- See more at: http://blogtimenow.com/blogging/automatically-redirect-blogger-blog-another-blog-website/#sthash.Q6qPkwFC.dpuf More on CRA and ACORN | Bronx News Networkbronx

Tuesday, October 28, 2008

More on CRA and ACORN

West Bronx resident and freelance journalist Eileen Markey goes in depth with ACORN on their relationship with CRA and subprime lending over the last decade in a piece in City Limits Weekly. Read about how they were one of many community groups fighting predatory lending and pushing for quality lending, not the toxic stuff that ended up blanketing low and moderate income communities of color.

But ACORN and other proponents of the Community Reinvestment Act – the 1977 law requiring banks to lend in all communities from which they receive deposits – did promote a fairly nuanced message. They lobbied for more quality lending in low-income and minority communities while also calling for more stringent regulation of the kind of non-bank lenders like Countrywide that fueled the mortgage crisis. Campaigns by ACORN and like-minded groups including the Chicago-based Neighborhood Training and Information Center sought to shrink the risky-mortgage business by pressuring investment banks not to buy the debt, and also pushed for changes in the way banks measured creditworthiness so that people with lower credit scores could be eligible for decent mortgages from real banks.

"A lot of this did not have to happen, and there were groups out there including ACORN that were sounding the alarm," said Ismene Speliotis, executive director of NY ACORN Housing, in an interview last week. But many investment banks, busy making oodles by investing in the sub-prime mortgages, didn't heed the warning.

0 comments:

Post a Comment

Bronx News Network reserves the right to remove comments that include personal attacks, name calling, foul language, commercial advertisements, spam, or any language that might be considered threatening, libelous or inciting hate.

User comments are reviewed by BxNN staff and may be included or excluded at our discretion.

If what you have to say is unrelated to this particular post, please visit our readers' forum.