REDLINING

Warren Buffett’s Mortgage Company Fined for Housing Discrimination

Trident Mortgage Co., owned by Berkshire Hathaway, allegedly discriminated against Black and Latino homebuyers in cities like Philadelphia and New Jersey.

A mortgage company owned by Warren Buffett discriminated against Black and Latino people looking to buy a home in Philadelphia, New Jersey, and Delaware, the Department of Justice said Wednesday. The company, Trident Mortgage Co., is a division of the Home Services branch of Buffett’s conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway. Employees there deliberately skipped writing mortgages in minority neighborhoods between 2015 and 2019, according to the Justice Department and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “Trident’s unlawful redlining activity denied communities of color equal access to residential mortgages, stripped them of the opportunity to build wealth, and devalued properties in their neighborhoods,” a department official said in a statement. Trident did not have to admit wrongdoing in what the Associated Press identified as the second-largest redlining settlement in history, but it will have to set aside some $20 million in loans for underserved communities.