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Full-Text Articles in Law
Elizabeth Warren’S New Housing Proposal Is Actually A Brilliant Plan To Close The Racial Wealth Gap, Mehrsa Baradaran, Darrick Hamilton
Elizabeth Warren’S New Housing Proposal Is Actually A Brilliant Plan To Close The Racial Wealth Gap, Mehrsa Baradaran, Darrick Hamilton
Popular Media
Last month, Sen. Elizabeth Warren released a $450 billion housing plan called the American Housing and Economic Mobility Act. The proposal is a comprehensive and bold step toward providing affordable housing for the most vulnerable Americans. The bill is the first since the Fair Housing Act with the explicit intent of redressing the iterative effects of our nation’s sordid history of housing discrimination. Critically, it has the potential to make a substantive dent in closing our enormous and persistent racial wealth gap.
An Analysis Of The Implementation And Impact Of The 2004-2005 Amendments To The Community Reinvestment Act Regulations: The Continuting Importance Of The Cra Examination Process, Josh Silver, Richard D. Marsico
An Analysis Of The Implementation And Impact Of The 2004-2005 Amendments To The Community Reinvestment Act Regulations: The Continuting Importance Of The Cra Examination Process, Josh Silver, Richard D. Marsico
Articles & Chapters
In 2004 and 2005, the four federal banking agencies that enforce the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) amended their CRA regulations. Community groups were concerned that these amendments would have a negative impact on bank CRA performance. In particular, they were concerned that community development lending and investment and the provision of bank branches and other banking services in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods would decline. This article studies the impact of the changes. In summary, the study found that: 1) the CRA examination process has an impact on bank behavior; 2) community development lending and investment by certain lending institutions declined …
Introduction, Richard D. Marsico
Policies To Expand Minority Entrepreneurship: Closing Comments, Michael S. Barr
Policies To Expand Minority Entrepreneurship: Closing Comments, Michael S. Barr
Book Chapters
This essay is based on comments delivered at the Conference on on Entrepreneurship in Low- and Moderate-Income Communities, November 3-4, 2005. This has been a productive conversation. In my closing comments, I want to shift our focus somewhat, from entrepreneurship in low-income communities to minority entrepreneurship generally. I want to do so because many minority entrepreneurs are connected to or hire from low-income communities, and because minority entrepreneurs face critical barriers even when they attempt to create and grow firms outside of distressed communities. In this comment, I want to highlight key barriers and suggest five steps for Congress, the …
Credit Where It Counts: Maintaining A Strong Community Reinvestment Act, Michael S. Barr
Credit Where It Counts: Maintaining A Strong Community Reinvestment Act, Michael S. Barr
Articles
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) has helped to revitalize low- and moderate-income communities and provided expanded opportunities for low- and moderate-income households. Recent regulatory steps aimed at alleviating burdens on banks and thrifts are unwarranted, and may diminish small business lending as well as community development investments and services. This policy brief explains the rationale for CRA, demonstrates its effectiveness, and argues that the recent regulatory proposals should be withdrawn or significantly modified.
