Tuesday afternoon I attended an interesting workshop at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis that was focused on how to close the significant gap between white and minority homeowners. For example, at 70 percent, Minnesota has the 5th highest homeownership rate in the country, but for communities of the color the homeownership rate is just 43 percent - one of the lowest rates in the country.

That issue is the focus of the work of the Minnesota Homeownership Center's Emerging Markets Homeownership Initiative, which sponsored the event. The highlight was a speech by Fed president, Narayana Kocherlakota, who said that the private sector needs to get more involved in making mortgages and that "heavy reliance on government guarantees is not a sound long-term strategy" for the nation. My colleague, Chris Serres, has more perspective on his speech in a story in the Wednesday Star Tribune. That speech was followed by remarks from Shana Ford, a vice president with M & I Bank, which has developed a financial literacy course and a unique loan program aimed at helping borrowers improve their financial skills and increase their credit score. M & I's "credit builder loan" is a $1,000 to $5,000 loan that's accessible to any borrower who can make the payments. There's almost no risk to the lender because the proceeds of that loan are held in an interest-earning C/D until the original loan amount is paid off. Then the borrower can use the money for a house downpayment, or anything else, and likely has improved their credit because they've made timely payments. Following that speech the audience broke into five discussion groups that talked about ways of reaching out to those "emerging markets." I sat in with Realtors, who focused on the need for more education and better partnerships between the real estate community and the lenders who have access to special financing and loan programs.