Discrimination in lending - MS

[Jo W.]

A friend of mine is a nurse and unfortunately she has MS, due to her illness she can call in to work with no limit of days. 

She applied for a refinance which will save her a lot of money and got denied because her HR department would not sign a guaranteed amount of work hours as she has MS and can call in whenever she likes. 

Does it sound like a discrimination to you? She is more than qualified (800 plus credit score, DTI ratio of less than 25% and work history).

Are there other options to refinance in this situation? 

[Chris Mason]

Originally posted by @Jo W.:

@Eric James @Russell Brazil @Andrew Postell

to be clear, she's been working at the same hospital for over 4 years and called in very few times (Just like any other employee). the fact that she has a medical condition that allows her to call in doesn't mean she doesn't have a stable income.

Based on your comments it sounds like a person with MS should not be qualified to lease a car, buy a house, or get a student loan.

 You and I have not seen her paperwork, her credit report, her loan application, her verification of employment, or anything else. So all we can do is speculate. No borrower in the history of humanity has ever told the WHOLE story to a friend or colleague about why their mortgage didn't go through.

I'd be curious to see what her written verification of employment says this time as well as the last time she applied for a mortgage. Her HR department could have internally recategorized her as "on-call / part time" 5 months ago, without her noticing or being aware (the notice is in her spam folder). I've seen that. And the person still works 40ish hours, plus or minus paid sick time off, and their paychecks don't go down, so the employee does not even notice when it happens. From HR/Admin's internal perspective, if they NEED someone at Nursing Station 23, it needs to be one of the reliable and consistent people. So for folks who aren't that, put them at Nursing Station 37, a "it's nice to have someone here, but operations aren't crippled if someone isn't here." Station 23 and 37 could even be the same physical location and exact same responsibilities, just a different internal Admin/HR category. But then when we go to verify employment, boom, what HR puts in writing is that she's part time. And, bam, that shifts her into the same category as seasonal workers and part time workers (there are no more "Stated Income" loans, we have to go off of what HR puts in writing), which in turn triggers the long term 2 year average derived from when HR put her in that part time category, which I'm speculating here may very well have been 5 months ago, or some other period of time less than 2 years ago. 

And if that is indeed what happened (emphasis: this is 100% speculation on my part, based on the limited, inaccurate, and incomplete, facts at hand), then her discrimination allegation could/should/would be directed at her employer and/or through her union. This one is now less common in California due to that W2/1099 law passed a few months before COVID hit, but back in the "before" days we would see this one ALL the time. 

This would be a "lesser evil" form of the "1099 employee" phenomenon that happens (hint: "1099 employee" is a contradiction in terms, there is no such thing). Person says they have a salary and work 40 hours a week as an employee, because that's what the recruiter told them, and it reflects on their paystubs. Dig a little deeper, and they're a 1099 independent contractor --- the recruiter said one thing, HR is singing to a different tune, as a cost saving measure.