Advancing The Cra—Using The Cra's Strategic Plan Option To Promote Community Inclusion: The Cra And Community Inclusion, Cassandra Jones Havard
Advancing The Cra—Using The Cra's Strategic Plan Option To Promote Community Inclusion: The Cra And Community Inclusion, Cassandra Jones Havard
All Faculty Scholarship
Banks, banking regulators, and community organizations have spent nearly thirty years interpreting and re-interpreting the simple but ambiguous mandate of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The statute imposes an affirmative duty requiring "regulated financial institutions to have continuing... obligations to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered." The CRA was met with much resistance and lax enforcement for almost a decade. Active protest from community groups, a more defined CRA exam, and innovative, profitable lending strategies, have resulted in a dramatic increase in community reinvestment dollar commitments and in loans to low- and …
To Lend Or Not To Lend: What The Cra Ought To Say About Sub-Prime And Predatory Lending, Cassandra Jones Havard
To Lend Or Not To Lend: What The Cra Ought To Say About Sub-Prime And Predatory Lending, Cassandra Jones Havard
All Faculty Scholarship
Policies that support the expansion of affordable housing for low- and moderate-income persons must be reconciled with those policies that undercut the sustainability of home ownership. The sub-prime market represents a much needed expansion of credit markets to those who have been denied access to credit though they are creditworthy. The high failure rate of the sub-prime market indicates that market forces are ineffective in halting this economic abuse. This article argues that the public policy choices and justifications for certain practices have marginalized the concerns of particular consumer classes. It challenges the premise that the free market can and …
Credit Where It Counts: The Community Reinvestment Act And Its Critics, Michael S. Barr
Credit Where It Counts: The Community Reinvestment Act And Its Critics, Michael S. Barr
Articles
Despite the depth and breadth of U.S. credit markets, low- and moderate-income communities and minority borrowers have not historically enjoyed full access to credit. The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) was enacted in 1977 to help overcome barriers to credit that these groups faced. Scholars have long leveled numerous critiques against CRA as unnecessary, ineffectual, costly, and lawless. Many have argued that CRA should be eliminated. By contrast, I contend that market failures and discrimination justify governmental intervention and that CRA is a reasonable policy response to these problems. Using recent empirical evidence, I demonstrate that over the last decade CRA …
Democratizing Capital: The History, Law, And Reform Of The Community Reinvestment Act, Richard D. Marsico
Democratizing Capital: The History, Law, And Reform Of The Community Reinvestment Act, Richard D. Marsico
Articles & Chapters
The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 (CRA) has made great progress in achieving its dual purposes: eliminating bank redlining and promoting reinvestment in previously redlined neighborhoods. In doing so, the CRA has helped to democratize capital by giving more people a voice in bank lending decisions and including more people in the economic mainstream by influencing banks to make loans to them to buy homes or open small businesses. Despite the CRA's success, the CRA has not reached its full potential. One of the main reasons for this is that the federal agencies that enforce the CRA are so fearful …
Access To Financial Services In The 21st Century: Five Opportunities For The Bush Administration And The 107th Congress (Symposium On Poverty And The Law)., Michael S. Barr
Articles
Noticeably absent from debate over President Bush's agenda is any discussion of a central question for equality of opportunity in the 21st century. Access to financial services is the "passport" to our modem economy, as former Treasury Secretary Lawrence H. Summers oft said, but despite the enormous progress that has been made over the last decade, too many families in the United States still are left out of the financial services mainstream. There are five key opportunities that the Bush Administration, working with Congress and the private sector, can seize in order to continue to democratize access to financial services: …
The Community Reinvestment Act: Questionable Premises And Perverse Incentives, Vincent D. Rougeau, Keith N. Hylton
The Community Reinvestment Act: Questionable Premises And Perverse Incentives, Vincent D. Rougeau, Keith N. Hylton
Journal Articles
Having just passed the twentieth anniversary of the enactment of the Community Reinvestment Act ("CRA" or "Act"), this is an appropriate time to take stock of the effectiveness of the legislation and to consider whether it continues to be useful as a tool for addressing the problems of neighborhood decline and discrimination in the lending market. Although discrimination in lending and the decline of certain inner-city neighborhoods is a problem that the CRA has not been able to solve, most observers would agree that the situation has improved since the mid-1970s. In particular, there has been notable progress toward the …
Shedding Some Light On Lending: The Effect Of Expanded Disclosure Laws On Home Mortgage Marketing, Lending And Discrimination In The New York Metropolitan Area, Richard D. Marsico
Shedding Some Light On Lending: The Effect Of Expanded Disclosure Laws On Home Mortgage Marketing, Lending And Discrimination In The New York Metropolitan Area, Richard D. Marsico
Articles & Chapters
No abstract provided.
