The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) today proposed sweeping changes to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) that would drastically weaken banks’ obligation to meet the credit needs of low- and moderate-income communities.
“This proposal dramatically weakens banks’ obligations to invest in working-class communities and threatens to undermine the affordable housing gains in the 21st Century Road to Housing Act entirely,” said Jesse Van Tol, President and CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. “Banks will face weaker exams, get credit for projects with little connection to low- and moderate-income communities and gain more control over where and how they are evaluated. CRA is supposed to put a thumb on the scale for working-class people; now it lets hundreds of banks off the hook, and dramatically reduces the obligation for others.”
“I’m particularly concerned about the proposal to raise the large bank threshold to $10 billion, with banks below $1 billion having no community investment obligation at all,” said Van Tol. “Bank capital drives the creation of affordable housing in this country, and they do it because of CRA. Now hundreds of banks won’t have the obligation to do so, and hundreds more will have a weaker requirement, which will further deepen our housing crisis.”
“Equally troubling is the changed definition of economic development, which previously required a focus on low- and moderate-income job creation. Now, banks can get credit for financing small business entities created by wealthy people, in an upper-income census tract, with no requirement to create any jobs for working-class people,” said Van Tol. “This proposal would likely shift billions of dollars in financing away from the small businesses that drive working-class job creation.”
