Senior Advisor, Organizing jkellman@ncrc.org 847.612.6531 Gerald (Jerry) Kellman has worked with NCRC as a Senior Advisor since 2014. He works on community benefits agreements; regional reinvestment coalitions, campaigns and summits; and capacity building for member organizations. Kellman began organizing as part of the civil rights movement. He cofounded the Gamaliel organizing network and developed grassroots […]
As big banks focus on big businesses, it has become harder and harder for Chicago’s small business owners and entrepreneurs to secure reasonable loans from responsible lenders.
HuffPost: Chicago Small Businesses Need Better Lending Options Read More »
The White House is quietly preparing the most sweeping changes to federal safety net programs in a generation, using legislation and executive actions to target recipients of food stamps, Medicaid and housing benefits.
Politico: Behind Trump’s plan to target the federal safety net Read More »
Children who grow up in some places go on to earn much more than they would if they grew up elsewhere.
New York Times: The best and worst places to grow up Read More »
There’s a clear link between a lack of places to live and the number of people sleeping out of doors at night. And the solution is clear, too: Cities need to double down not just on homeless services, but on building more affordable housing, and quickly.
Fast Company: America’s affordable housing crisis Is driving its homelessness crisis Read More »
Not education. Not income. Not even being an expert on racial disparities in health care
ProPublica: Nothing Protects Black Women From Dying in Pregnancy and Childbirth Read More »
Despite a decade of setbacks, the game is definitely not over for low-income borrowers.
Talk Poverty: Why Have Banks Stopped Lending to Low-Income Americans? Read More »
The 2017 Opportunity Index, a comprehensive look at the factors that drive opportunity across the United States, reveals how the South is home to some of the most dynamic and fastest -growing areas in the country — but also some of the least hopeful.
OZY: The south: the best and worst place for the American dream Read More »
Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook will drop fees to nonprofit fundraisers, but the company will keep them for individuals trying to raise money on the platform.
The Senate Banking Committee will begin its markup today of a bill that would roll back the Dodd-Frank Act. Experts see it as a dangerous step. The Center for Responsible Lending, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and the National Consumer Law Center all oppose the bill.
HousingWire: Senate Banking Committee introduces repeal of Dodd-Frank Act Read More »
Building more housing, more densely, could help address a widespread economic challenge. A fight over one lot in Berkeley, California shows how tough that could be.
New York Times: The Great American Single-Family Home Problem Read More »
Young doctors entering the medical field take the Hippocratic Oath requiring them to deliver quality and ethical care. This cardinal rule of medicine should be applied as the Trump administration mulls Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) reform. The first rule must be to “do no harm” and enact no “reform” that results in less lending and investing in underserved communities.
Would Trump’s CRA Reform Really “Do No Harm?” Read More »
A native of Queens, Donald Trump was the son and heir to Fred Trump, a scrappy and ruthless developer of housing for New York’s white working and middle class. An outer-borough nativist and one-time Klan supporter, the senior Trump profited mightily from the federal government’s massive intervention in the real estate industry, which began in the Great Depression. His fortune was premised on strict racial segregation, a process whose legacies still shape the geography of urban and suburban America.
Public Books: The Big Picture: America’s real estate developer in chief Read More »
Los Angeles Times, Nov. 27, 2017: Completely unnecessary spat over CFPB leaves consumers out in the cold For his part, Trump tweeted over the weekend that the CFPB “has been a total disaster” that has left financial firms “devastated and unable to properly serve the public.” That, of course, is total nonsense. The CFPB has
LA Times: Completely unnecessary spat over CFPB leaves consumers out in the cold Read More »
Earlier this year, in a large metropolitan area of the eastern United States, two men walked into the same bank branch on the same day, each at different times of the day.
They each came in with nearly identical business backgrounds and strong credit histories, and they each asked about a small business loan of $60,000-$70,000 to expand their business and to possibly hire a part-time employee. There were some key differences, like each man’s name and their company names — and their race.
Next City: “Mystery Shopper” Experiment Reveals Racial Gap in Small Business Lending Read More »