Synergy And Friction – Cra, Bhcs, Sba And Community Development Lending, Cassandra Jones Havard
Synergy And Friction – Cra, Bhcs, Sba And Community Development Lending, Cassandra Jones Havard
All Faculty Scholarship
The era of federal funding retrenchment makes acute the need for community businesses to have access to capital. The Small Business Administration (SBA) provides small businesses with access to low-cost loans funds. The existing SBA regulatory scheme fosters an approach which allows a private mechanism, lenders, to make public policy decisions about the socio-economic character of communities. Implicit in the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) and its recent reforms are a recognition of the complex interdependence among policy objectives. The reform statute specifically recognizes that geographical disinvestment has an equally deleterious effect on small business lending as it does on residential …
Lending Discrimination: Economic Theory, Econometric Evidence, And The Community Reinvestment Act, Keith N. Hylton, Vincent D. Rougeau
Lending Discrimination: Economic Theory, Econometric Evidence, And The Community Reinvestment Act, Keith N. Hylton, Vincent D. Rougeau
Faculty Scholarship
Although it has been settled law for almost two decades, there has been a heightened interest in the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) over the last several years. One factor driving this interest is the continuing economic decline of the inner cities and the consequent widening of the wealth gap between cities and surrounding suburbs in many areas of the country. A second factor is the consolidation of the banking industry, which has encouraged expansion-oriented banks to improve their CRA ratings to gain the approval of regulators. A recent effort to enhance enforcement of the statute, in part the result of …
Lending Discsrimination: Economic Theory, Econometric Evidence, And The Community Reinvestment Act, Vincent D. Rougeau, Keith N. Hylton
Lending Discsrimination: Economic Theory, Econometric Evidence, And The Community Reinvestment Act, Vincent D. Rougeau, Keith N. Hylton
Journal Articles
Although it has been settled law for almost two decades, there has been a heightened interest in the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) over the last several years. One factor driving this interest is the continuing economic decline of the inner cities and the consequent widening of the wealth gap between cities and surrounding suburbs in many areas of the country. A second factor is the consolidation of the banking industry, which has encouraged expansion-oriented banks to improve their CRA ratings to gain the approval of regulators. A recent effort to enhance enforcement of the statute, in part the result of …
The New Community Reinvestment Act Regulations: An Attempt To Implement Performance-Based Standards, Richard D. Marsico
The New Community Reinvestment Act Regulations: An Attempt To Implement Performance-Based Standards, Richard D. Marsico
Articles & Chapters
On May 4, 1995, the federal banking regulatory agencies published new Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) regulations.' This culminated a process that began nearly two years earlier, in July 1993, when President Clinton called on the agencies to reform the CRA enforcement regime. The goal was to institute a regulatory scheme that emphasized lending performance over process, that was more objective and less subject to arbitrary interpretation, and that reduced unnecessary paperwork.2 With this presidential mandate, the agencies commenced a 21-month odyssey that included seven hearings around the country with more than 250 witnesses, two sets of proposed revisions to the …
Fighting Poverty Through Community Empowerment And Economic Development: The Role Of The Community Reinvestment And Home Mortgage Disclosure Acts, Richard D. Marsico
Fighting Poverty Through Community Empowerment And Economic Development: The Role Of The Community Reinvestment And Home Mortgage Disclosure Acts, Richard D. Marsico
Articles & Chapters
No abstract provided.
Introduction To Mortgage Lending Discrimination Law, Robert G. Schwemm
Introduction To Mortgage Lending Discrimination Law, Robert G. Schwemm
Law Faculty Scholarly Articles
Although mortgage lending discrimination and the laws that forbid it have been a part of the American landscape for over two decades, it has only been in recent years that this subject has captured the attention of the public, Congress, and federal enforcement officials. The result has been a tremendous upsurge in interest in this field. Still, there are relatively few cases that have been litigated to a conclusion on the merits, and fewer still that have resulted in plaintiff's victories. Thus, we find ourselves in an exciting period of great potential, but as yet not fully realized accomplishment, as …