Last week, a New York-based home loan company, Delta Financial, settled a lawsuit filed by three federal agencies accusing it of predatory lending to minority homeowners.

While the town has said that residents are free to challenge their tax assessments, lawyers for the minority homeowners say only the wealthy have the time and resources to do so.

Instead, the number of homeowners grew by 3.4 million households in the period studied, with minority homeowners making up 29 percent of the increase.

Catrina V. Roberts, a single mother of four, joined a new, growing class of minority homeowners when she moved from her subsidized apartment to a two-story house in 1999.

Loren Miller, a local attorney and owner/publisher of the California Eagle newspaper represented the minority homeowners in their restrictive covenant case.

The assessment system is also the target of a Federal lawsuit, which charges that the system discriminates against minority homeowners.

Agnos also led an effort to combat predatory lending aimed at minority homeowners and to repeal "racial covenants" barring non-whites from living or staying overnight in many California communities.

IN June the Federal Government sued Nassau, charging that its assessment practices imposed unfairly high taxes on minority homeowners in less prosperous areas.

Most of the minority homeowners live in southern and central Nassau, in small houses on modest lots.

As a result, minority homeowners tend to pay taxes at a higher percentage of their property's market value than white owners do, critics say.