NCRC

In 2017, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found that banks were far more critical in considering small business loans from Black applicants and were less likely to schedule follow-up appointments or offer help completing the loan application. This disparity existed even when Black and white applicants in the study had identical education, age and income.

According to the NCRC, the CFPB’s new rule would exempt “40% of financial institutions that currently report data about their closed-end mortgages from having to do so beginning in 2021.”

People of color have also faced challenges and discrimination in sustaining their small businesses. According to a study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Black applicants who applied for Paycheck Protection Program loans were treated poorly or unfairly compared to their White counterparts.

“The CFPB used its rule-making power to undermine data reporting that’s essential for the public to detect and stop discrimination in lending and housing,” Jesse Van Tol, NCRC’s CEO, said in a statement.

Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, called the new housing rule, “terrible,” adding: “The administration just gutted the rule that enforces fairness in housing, which was and still is the whole point of the Fair Housing Act,” he said. “All of us have an interest in living in fair and desegregated communities. This would be a return to separate but equal and would be among the most overtly racist housing policies in decades. It’s hard to even call it a policy. It doesn’t enforce anything. It hands off any action to local governments, and they can get away with no action. This approach won’t affirmatively further anything other than discrimination.”

CGTN’s Rachelle Akuffo and NCRC’s Dedrick Asante-Muhammad discuss the federal reserve’s impact on racial economic disparity

Although the practice was banned in 1968, communities deemed “hazardous” by the federal Home Owners’ Loan Corp. from 1935 to 1939 are still much more likely than other areas to be home to lower-income, minority residents, a 2018 study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found.

“Our economy and health care system marginalize the economically vulnerable so this recession caused by a health crisis leaves the most economically and health-fragile community members to face the worst of both of these crises,” said Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, chief of race, wealth and community at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

Without knowing the path of the virus, it’s also impossible to predict how many people who have lost their jobs due to the pandemic will be able to find new ones, said Gerron Levi, director of policy at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

“It’s a real gamble,” she said. “It’s a rolling of the dice with so many people unemployed and so many people facing a situation where they really can’t return to work because there is not a job available.”

But the PPP has had its share of problems. A study conducted by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found that Black business owners had a harder time getting federal aid through the program.

A recent study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found “different levels of encouragement to apply for loans, different products offered, and different information provided by bank representatives.”

An alarming aspect of the new Community Reinvestment Act is the broadening definition of CRA activities. An analysis from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found that stadiums in opportunity zones, middle-income homeowners living in high-cost neighborhoods, and volunteer hours could all qualify as CRA activities.