Community Reinvestment Act Webinar (CRA)

What is CRA and how does it affect your work?

Join CCEDA and CRC to discuss the Community Reinvestment Act and how it relates to the work of CDC’s, CAA’s and CAP’s.

Speakers:

Doni Tadesse, Southern California Organizer, California Reinvestment Coalition

Register Here

For all questions, please email: elias@cceda.com

What is CRA?

The CRA has been hugely impactful in providing credit, investments and financial services to underserved communities in California. In fact, the California Reinvestment Coalition, its members, and allies have negotiated over $75 Billion in loans, investments, and financial services for communities of color and low-income communities in California over the last two years as part of Community Benefits Agreements. Yet significant gaps remain in CRA rules and implementation, and the promise of CRA has not yet been realized. While the agencies make several positive suggestions in the proposed rule, we must oppose this proposal unless critical issues are addressed. The CRA must:

• Take race into account and evaluate banks for service to borrowers and communities of color
• Downgrade banks for harm such as discrimination, displacement, and fee gouging
• Ensure affordable housing tax credits and lending are reviewed separately, and increased
• Require banks to serve all areas (not 60%) where they take deposits and lend, and refrain from raising current asset thresholds which will decrease rural reinvestment
• Prioritize the opening of branches and penalize the closing of branches in underserved areas
• Elevate broadband/digital equity, access for Native American communities and climate resiliency
• Scrutinize the qualitative impact of all lending tied to banks, and end Rent-A-Bank partnerships
• Enhance community participation so that CRA activity is tied to community needs, CRA ratings reflect community impact, and bank mergers are denied unless they provide a clear public benefit that regulators will enforce

The use of the terms “people of color” and “communities of color” is meant to be inclusive of African American/Black, Latine/Hispanic, Asian American/Pacific Islander, and Native American persons and neighborhoods.