Small Business Employment; Pollution & Racism and More.

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** Just News
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for October 30, 2020

News and views from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. Find more at ncrc.org. For continuous updates, follow us on Twitter ([link removed][UNIQID]) and Facebook ([link removed][UNIQID]) .


** News
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OCC Grants Preliminary Charter Application For Social Finance, Inc., Despite Opposition
On Tuesday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency granted a conditional approval to Social Finance, Inc. to create a nationally chartered bank called SoFi Bank despite opposition from national community groups, including the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])

OCC’s New True Lender Rule Opens The Door To More Abusive Lending
In a final rule issued Tuesday, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency sanctioned high-cost lending arrangements between state-licensed non-banks and national banks. As a result, payday lenders and others charging triple-digit interest rates will be able to conduct business in states where high-cost lending is prohibited by state law. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])

Study: After The Coronavirus Shutdowns, Employment Levels Rebounded Completely For White Entrepreneurs In North Carolina, But Not For Black Ones
Although active employment rates in North Carolina’s small businesses dropped broadly during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic, by the end of August the rate had returned to pre-COVID levels for White entrepreneurs, but was still down by 62% for Black business owners, a new study shows. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])

NCRC Applauds Preliminary Injunction To Postpone Effective Date Of HUD’s Disparate Impact Rule
Today, the United States District Court of Massachusetts found in favor of the Massachusetts Fair Housing Center and Housing Works, Inc. and issued a preliminary injunction to postpone the start date of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) new disparate impact rule, which had been finalized by the agency in September. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])


** Views
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Pollution In Black Neighborhoods Part Of Louisville’s Systemic Racism
By John Hans Gilderbloom, Gregory D. Squires, Dr. Robert P. Friedland and Dwan Turner
Louisville has the highest levels of pollution among the hundreds of midsize American cities. What does this mean in terms of our health, sustainability, safety and prosperity? In short, local residents are more vulnerable to a host of health problems and educational challenges. Neighborhood quality also is upended with 5,000 abandoned homes. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])

Economic Reparations: The Path “From Here To Equality”
By Dedrick Asante-Muhammad and Kathy Ramirez
NCRC hosted a conversation with William Darity Jr. and Kirsten Mullen on their recently released book, From Here to Equality: Reparations for Black Americans in the Twenty-First Century. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])


** Policy
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NCRC Initial Analysis Of Federal Reserve’s ANPR On The Community Reinvestment Act: A Step Forward But Needs To Be More Rigorous
By Josh Silver
The Federal Reserve Board has issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) on the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The ANPR proposes to build upon the existing CRA exam structure of separate tests for retail and community development activity. The board is exploring how to create assessment areas, geographical areas on CRA exams that receive ratings, that will capture lending and deposit-taking activity outside of branch networks. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])


** Research
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Racial Wealth Snapshot: Immigration and The Racial Wealth Divide
By Dedrick Asante-Muhammad and Sally Sim
The United States has more immigrants than any country in the world. In 2018, approximately 44.7 million immigrants lived in the United States, accounting for 13.7% of the country’s population. Although immigration has always played a key role in the history and the making of the United States, from the colonial era to the California gold rush and Ellis island, the United States recently saw immigration slow down during the Great Recession. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])

Redlining and Neighborhood Health
NCRC report shows that there is a higher prevalence of COVID-19 risk factors in historically “redlined” neighborhoods. This paper is one of the first of its kind to examine historical redlining in cities across the nation on numerous present-day neighborhood health outcomes. [Read more] ([link removed][UNIQID])


** Field Notes
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With COVID-19 Taking A New Toll, A Poor Black Community In Alabama Awaits Justice For A 2008 Industrial Disaster
By Rose Ramirez and Brad Blower
More than three years after the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) and the South Alabama Center for Fair Housing (SACFH) filed a housing discrimination complaint with the Deparment of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) for the treatment of Black residents in an area known as Eight Mile, just north of Mobile, Alabama, there is still no resolution. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])

Overcoming Barriers To A Just Economy: Nikole Hannah-Jones On Reparations And White Discomfort
By Maxim Applegate
What is owed to Black Americans for slavery, racial violence, segregation and the denial of rights and resources? Unfortunately, that’s a conversation White Americans largely won’t entertain. A Reuters/Ipsos poll earlier this year found only one in five respondents agreed the United States should use “taxpayer money to pay damages to descendants of enslaved people in the United States.” [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])


