Data backs bias claim – Kubayi

Government is 'calling for more transparency in lending practices'.

- Ina Opperman

HOME LOANS 'SKEWED': MINISTER DISMISSES ARGUMENT OF NO RACIAL DISCRIMINATION.

Minister of Human Settlements Mmamoloko Kubayi has hit back at a housing expert who criticised her stance on home loans.

Kubayi, said Renier Kriek, CEO of Sentinel Homes, was "asleep at the wheel" and missed the point on the issue of home loan lending practices.

Kubayi said she welcomed the public discussion and criticism that ensued after her press briefing at the end of August, but found it "astonishing for so-called experts to hurl insults at us based on alternative facts and a historical understanding of how the world works".

Kriek said last week: "The minister's plan to change the law to force banks to explain why they reject loans to any previously disadvantaged person side-steps the real issues in housing supply and demand, as well as any meaningful solution."

He also said credit are providers profit-driven not racially motivated and that banks are profit-seeking enterprises that make money from awarding credit, not from denying it.

"Home loans are a major source of their income and it makes sense that they are incentivised to grant as many as possible.