By Susan Arbetter City of Albany PUBLISHED 5:59 PM ET May. 03, 2021 PUBLISHED 5:59 PM EDT May. 03, 2021 SHARE For decades, many banks in the U.S. denied mortgages to people of color based strictly on race or the neighborhood where they lived. The practice, which started in the 1930s, was called red-lining and it was backed by the U.S. government. It’s one of the reasons that black families lost out on the wealth accumulation that white families have leveraged for the past 90 years. While red-lining is no longer legal, banks still engage in predatory lending in some of the very same neighborhoods that had been red-lined in the past.