Links to media coverage of NCRC.
To request an interview with NCRC experts, send a note to: media@ncrc.org.
In November 2020, a study was released by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition regarding Paycheck Protection Program loans that used matched-pair testing. NCRC performed past matched-pair “mystery shopper” tests in 2017, 2019, and earlier in 2020.
A report from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition shows that 13,000 bank branches closed in the U.S. between 2008 and 2020 — or 14% of all branches.
According to a report by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, from 2017 to 2020, banks closed 4,407 branches.
The National Community Reinvestment Coalition has long advocated for “more nuance” in CRA ratings — and you can see in the chart above how regulators have started nodding to the need for more nuance, given the five performance levels for the different areas examined within the evaluation.
“The hill is very steep,” said Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a group that promotes fairness in banking and housing. “I don’t think we’ve even begun to put a dent in that problem.”
A study from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition released in June 2020 showed Indianapolis ranked No. 12 on the list of most intensely gentrifying cities in the U.S. from 2013 to 2017.
This has led to higher fees for consumers, reduced access to banking services for communities of color and low-income working families, and increased concerns about risk to the financial system, according to studies by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.
In 2019, a National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) study found that seven cities accounted for almost half of the gentrification in the United States from 2000 to 2013, and Baltimore was included in this bracket. The city had the fifth largest number of gentrified areas.
“They knew this moment was coming,” said Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a housing advocacy group. “Why don’t we already have a nominee?”
One organization that was awarded was the National Community Reinvestment Coalition
A report released recently draws attention to an under-utilized program that, if scaled up, could meet tremendous demand for greater homeownership opportunities and begin to repair the damage of racist policies that have created housing inequity for decades. The report, authored by the Chicago Area Fair Housing Alliance (CAFHA), draws on interviews, surveys, and administrative records focused on the relatively unknown public housing authority homeownership program that is embedded within the better-known housing choice voucher (formerly known as Section 8) program.
“We cannot stand by and allow algorithms to resurrect old biases in new packages, or introduce new forms of discrimination hidden in proprietary code.” —National Community Reinvestment Coalition CEO Jesse Van Tol, joining fintechs PayPal, Square and others in a call for more guidance on how AI should be used in lending.
Last year, the advocacy group National Community Reinvestment Coalition raised concerns about this trend after tallying up more than 13,000 closures, or 14% of all branches, between 2008 and 2020. It issued a report that noted that such closures often disproportionately impact rural, low-income, and minority communities where few branches might have existed in the first place.
Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ), along with Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE) and Rep. Steven Horsford (D-NV) recently re-introduced The Break the Cycle of Violence Act in the 117th Congress.
Director of Fair Lending at National Community Reinvestment Coalition Anneliese Lederer said that there were certain barriers that caused the PPP loan disparity, including a lack of existing relationships with banks, banks discouraging Black and Latinx people from applying for loans, inequality in outreach and an initial rule that did not allow people with criminal records or who had defaulted on student loans to benefit from the PPP program.
