The New Rules Are Here: Unpacking the CRA

Next City

Whether a person has access to banking directly changes their life. That's why advocates for racial justice have for a long time talked about the importance of an anti-redlining statute called the Community Reinvestment Act.
If you want to ensure that everyone everywhere, including in middle and low- income neighborhoods, is on a level playing field when it comes to starting a business or owning a home, then you need to know how this 1997 law works – and what's changing in the newest regulations, the first revamp since to the law since 1995.
“What this act attempts to do is hold financial institutions, banks specifically, accountable for meeting the credit needs of the places where they do business,” explains Next City's senior economic justice correspondent Oscar Perry Abello. And it does have enforcement power, though critics say it's not used enough. “The teeth of the CRA come from the fact that it gives the regulators the ability to deny certain applications – like applications to merge with another bank or open up a new branch or close down a branch … if they believe a bank is not meeting its obligations under the Community Reinvestment Act.”