FYI: African Americans were more than twice as likely to be denied a conventional mortgage loan than white homebuyers in 2002, according to ACORN’s annual study of home loans in metropolitan areas around the country, released yesterday. Latinos, meanwhile, were more than 1.5 times more likely to be denied than whites. Overall homeownership rates continued their steady climb, reaching 68.1 percent in 2002. But when broken out by race and ethnicity, that stat tells different story: Almost 75 percent of white families owned their homes in 2002, compared to 48 percent of blacks and 47.5 percent of Latinos. [10/17/03]