OCR Text |
Show Page The National Enterprise, May 4, 1977 twenty-tw- o de Toiedamo 1 Open Account Handout Industry Wastes Energy by Ralph deToledano ) An Alternative to Redlining in Philadelphia in good by Chuck Aker low Mortgage lenders are among the worlds most conservative creatures. Their belief in humanity is primarily negative and they tend to only be interested in loaning a person money when he really doesnt need it. The problem of loaning money to credit-worth- y people who happen to live in areas of urban blight has been re- solved by the lenders in many American communities, including this one, through a process known as Red-linin- g red-linin- g. is where mortgage lenders refuse to make loans to someone living in an area of the city which is regarded as blighted and welfare oriented regardless of the credit worthiness of the applicant or the condition of the property. Thus, a working mother living in the central city area who otherwise pays her bills and tries to maintain her property order is denied the opportunity to borrow money to purchase the home simply because of the area in which it proach to a more narrow look at the actual neighborhood. Mortgage officers look at the is found. particular street and evaluate it on its own merits. If the But the bankers in Philadelphia are abandonment rate on the street is less than 10 then the loan officer proceeds to Silly? Perhaps. trying a new approach w'hich, thus far, appears quite successful. Three major Philadelphia banks and ten others have instituted a program through which they have loaned to more than 1700 persons during the last year and one half for a total com- mitment of more than $19.1 million. These loans are in areas that the savings and loan folks typically ducked. Some were to welfare mothers and others to people with less than 10 down payment. As of this writing the delinquency rate has run only 0.6 which is comparable to conventional mortgages in Philadelphia. The criteria for loaning was altered from the redlining ap award the loan based upon the structural soundness of the home and the credit worthiness of the applicant. Additionally, the MGIC In- vestment Corp of Milwaukee agreed to provide mortgage insurance for all loans in excess of 75 of appraisal. And in some cases, bankers have counted welfare payments as income. Others have made 90 to 95 mortgages. While the program is still relatively new it is a powerful step in the right direction since, if successful, it will disappear as a program and be. instead, an integral and recognized method of lending. g When that happens, may be a thing of the past. THE NATIONAL red-linin- Copley News Service With conservation todays bid rage, perhaps the time has come to suggest the curtailment of one activity which wastes energy, paper, labor, the postman s time, etc., etc., etc. refer to the production of those millions of press releases that flood the mails and usually end up unopened in the waste baskets of editors, columnists, commentators and the media in general. I These handouts come in a daily avalanche. Every corporation, special-intereorganizagovernment agency and tion, political figure and opinion peddler has one or more public relations people churning them out. The vast majority are of interest only to those who have produced them and to the PR man who gets paid to prepare them. sub-agenc- y, st much energy goes into the manufacture of paper, into feeding Multigraph and offset how much extra gasoline machines, into electric typewriters is used by the mail trucks delivering this material. No one has computed how jAnd what does most of it consist of? g The pronouncements of a businessman or a politician to the local Chamber of Commerce or the ladies auxiliary, news that is only of interest to those involved in the g statements which activity or the political effort no one takes seriously, and not an ounce of information per ton. earth-shakin- self-servin- A columnist learns after a while which envelopes to open, which to deliver intact to his round file. For example, the American Iron Sc Steel Institute sends me handouts several times a week. Most of them wouldnt interest the editor of a steel industry newsletter, much less a general columnist. Its not that I am against public relations per se. The good PR man supplies you with information and saves the time of tracking down facts which are not easily available. A small PR outfit like Hugh Newton Associates packs more solid information into one press release than the big Madison dispensaries give you in a years time. A good PR man doesnt use the shotgun approach. He pinpoints his material and sends it only to those who are interested in what he is writing about. Before he inundates you with a release, he calls and asks if you want it. 25-pa- ge To take another case. From time to time Tom Geoghegan of United States Steel sends me a report or a publication of his company. I read it because I know that he understands a newsmans needs, and more often than not, I learn something. But I could spend the entire day reading the s and that comes across my desk in the form of s communications. non-new- non-informati- on stop-pres- Part of the problem is that most organizations, governmental and in the private sector, judge by volume, not by results. They rate a PR man by the size of his mailing list and by the number of editors and commentators he takes out to lunch not by the stories that see print or break through on TV. What many big PR agencies never get on to, moveover, is that editors and columnists who are bombarded with PR junk mail not only turn away from the sender but in time begin to resent him. . The classic example of waste was the releases sent out by the Embassy of Portugal to the Washington press corps. They were written in Portuguese! Releases from other embassies are frequently written in a tantalizing kind of pidgin English which you can almost understand, but not quite. Think of the energy that could be saved if the handout industry exercised some restraint my energy most of all. Letters Editor: Some people think the pool is full . We feign our intelligence as a people, and our leadership as a nation, we quickly move to discontinue the use of questionable food coloring in our desserts, and suspicious sweeteners in our yet allow the proven statistics of destruction beverages caused by the use of alcohol to be drenched in the blood and horror of generations bereaved, agonized, and debilitated by the subtle poison which is proclaimed and dcsseminated from every corner of our land. Sincerely, Gerald G. Andersen |