That law is “the thumb on the scale that gets banks to take a second look at the kind of financing these communities need,” said Gerron Levi?, senior director of government affairs for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

A study from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition that examined PPP loan applications captured specific examples of these biases. In some instances, it found that Black business owners with a comparable financial profile as white ones were less likely to be told that they met the qualifications needed for a loan.

The CRA followed the 1968 Fair Housing Act in (theoretically) ending redlining and encouraging banks to extend credit to low- and moderate-income (LMI) neighborhoods. Rather than establish another expensive federal program, “the genius of the CRA is that it was designed from its inception to tap into the financial might of the banking industry,” the National Community Reinvestment Coalition writes.

According to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, “Neighborhoods considered high risk or “Hazardous” were often “redlined” by lending institutions, denying them access to capital investment which could improve the housing and economic opportunity of residents…HOLC examiners consulted with local bank loan officers, city officials, appraisers, and realtors to create “Residential Security” maps of cities.

The report by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition shows that life expectancies vary in Rochester by about five years between redlined and high-rated neighborhoods, according to government classifications dating from the 1930s.

When the National Community Reinvestment Coalition sent “mystery shoppers” to banks in the Washington area, they found that Black business owners had a harder time getting Paycheck Protection Program loans than their white counterparts.

Even though low unemployment rates were common across communities pre-pandemic, the data from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition shows it didn’t lead to broad economic prosperity in Worcester County.

Bank employees offered Black applicants less help with their PPP applications, a matched-pair study from the nonprofit National Community Reinvestment Coalition found.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an organization that works to promote investment in underserved communities, said in July the federal government’s data was “so flawed it is virtually useless to assess if there was any bias in how the money was distributed or how much money went to specific communities.”