** Resources
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Resources To Help Support The Black Lives Matter Movement
If you are interested in supporting Black Lives Matter, these resources may be helpful for you. [Read more] ([link removed][UNIQID])

NCRC COVID-19 Resource Page
We've compiled and are updating an index of COVID-19 resources for communities, small businesses, individuals and organizations that serve them, such as housing counseling agencies. [Read more] ([link removed][UNIQID])


** Upcoming Events
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Pitching Your Nonprofit with Power
November 4, 2:00 pm EDT - 3:30 pm EDT
Join NCRC's Training Academy for an interactive, high-energy training to learn how to take potential donors from Interested to Invested in donating to your non-profit after just one powerful pitch. [Register now] ([link removed][UNIQID])

Discovering Nonprofit Impact Using a Racial Equity Lens - Part I: Needs Assessments
November 5, 2:00 pm EDT - 3:30 pm EDT
Join NCRC's Training Academy to learn the steps required in developing community need assessments using a racial equity lens. [Register now] ([link removed][UNIQID])


** In the News
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A Broken Mortgage Market Strands Detroit’s Black Residents
By Ben Eisen, The Wall Street Journal
Detroit is making a comeback after years of decline that led to a bankruptcy filing in 2013. But large swaths of the city are left behind, starved of the housing credit needed to revive them. No purchase mortgages were made last year in almost a third of Detroit’s census tracts, and fewer than five each in another third, according to data from LendingPatterns.com, a mortgage-data analysis tool. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])

SoFi Clears Initial OCC Hurdle In Quest To Launch Bank
By Law360.com
In a Wednesday email to Law360, NCRC senior policy adviser Adam Rust criticized the OCC for allowing SoFi to move forward in the application process, arguing that the company should have been required to publicly commit to clear, specific CRA performance benchmarks that would help ensure accountability. Instead, the company "provided a skeleton list of proposed activities — there are no numeric goals for significant product lines," Rust said. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])

Small Businesses Of Color Matter Too
By Jerome D. Williams, Sterling Bone, Glenn Christensen, and Anneliese Lederer, The Regulatory Review
These systemic inequalities also exist outside of the justice system, where they pervade economic and administrative systems. Regulators and lawmakers should address these inequalities to allow small businesses of color the same opportunities that their White counterparts enjoy. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])

Op-Ed: How Charles And Inez Barron’s Seat Switching Is A Dangerous Political Legacy Game
By Chanell Turner, Kings County Politics
It’s hard to live in any lower-income neighborhood that is adjacent to or within a major city without being faced with the prospect of gentrification. According to the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, New York had one of the highest rates of gentrification and displaced black Americans between 2000 and 2013. Higher rents and property taxes—the hallmarks of gentrification—continue to price many Black and Latino people out of their neighborhoods. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])


** On Our Radar
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Grassroots Democrats Are Preparing To Swarm The Biden Administration
By Micah L. Sifry, The New Republic
For the last few months, a team on Joe Biden’s campaign has been drawing up plans for the transition, compiling lists and vetting potential appointees. Meanwhile, a network of left-wing organizers, operating under the maxim “personnel is policy,” has been doing opposition research on a prospective Biden White House. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])

A Virginia State Senator Found Headstones On His Property. It Brought To Light A Historic Injustice In DC
By Gregory S. Schneider, The Washington Post
A state senator, Stuart enlisted Virginia historians to figure out where they came from. The trail led upriver to the nation’s capital, and illuminated a dark truth about how Washington became the city it is today: The headstones were from Columbian Harmony Cemetery, a historic African American burial ground that was dug up and relocated in 1960 to make way for commercial development. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])

When Falling Behind On Rent Leads To Jail Time
By Matt Williams, ProPublica
Evictions in Arkansas can snowball from criminal charges to arrests to jail time because of a 119-year-old law that mostly impacts female, Black and low-income renters. Even prosecutors have called it unconstitutional. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])

Jobless Claims Fall To 751,000, But New Infections A Threat
By Christopher Rugaber, AP News
TThe number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell last week to 751,000, the lowest since March, but it’s still historically high and indicates the viral pandemic is forcing many employers to cut jobs. [Read More] ([link removed][UNIQID])

#AfterThis: A Virtual Hug
Here's something new and different from NCRC to encourage hope, creativity and a Just Economy: afterth.is ([link removed][UNIQID]) .
New to NCRC? Here's our story. ([link removed][UNIQID])
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