The United States Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) in 1977 with the objective of ending redlining, the decades-old practice of neighborhood discrimination by banks against African Americans and others based on race and income. The race-based rejection of loans to creditworthy residents of redlined neighborhoods delayed the American dream of homeownership and small business ownership for generations. Senator William Proxmire, the main Congressional sponsor of CRA, along with advocacy organizations, believed that segregated neighborhoods would not successfully revitalize themselves if banks continued to refuse to make loans in them. Therefore, the CRA was devised to make banks accountable for serving the needs of entire communities.
Based on a comprehensive analysis of half a century of CRA-related legislation and banking regulation, this book takes a hard look at the effectiveness of the CRA and clearly lays out what needs to be done to CRA and its regulation to improve outcomes. The author addresses whether CRA is an effective response to racial injustice, whether CRA has effectively empowered communities, whether the federal agencies have developed regulations that conform with and further the statutory objectives of CRA, and whether the law appropriately addresses and rectifies market failures in our economy.
With decades of experience in the CRA and fair lending field, Josh Silver spent most of his time as Vice President of Research and Policy and as a Senior Fellow with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition but also worked for Manna, Inc., a local nonprofit housing development organization based in the District of Columbia, and for the Urban Institute, a think tank also based in Washington, DC.
