Race Discrimination in Home Loans Persists : Banking: Clinton Administration launches campaign to pump $34 billion worth of mortgages into the inner cities.

WASHINGTON — Racial disparity in home mortgage lending has scarcely changed since 1990, despite a two-year campaign by bankers and the government to wipe out loan discrimination, a study released Tuesday shows.

The Clinton Administration, meanwhile, announced a program designed to pump more than $34 billion worth of mortgages into inner cities and to low-income people through 1994.

It set a 30% portfolio target for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae on mortgages that support low- to moderate-income housing, the Department of Housing and Urban Development said.

The government is requiring the same 30% commitment by the end of 1994 for buying mortgages that lenders make in inner cities.

The Federal National Mortgage Assn. and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. are major players in the mortgage market, buying up about two-thirds of all the home mortgages in the nation made by the original lenders.

This gives them immense power in the mortgage market, where they virtually dictate mortgage lending terms.

For blacks and Latinos, however, it is a market many remain locked out of, according to the Assn. of Community Organizations for Reform Now .

In its study, ACORN said its review of 1992 federal data on loans made by 120 banks, thrifts and lenders in 23 cities found blacks and Latinos were 2.7 times more likely to be rejected than a white person earning the same income.

That rejection rate is little changed from 2.8 in 1990, when the federal government first released mortgage lending data, causing outrage and charges of racial bias among lenders.