In the News

Historically, white people easily got mortgages to live in America’s nicest areas, while aspiring racial/ethnic home buyers from the inner-city were refused loans from banks and federal programs. That is what is called “redlining.”

Cleveland’s largest hometown bank may be setting the new standard for community investments among the country’s large financial institutions. It was also the largest promise made by a bank as a percentage of its collective asset base, according to the nonprofit National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

Across the District of Columbia, black natives complain that with each new resident comes increased targeting by law enforcement tasked with keeping their communities safe.

The Wilmington Neighborhood Conservancy Land Bank (Land Bank) has assembled nine properties in the 800 block of W. Ninth St., and is working with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) and JP Morgan Chase on the project.

On June 4, Anne Beers Elementary is set to host the 85-year-old former public school teacher and current diversity educator for an experimental masterclass with students, parents, educators and the community. The event’s inspiration originated with parents from the school who wished to lead a conversation about DC’s gentrification over the past two decades.

The previous leadership of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recovered over $12 billion in restitution and canceled debts for over 30 million Americans. Under its new leadership, the CFPB has not lived up to that standard.

Communities subjected to discriminatory lending and mortgage practices decades ago now have higher rates of asthma, according to new research out Wednesday. These predominately low-income communities and communities of color also suffer from increased exposure to pollutants.

Park Heights is one of several Baltimore neighborhoods where gun violence is endemic. But residents here also have concerns about whether the city will continue with its revitalization plan demolishing unsightly and deteriorating buildings – or even the racetrack.

Local organizers are bringing the Dyke March, a grassroots march for queer liberation led by self-identifying dykes, back to the District on June 7 after a more than decade-long hiatus. Their inaugural theme for the protest is “Dykes Against Displacement.”

Black people in Washington, D.C., were arrested 10 times as often as their white peers during a recent five-year period that has also seen the capital city top lists of the most rapidly gentrifying cities in the nation.

A new report finds that the 2017 tax reform put $143 a day into the pockets of a top 1-percent family, while middle-class households earning between $40,000 and $110,000 are seeing just $2.75 a day, according to an op-ed in the St. Louis American.

KeyBank’s new East Side branch is getting ready to open next month, and its neighbors are noticing. The new branch is a visible piece of the five-year national community benefits plan that Key launched at the start of 2017.

In the week since President Trump and Congressional Democratic leaders announced a vague agreement to pursue a $2 trillion infrastructure plan, more than one note of doubt has been sounded. Depending on how the plan is structured, people in America’s rural areas (who arguably need more of an economic boost than anyone else) could be left out.