MPA, March 13, 2023, Efforts To Reach Historically Neglected Segments Grow
The quest to expand credit into historically neglected segments has been heightened in the last couple of years, with a growing list of initiatives emerging to fulfill the mission. Efforts on several fronts are underway to help expand the American Dream of homeownership to long-ignored communities.
To be sure, the mission isn’t new. It began in earnest with passage of the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977, designed to end the unsavory practice of redlining by which entire community swaths – invariably low-income or minority-populated – would be marked on maps to deter bank borrowing into those areas.
Making matters worse, the very idea of redlining was a federally endorsed construct. Some 80 years ago, the Home Owners’ Loan Corp. a federal agency, created so-called “Residential Security” maps of major American cities. As the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) explains on its website, the maps document how loan officers, appraisers and real estate professionals evaluated mortgage lending risk during the era immediately prior to the suburbanization surge of the 1950s.
