American Banker, August 31, 2023, Podcast – Banks, Buffalo And A Mass Shooting: How The Industry Can Help Heal A Targeted Community
What is the role of banks in fixing deeply entrenched problems in segregated communities that banks’ past lending practices such as redlining helped create? What do banks owe a community like the East Side, which was targeted by a white supremacist because of the sheer concentration of black residents within its borders?
Redlining, as we know it, is related to the Home Owner’s Loan Corporation, which during the Great Depression sent examiners into about 200 cities to better understand where in those cities were mortgages that they wanted to buy, says Jason Richardson, senior director of research at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
Now, more than a year after the Tops massacre, a growing number of community leaders, activists, and other East Side stakeholders are looking for the banking industry to do more. They argue that banks, because of their powerful role as financiers and because of the industry’s history of lending discrimination, have a greater responsibility to address the East Side’s generational challenges.
