The National Community Reinvestment Coalition and researchers from Utah State, Brigham Young and Rutgers partnered to send testers to 32 bank branches representing 17 randomly selected financial institutions in the Washington, D.C. metro area. Researchers wanted to see how Black business owners might be treated in seeking pandemic-related relief.

Add to that a study from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. It found 43% of the time, banks treated Black PPP borrowers significantly worse and offered different products when compared to White borrowers with slightly weaker financial information.

A 2019 study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition provides a possible explanation: Researchers found banks treat Black applicants different from white applicants, encouraging white business owners to apply for one or more loans while discouraging Black business owners from applying for any.

On this last point, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) and researchers from Utah State, Brigham Young and Rutgers partnered to send testers to 32 bank branches representing 17 randomly selected financial institutions in the D.C. metro area. Researchers wanted to see how Black business owners might be treated in seeking pandemic-related relief.

The NCRC teamed up with the universities to determine whether the disparities in small-business lending that were present before the pandemic continued with the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), which was aimed at helping small businesses retain employees. Testers had similar credit profiles. The only major difference was race.

Many cities affected by evictions were already in the midst of mass displacement of Black and Latino residents following attempts at gentrification, according to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, a nonprofit organization based in Washington.

“The interplay between gentrification and eviction is significant,” said Jesse Van Tol, CEO of National Community Reinvestment Coalition. “Eviction can facilitate new rounds of gentrification when landlords take it as an opportunity to fix up units and renovate to attract wealthier tenants and it can be used as an opportunity to extract more rent out of people.”

On July 30, 2020, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (“NCRC”) and several other consumer advocacy organizations filed suit against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (“CFPB” or the “Bureau”), claiming that the Bureau’s recent Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (“HMDA”) rulemaking violates the Administrative Procedure Act (“APA”).

A study released by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition last year found that D.C. has the most intense rate of gentrification in the country. Roughly 20,000 Black residents were displaced between the years 2000 and 2013.

Black people and other communities of color that have been most affected by the twin pandemics would benefit most from the bill. A recent report by the Institute for Policy Studies and the National Community Reinvestment Coalition listed a federal jobs guarantee as one of eight solutions to the racial wealth divide.

Determining the amount of housing needed is crucial now because expansive swaths of the city are vulnerable to displacement, according to an interactive map from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, the organization that ranked Denver as one of the most intensively gentrifying cities in America.

The bill is supported by the Opportunity Finance Network, National Community Reinvestment Coalition, Native CDFI Network, Opportunity Fund, Local Initiatives Support Coalition, Inclusiv, Prosperity Now, Enterprise, National Association of Realtors, and Credit Union National Association.

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition and the St. Louis Equal Housing and Community Reinvestment Alliance have written letters to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. asking that Jones be considered a St. Louis-based lender for purposes of the Community Reinvestment Act.