In mid-November, along with other Empire Justice Center advocates, I participated in a meeting of consumer, housing, and fair lending activists with leaders of one of the largest banks in the Rochester area and New York State. These advocates from western New York to Albany shared what we were seeing in our communities and the commitments we wanted from the bank, including:
• Increased staff diversity, including staff who speak Spanish, know American Sign Language or other languages spoken by limited English-proficient customers, and ongoing anti-racist training
• Increased numbers of home mortgages and small business loans to people and communities of color
• Steps for how the bank’s investments to address climate change advances climate justice for underserved communities
At the end of the meeting, the bank CEO said they appreciated our feedback and ideas and said they would review them and incorporate them into the bank plan. This is just one of the dozens of meetings with banks and bank regulators in which members of the Greater Rochester Community Reinvestment Coalition (GRCRC) and staff from Empire Justice Center have organized and participated in over the past two decades. The federal Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) helps make these meetings happen.
Enacted in 1977 to address redlining*, the CRA obligates banks to serve the communities in which they do business, meaning where they have branches, and includes serving low- and moderate-income communities. While the legislative history of the CRA shows that it was passed to address redlining, the text of the legislation does not mention redlining, nor people and communities of color; rather, the language is around low-moderate income communities.
Still, advocates from across the country have been able to bring banks and their federal regulators to the table using the CRA. While the CRA might be seen as the “stick,” we also provide the “carrot” of good data summaries and analyses and on-the-ground information shared by our coalition members.
We believe that data-informed advocacy in coalition with people and organizations working in and with communities still suffering from the vestiges of redlining has made many improvements in our communities. A local bank our coalition has met with over the past 20 years increased its lending, investments, and grants by 490% since 2005 to an annual average of $205 million in 2020. This money goes to Rochester-area low-moderate income families, businesses in low-moderate income neighborhoods, the development of affordable housing, or support of nonprofits working with the low-moderate income community and small businesses.
Still, we have a lot of work to do to create a financial system that works for all, especially Black, Indigenous, and other people of color who have been harmed by settler colonialism, enslavement, redlining, and continuing wealth extraction from their families, businesses and communities. While I continue to advocate for a CRA that explicitly includes the obligation for banks to serve BIPOC and communities of color; for responsible, affordable financial products that allow BIPOC and poor people to build wealth; and for safe, affordable housing for all, I wonder if this is enough.
My study and reflection over the past decade of the interconnected systems of white supremacy, capitalism, and patriarchy is pulling me to do more than make our current financial, housing, educational and other systems more diverse, inclusive and equitable. I believe we need deep structural and cultural transformation where people from marginalized groups heal and people from privileged groups take responsibility and make amends for historic and ongoing harms. I have a broad vision of working in trusting relationship with others of all identities to transform systems of oppression into Martin Luther King’s Beloved Community; and I bring this vision to my work at Empire Justice whenever I can.
*Not illegal until the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, redlining is the discriminatory practice that intentionally restricted investment in parts of American cities classified as ‘hazardous’ to investment based largely on the race of the people that lived there. While the most well-known examples involve denial of credit and insurance, denial of healthcare and the development of food deserts in Black and Brown neighborhoods have also been attributed to redlining. For history and detailed examples, see here.