In the News

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s “affordable housing goals ensure that all credit-worthy people have access to quality mortgages,” Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said in a statement. “Their affordable housing obligations should be strengthened, not weakened, before ending the government’s conservatorship.”

In a letter written and submitted by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), the coalition of housing, consumer protection and community development organizations urged the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to drop the idea of a “one-ratio” metric from new CRA rules expected to be proposed by the agencies this fall.

While the administration says affordable housing goals would be replaced with a more “efficient, transparent, and accountable mechanism,” like a fee that would go to HUD to promote affordable housing, consumer and civil rights groups are suspicious. “Essentially they are trying to shrink the government footprint in the market and introduce private guarantors that won’t have the same obligations as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” said Jesse Van Tol, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

In a letter from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and 27 other organizations, the coalition urged the Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation to not twist a desire for greater clarity and consistency into a dollar volume metric that would not be meaningful for local communities.

The National Urban League, Center for Responsible Lending, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, NAACP, National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development, National Fair Housing Alliance, UnidosUS, National Community Reinvestment Coalition and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, Inc. released the following joint statement.

“Essentially they are trying to shrink the government footprint in the market and introduce private guarantors that won’t have the same obligations as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,” said Jesse Van Tol, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

“Adding new private guarantors to the housing finance system and privatizing Fannie and Freddie would not only increase costs, but will incentivize guarantors to chase the most lucrative markets and serve only the most profitable borrowers or regions of the country. Such a scenario would enable taxpayer-backed companies to evade their duty to serve the entire market, including urban and rural areas,” the groups said Thursday in a joint statement.

Issuing the statement were the Center for Responsible Lending, National Urban League, National Fair Housing Alliance, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, NAACP, National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development, UnidosUS (formerly the National Council of La Raza) and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund.

“It’s a cultural, civil rights and business problem that should be relegated to history, but instead it’s still a factor in who gets access to capital,” said Jesse Van Tol, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. “This is exacerbating the nation’s profound racial wealth divide.”

National Community Reinvestment Coalition says that redlining buttressed the segregated nature of cities.

“We know that when it comes to things like denial disparities, from the point of actually applying for a loan, there are disparities by race and gender, but this is really pre-application, what’s the experience of minority-owned businesses in even inquiring about a bank loan,” says Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), the national network of bank watchdog and community development groups that commissioned the new research.

“HUD’s proposal makes it far more difficult for those injured by stealth discriminatory policies to prove discrimination,” community-investment organizer Jesse Van Tol told ABC News. “The bar was already set high and HUD‘s proposal would put it in the stratosphere — it really strains credulity.”

The memo from the Committee’s Majority Staff to Committee Members states that the hearing “will examine access to affordable housing, credit, and banking services in low and moderate-income (“LMI”) neighborhoods.”

Truist Bank announces $60 billion community investment plan.

In a span of 13 years, more than 20,000 African American Washingtonians have been booted by primarily white, high-income new residents, according to a study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.