Clayton Homes is a low-cost mobile home provider in the US. Recently, they were the focus of an investigation by the Seattle Times and Buzzfeed. The investigation has exposed racially targeted, predatory lending practices. Here’s the kicker: Clayton Homes is owned by Warren Buffet.
Clayton Homes company hallways are adorned with motivational posters starring a smiling Buffet.
The company has expanded in the past 12 years, since Buffet took control. It now controls up to 72 percent of mobile home sales to black families and over 50 percent of mobile home sales to both Hispanic and Native American families.
With that power comes a complete lack of social responsibility. Clayton has used its monopoly of the mobile home market to make billions of dollars. These billions have come from the pockets of poor people, disproportionately people of color.
When Clayton sells its homes to people who need loans, it uses an in-house lender, Vanderbilt Mortgage. Vanderbilt, the Times found, charges people of color higher interest rates than whites. In fact, the report found that a black family earning $75,000 a year faced a higher interest rate than a white family earning just $35,000 a year for the same property.
While Clayton Homes cannot advertise Vanderbilt’s services outright, the Times found that the lending arm of the company has a presence in every step of the process to buying a Clayton Homes mobile home. In some cases, Vanderbilt was used by Clayton Homes representatives without informing the buyer of any other options.
Buffet told Berkshire Hathaway shareholders in May that he “makes no apologies whatsoever about Clayton’s lending terms.”
Vanderbilt uses pressure and distraction to push people into financing through the company. The company engaged in a practice known as “reverse redlining:” seeking out low-income people of color and offering them loans with high interest rates. Many of the people Vanderbilt seeks out for mobile home loans are manipulated into signing papers they do not really understand.
When families cannot make payments, Clayton Homes will repossess the properties and resell them. The people exploited by the company, however, remain in debt, their credit ruined.
Warren Buffet said in October that “the American Dream is alive and well, but it isn’t for a good many people.” His company Clayton Homes is helping to keep that dream out of reach for many poor people of color.
Featured image is by Muffingg, available under a Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution-Sharealike license.
