They found that most of these loans went to neighborhoods in St. Louis where whites made up most of the population. Nearly half went to census areas where minorities made up less than 10 percent of the population, and another fourth went to areas where minorities made up 10 to 19 percent of the population. Only 3 percent of loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers were made in St. Louis neighborhoods where minorities made up 80 to 100 percent of the population.

“In the city at large, we found that the lack of lending is not fully explained by income — race is a critical factor,” Bruce Mitchell, a researcher at the coalition, said in an email. “Credit is flowing more to neighborhoods with higher percentages of white residents than it is to majority African-American neighborhoods of the same income profile.”

The disparity can be clearly seen in individual St. Louis census tracts.

In one tract, where 23 percent of the population was African-American, and where residents had a moderate income, six mortgages were made per 100 homes in 2012 to the end of 2014.

That number of loans was higher than in a nearby middle-income tract where African-Americans made up 58 percent of the population. In this area, 2.5 loans were made per 100 homes in the same period. (The frequency of lending is measured per 100 homes to account for the fact that tracts don’t contain the same number of homes.)

The low number of mortgages made in minority areas can be explained in part by the fact that fewer people in these areas applied for a mortgage. The lower number of applications may to a large extent be explained by lower incomes and the belief of some prospective borrowers that it is too difficult to qualify for a mortgage.

That said, applicants for mortgages in minority neighborhoods were denied a loan at significantly higher rates than in mostly white neighborhoods. In areas where minorities made up between 10 and 19 percent of the population, 64 percent of mortgage applications by low- and moderate-income applicants were approved. In St. Louis areas where minorities made up 50 to 79 percent of the population, only half the mortgage applications in this income bracket were approved, according to the coalition’s analysis.

The lower approval rate in minority neighborhoods in St. Louis may partly be a result of factors like weaker credit scores and lower or more intermittent incomes. But the lower rate might also reflect the relatively low number of banks in some of these minority neighborhoods.