NCRC and National Partners Oppose OCC, FDIC Proposed CRA Rollback

One day after the 49th anniversary of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) and its national partners urge the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) to reject the proposed rollback.

"When organizations representing communities, consumers, civil rights advocates and housing leaders across the country come together in opposition to a proposal, regulators should pay attention," said NCRC's President and CEO Jesse Van Tol . "As Americans struggle with the cost of housing and everyday expenses, weakening one of our most effective tools for encouraging private investment makes little sense. The OCC and FDIC should listen to this broad coalition, withdraw this proposal and work toward a stronger CRA that delivers more investment, greater transparency and meaningful accountability."

"The Community Reinvestment Act was created to reverse the legacy of government-sanctioned redlining and decades of disinvestment in underserved communities. The proposed rulemaking would weaken support for affordable housing, limit access to capital for entrepreneurs and small businesses, reduce community investment, and jeopardize resources that help families build wealth and financial security," said Marc H. Morial, president & CEO at the National Urban League. "At a moment when we should be expanding economic opportunity, this rushed and politically motivated proposal threatens to roll back decades of hard-won progress. The National Urban League, alongside NCRC, calls on the OCC and FDIC to withdraw this proposal and preserve CRA's promise of fair access to credit, investment and opportunity for every community, and particularly those that the CRA was designed for in the first place."

"CRA has helped sustain bank-CDFI partnerships that enable CDFIs to reach borrowers, projects and communities that otherwise struggle to access responsible capital," said Opportunity Finance Network's President and CEO Harold Pettigrew . "CRA reform should strengthen that collaboration. We are concerned that this proposal moves in the opposite direction by weakening key incentives for bank-CDFI partnerships, fragmenting the framework across regulators, and introducing greater uncertainty for community development financing. The adverse effects will be borne out by low- and moderate- income American communities that most need access to opportunity."

"While families are struggling nationwide to afford basics like food and housing, the Trump administration is choosing corporate profits over community needs by undermining the Community Reinvestment Act," said Caroline Nagy, associate director of housing at Americans for Financial Reform Education Fund . "Reducing the obligations of financial institutions to invest in affordable housing, economic development, and climate resilience is the last thing we need in our increasingly unaffordable and unequal economy."

"The proposed changes to CRA are drastic and ill-conceived," said Ruth Susswein, Consumer Action's director of consumer protection . "These so-called reforms will result in huge harm to consumers and communities by significantly shrinking the number of banks required to responsibly lend and provide banking services to local low- to moderate-income consumers and small businesses."

"Since it became law in the 1970s, the Community Reinvestment Act has created an ecosystem that produces affordable housing, launches small businesses, and rehabilitates distressed communities, often in places where private capital might otherwise not flow," said Adam Rust, director of Financial Services at the Consumer Federation of America . "That infrastructure took decades to build, and it works. The CRA proposal is a step in the wrong direction and at the worst possible time. When too many people are already struggling to make ends meet, the proposed rule would make it harder for people and communities to get ahead. It will deny capital to hard-hit communities and push homeownership further out of reach. The FDIC and the OCC must take this proposal off the table."

"It's essential to preserve the core purpose of the Community Reinvestment Act to ensure that banks invest in the low-income neighborhoods where they do business," said Odette Williamson, director of Racial Justice Advocacy at the National Consumer Law Center . "The CRA has been a powerful tool to combat redlining and disinvestment in under-resourced communities, but those battles are far from won. We strongly oppose efforts to gut the CRA.

"The drastic changes to the Community Reinvestment Act regulations do not serve the needs of Black and Latino neighborhoods or the rural towns that desperately need more support and resources," said Nikitra Bailey, executive vice president of the National Fair Housing Alliance . "If these changes are finalized, they would discourage support for community nonprofits, give banks a pass on unlawful discriminatory practices and reduce support for Special Purpose Credit Programs, which are a highly effective tool to address the goals of the CRA: make banks serve the neighborhoods they once redlined."

"Our neighborhoods are safer, healthier, and stronger when people have a place to call home," said Deborah Thrope, deputy director at the National Housing Law Project . " Rolling back the CRA will only worsen the nation's affordable housing crisis and have devastating impacts on communities across the country. By severely limiting banks' abilities to support local construction and community development, the proposed changes to the CRA will hurt poor and working families who have the most acute affordable housing needs."

"At a time when families are facing rising housing costs, higher energy bills and growing climate risks, we should be strengthening incentives for community investment, not weakening them," said Doug Sims, managing director of Green Finance & Economic Development at the Natural Resources Defense Council . "The regulators have not adequately accounted for how their proposed changes could affect the communities the CRA was designed to serve. By weakening incentives for community investment, this proposal risks reducing access to the capital that helps families afford housing, recover from disasters and build long-term economic resilience."

"The proposed changes to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) will result in fewer small businesses being able to access the capital they need to grow - particularly businesses located in under-resourced communities," said Alexis D'Amato Falvey, Small Business Majority's senior federal government affairs manager . "Banks that are newly exempt from the CRA's rules will lose key incentives to invest in small business-serving institutions like Community Financial Development Institutions (CDFIs) and other organizations committed to helping the smallest businesses. With less money available to them, CDFIs will struggle to provide small businesses with the loans and technical assistance they need to thrive."

Together, we are urging the OCC and FDIC to rescind the proposal and pursue a CRA framework that strengthens banks' obligations to the communities they serve.