In the News

Adam Rust, senior policy advisor at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition

“It’s a letdown that consumer advocates saw coming. The ability to repay guidelines were common sense, they were based on good research.”

A recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition listed a federal jobs guarantee as one of eight solutions to the racial wealth divide.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition released the report ranking Denver the second-most gentrified city in the nation.

The study says “COVID-19 exposed deep economic and social fault lines nationwide.” It also notes that problems with gentrification have been an issue long before the coronavirus pandemic hit.

In a press release Jesse Van Tol, CEO of NCRC, said, “recovery in most places will be even more challenging than in those where investment was already concentrated. There is no doubt that the protests that have erupted nationwide are at least in part motivated by the nation’s long history of racial economic inequality.”

“NCRC once again found that gentrification and displacement was highly concentrated, and that most low-income neighborhoods, and the vast majority of cities, continued to deal with a chronic lack of investment,” a statement in the report’s executive summary read.

Gentrification in this report refers to the displacement of existing, low-income populations, which the National Community Reinvestment Coalition tracked by measuring changes in income, home values and education levels during a five-year period ending in 2017.

“COVID-19 struck a nation that was already mostly struggling,” Jesse Van Tol, CEO of NCRC, said in a news release. “Recovery in most places will be even more challenging than in those where investment was already concentrated. There is no doubt that the protests that have erupted nationwide are at least in part motivated by the nation’s long history of racial economic inequality.”

The data makes it “difficult to assess who is getting the loans,” said Jesse Van Tol, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a nonprofit focused on ending discrimination in lending, housing and business. “The program design and data collection were so loose it allowed for potential gaming around who [banks] were serving.”

San Francisco-Oakland. San Jose. Sacramento. San Diego. Los Angeles. Of the country’s 20 most intensely gentrified cities, California has five of them, according to a new study.

“Americans are in the streets protesting police brutality and what it represents: systemic racism, profound inequality and the brutality of poverty that began with slavery,” said Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. “And now the president tweets a threat to end one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation, and one of the few tools we have to rectify the horrors and massive injustices of past, legalized housing discrimination and segregation. Trump’s threat is a dog whistle to people who want segregation and racial injustices to go on forever.”

The findings come from the Washington, D.C.-based National Community Reinvestment Coalition, whose members include community investment and development organizations, faith-based institutions and civil rights groups.

First Merchants recently announced a $1.4 billion community investment plan with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and its community-based members and partners. The commitment, which extends through 2025, includes mortgage and small business lending as well as community development investments.

“At a time when the country is dealing with all of this, this rule from the [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency] goes in the exact wrong direction, it would decrease investment in these communities,” Jesse Van Tol, chief executive officer of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, told National Journal.

Architecture is never neutral; it either heals or hurts. According to a study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, three out of four neighborhoods that were redlined on government maps 80 years ago continue to struggle economically.