Congressional hearing held in Jamaica shows
modern-day redlining persists in SE Queens
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TIMESLEDGER | QNS.COM | MARCH 13-MARCH 19, 2020 19
BY BILL PARRY
A rare Congressional field
hearing was held March 6 at
the Jamaica Performing Arts
Center on the issue of modernday
redlining and how it persists
in banking deserts such
as southeast Queens.
The House Financial Services
Subcommittee on Consumer
Protection and Financial
Institution, chaired by
Congressman Gregory Meeks,
released a new analysis confirming
that race, and in particular
the density of black and
Hispanic populations, is the
predominant determinant of
bank branch density, or banking
deserts.
The study isolated Census
data and found that Queens zip
codes with less than 25 percent
black and Hispanic populations
had a total of 193 bank
branches, for a total population
of 609,655 people, or one
for every 3,159 people.
Whereas ZIP codes with
over 75 percent black and Hispanic
populations were found
to have one bank branch for
every 22,936 people, meaning
those neighborhoods of color
have seven times fewer bank
branches.
“My office’s analysis proves
what we’ve anecdotally seen
here in Queens all along: the
more a community is black and
brown, the less banks you see,”
Meeks said. “What’s startling
here is just how disproportionate
that reality is. Redlining
cannot be spoken about in the
past tense, a dark chapter in
our nation’s history. Despite
our proximity to Wall Street,
redlining is very much still
present here in Queens, hurting
minority communities’
ability to get a loan to start a
small business or a mortgage
to get a home and lift themselves
into the middle class.”
During the hearing, Meeks
was joined by his colleagues,
including Congresswoman
Carolyn Maloney and Congresswoman
Alexandria Ocasio
Cortez, who heard testimony
from a panel of experts
on affordable housing and
banking marginalized communities,
including from the
Association for Neighborhood
and Housing Development,
Chhaya CDC, Neighborhood
Assistance Corporation of
America, National Association
for Latino Community Asset
Builders, and the National
Bankers Association.
The Community Reinvestment
Act has, over the past four
decades, spurred hundreds
of billions of dollars in lending
to low- and middle-income
communities but the Trump
administration and the Federal
Deposit Insurance Corporation
declared it’s out of date
and in need of an overhaul.
“The witnesses we heard
from today are some of our
closest allies here at home, who
share our commitment to ensuring
services for unbanked
and underbanked communities,”
Maloney said. “Together,
we are fighting to preserve the
Community Reinvestment Act
to combat redlining, and to
protect minority banks, credit
unions, and CDFLs in these
underserved communities.
These institutions are empowering
our neighbors and the
small businesses that make
our communities thrive and
we cannot let the Trump administration
gut the CRA and
make it even easier for banks
to avoid lending to low-income
and underserved communities.
The administration’s proposal
is so misguided that even
the Federal Reserve refused to
join it.”
The public comment period
on CRA reforms has been extended
to April 8.
Congressman Gregory Meeks unveils a new study that confirms
modern-day redlining continues in southeast Queens.
Courtesy of Meeks’ offi ce
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