In the News

“We all agree there needed to be a list. The problem is what the (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) has put on that list,” said Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an umbrella group for dozens of community groups trying to get banks to do more work in low-income neighborhoods.

“There is no doubt that these proposed changes will be disastrous for low- to moderate-income communities,” says NCRC chief executive Jesse Van Tol. 

“The proposal is so fundamentally flawed it really needs a rethink,” Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an advocacy group, told The Wall Street Journal.

“We’re in the midst of an affordable housing crisis in this country,” said Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an anti-poverty group. “It’s disappointing that they would propose such a budget that scales back so many supports for federal housing.”

Americans expect better from the banks where they deposit their money and they deserve better from a government that’s supposed to look out for the interests of everyone.

According to a March 2019 study by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC), more than 135,000 Black and Hispanics around the nation were displaced between 2000 and 2012.

While redlining was banned with the Fair Housing Act of 1968, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition found in a 2018 study that, “Most of the neighborhoods (74%) that the HOLC graded as high-risk or “hazardous” eight decades ago are low-to-moderate income today. Additionally, most of the HOLC graded “hazardous” areas (nearly 64%) are minority neighborhoods now.”

The average rent of those “Class A” apartments was nearly $2,500 in the second quarter of 2019. That’s considered affordable for renters who earn at least $8,400 per month.

The District was named the country’s most gentrified city in a 2019 report from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

Critics contend that bank regulators should be doing more to keep rural branches open. “It’s really common to hear, even from regulators, that people don’t need a bank branch anymore,” said Jason Richardson, director of research at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

“We all agree there needed to be a list. The problem is what the (Office of the Comptroller of the Currency) has put on that list,” said Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, an umbrella group for dozens of community groups trying to get banks to do more work in low-income neighborhoods.

Jesse Van Tol, chief executive of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said his group has already submitted a Freedom of Information Act request for the data.

“The OCC is supposed to work in the public’s interest,” he said, “and the American public deserves a chance to review the government’s own data and analysis before the OCC pushes ahead with new rules based on it.”

“The bank branch is to local economies what the debit card is to your wallet — a key point of contact to the financial system and the way a large part of the population accesses non-predatory financial services,” said Jesse Van Tol, CEO of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

According to Jason Richardson, one of the study’s authors and the director of research for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, “We’ve also shown that revitalization of struggling neighborhoods is unevenly distributed. The big investments that fuel gentrification and cultural displacement didn’t reach most of the nation’s poorest neighborhoods and rural areas.”

The National Community Reinvestment Coalition told the Washington Post that banks approved an average of $78 billion a year between 2012 and 2017 in community development loans and $55 billion a year in small business loans in low-income areas. The regulations need to be updated, but the proposed changes need to focus on fairness in lower-income lending and not allow unrelated factors to be included in CRA assessments.