In the News

As the National Community Reinvestment Coalition reported in 2018, most of the neighborhoods (74 percent) that the federal government redlined eight decades earlier are low- to moderate-income communities today.

In March [2018], the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) released a study that compared the HOLC’s redlined neighborhoods with their current economic and social conditions and found that, despite some heavily gentrified areas, the segregation and economic inequality in those areas persist today.

According to a 2010 report by the U.S. Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency, Black-owned businesses are less likely to be approved for funding than white-owned businesses, and 2019 report by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) found that Black business owners are treated inferior at banks.

Otting’s lasting legacy will be his efforts to make discrimination in mortgages and bank lending more likely — hopefully it won’t be a lasting legacy; the National Community Reinvestment Coalition has already announced it will sue to block the rule.

Host Alan Jennings speaks to the leaders of two national groups who are working to reinvest funds into low-income neighborhoods and fight poverty.

Richardson at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a nonprofit that promotes access to banking services in traditionally underserved communities, contends that bank lending practices are part of the problem.

“If no one is getting loans, you will see home values remain low,” he said. “The reason that (banks) can’t lend to these communities is because there isn’t equity to lend on. It’s a chicken and egg scenario.”

“This is an awkward, disjointed and rushed move by a single agency that couldn’t get agreement from the two other agencies that regulate banks within the same administration,” National Community Reinvestment Coalition CEO Jesse Van Tol said. “The OCC should have been able to agree and work with the other two agencies that oversee enforcement of the same law. It couldn’t. It failed. That’s an administrative fiasco.”

Van Tol added: “The timing is shocking, in the middle of a pandemic that has been hardest on lower-income communities this law is supposed to protect. What an insulting and cruel moment to unleash new rules that will in some cases help banks to do less for some poor communities and communities of color. Those are the communities hit hardest by COVID-19.”

“This is an awkward, disjointed and rushed move by a single agency that couldn’t get agreement from the two other agencies that regulate banks within the same administration,” said Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. “The OCC should have been able to agree and work with the other two agencies that oversee enforcement of the same law. It couldn’t. It failed. That’s an administrative fiasco.”

Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said the rule would likely face a legal challenge, though he did not specify if his own group would sue.

“This is an awkward, disjointed and rushed move by a single agency that couldn’t get agreement from the two other agencies that regulate banks,” he said in a separate statement.

In a statement, National Community Reinvestment Coalition CEO Jesse Van Tol laid out the high stakes: “The timing is shocking, in the middle of a pandemic that has been hardest on lower-income communities this law is supposed to protect. What an insulting and cruel moment to unleash new rules that will in some cases help banks to do less for some poor communities and communities of color. Those are the communities hit hardest by COVID-19.”

“The last foreclosure crisis was a slow-moving train; the impact in terms of people was over the course of several years,” Jesse Van Tol, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a research and advocacy coalition of 600 community organizations, previously told The Post’s Renae Merle. “Whereas the current moment, it’s all happening pretty quickly, 25 million, 30 million unemployed in a manner of a few weeks.”

The OCC “introduced new, gaping loopholes into the rules that will allow banks to reduce their focus on lower-income borrowers and communities,” said Jesse Van Tol, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. “It’s an administrative fiasco. We’ll see you in court.”

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition and the California Reinvestment Coalition on Thursday said they intend to sue the OCC over the rule, arguing that the rulemaking moved on a predetermined course that violated federal administrative law.

“The OCC went against the majority of public comments and introduced new, gaping loopholes into the rules that will allow banks to reduce their focus on lower-income borrowers and communities, the very communities the law was intended to protect when it was passed in 1977,” said Jesse Van Tol, the chief executive of the NCRC. “It’s an administrative fiasco. We’ll see you in court.”

Silver and others said more targeted CRA investments can have a bigger impact in the middle of a crisis.