agreed to a proposed $68 million settlement<\/a> in February following a lawsuit initiated by former President Joe Biden\u2019s Department of Justice.<\/p>\nThe 2023 lawsuit alleged Colony Ridge used unscrupulous and illegal tactics to target Hispanic customers with high-interest loans and misled buyers about infrastructure, including water, sewer and electrical connections.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Bennett said his questions needed to be answered before he could give his blessing to the settlement. But Jason Ray, an attorney for Colony Ridge, said the settlement remains in place without judicial oversight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Judge Bennett has a concern about the expenditure of funds, then we would welcome court oversight,\u201d he said. \u201cWe would have been happy either way.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Ray said that through the discovery process, his clients were able to provide evidence that some of the allegations \u201cwere not well founded.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that\u2019s why the settlement reflects the terms that it does,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The judge\u2019s refusal to sign off on it means the parties will have to oversee its terms on their own, said Sasha Samberg-Champion, an attorney with the National Fair Housing Alliance.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe judge can\u2019t make the United States pursue a just resolution if it doesn\u2019t want to,\u201d he said. \u201cHe\u2019s basically saying if you stand on this agreement\u2026 I am not going to keep this case and enforce this agreement. You\u2019re on your own to enforce it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The National Fair Housing Alliance was part of a group of organizations that filed a court briefing asking the judge to scrutinize the agreement.<\/p>\n
Samberg-Champion said he\u2019s gratified that the judge had concerns about the settlement because the deal doesn\u2019t \u201cvindicate the rights\u201d of Colony Ridge residents who lost their homes to foreclosure and suffered other financial hardships. He said Bennett\u2019s refusal to sign off on the settlement leaves the door open for Colony Ridge residents to continue to pursue some sort of legal action.<\/p>\n
\u201c(The settlement) can be challenged by any resident, they don\u2019t have the force of law behind the decisions they\u2019ve taken today,\u201d he said. \u201cNo judge is going to enforce this agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHow did we get from 45 pages of financial transactions that rise to the level of reverse redlining…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245262,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[86133,1505,56,58,57],"class_list":{"0":"post-245261","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston","8":"tag-hc-crime","9":"tag-hc-politics","10":"tag-houston","11":"tag-houston-headlines","12":"tag-houston-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245261\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245262"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}