CityLimits, February 24, 2020: Hopes for Improving Anti-Redlining Law Take a Backseat to Saving It
Under a federal anti-redlining financial regulation, the Community Reinvestment Act, banks that lend to even the shadiest landlords may even receive credit for serving the low-income communities that they are helping those landlords to exploit.
The CRA, a crucial but flawed tool intended to give communities leverage over banks, is up for reform — and though community advocates have long advocated for substantive changes to the law, they are currently worried about conservative moves to hobble it.
But over the years, the legislation has become bureaucratic, overcomplicated and disconnected from the communities in which anti-redlining organizing took place, [Gregory] Jost argues: “The people that actually were around for the CRA’s passage are for the most part no longer with us and over the past 45 years it’s become disconnected from the grassroots.”
The CRA is a fairly simple law, but its enforcement metrics are complex and that has resulted in it becoming restricted to the province of experts. It’s arguably this technocratization that has allowed for toothless enforcement.
“We have to push back against unnecessary complication of matters. The metrics don’t have to be super complicated,” Jost said.
“That’s always been a tool of people in power to make things wonkier than they actually need to be: Make it confusing to keep it out of the hands of the people.”
The reform community groups most dreaded is what they call “one ratio.” “The comptroller has a notion that this would make life easier for bank CEOs,” says Josh Silver of the National Community Reinvestment [Coalition.]
