In
1977, then-President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Community Reinvestment
Act, a federal law that sought to wipe away the last vestiges of racial
discrimination and redlining in America’s home mortgage industry.
The
idea was simple. By requiring lenders – primarily banks – to make credit
available in all parts of the communities they served, including low- and
moderate-income neighborhoods, the government could redirect the flow of
private capital back into areas that had suffered from decades of systemic
disinvestment.
Nearly
half a century later, many people in Illinois argue the federal CRA has failed
to live up to its promise. Whether that’s because the law was too narrow in
scope, or because the lending business itself has changed dramatically over the
decades, urban metropolitan areas like Chicago are still plagued with crumbling
neighborhoods where few lenders are willing to invest.
“My area is the southeast side of Chicago, so if you want to talk about Woodlawn,
Hyde Park, South Chicago, I mean, these are places where you have a significant
amount of folks who are not white and upper-middle class. So yeah, there’s been
a problem,” Rep. Curtis Tarver, D-Chicago, said during a recent interview.
Tarver
was among the sponsors of a 2021 that enacted a new state-level Community
Reinvestment Act. Passed during a special lame duck session in January that
year, it was part of the Legislative Black Caucus’ “four pillars” of social and
economic reform measures that grew out of unrest that began sweeping across
minority communities throughout the United States the previous summer.
“There
were a few things that happened in 2020,” recalled Jane Doyle of the
Chicago-based Woodstock Institute, one of the main backers of the bill.
“Of course, the pandemic, the ways that the pandemic exposed racial disparities
in our economy and our health care system, pretty much all parts of society.
There was the murder of George Floyd and the Black Lives Matter protests that
ensued after that.”
But
more specific to the lending industry, Doyle said, was an investigative news
story entitled “Where Banks Don’t Lend” by public radio station WBEZ and the
nonprofit news organization City Bureau. It was released June 3, 2020,
less than two weeks after Floyd’s death.
“The
sort of big summary data point that came out of that is that there was more
mortgage capital invested in one majority-white community in Chicago than all
majority-Black communities combined,” Doyle said.
It
was against that backdrop that the Legislative Black Caucus pushed through the Illinois Community Reinvestment
Act, a part of its “Economic Access, Equity, and Opportunity”
pillar.
Unlike
the federal law, which applies primarily to nationally chartered banks,
the state law applies to state-chartered banks and savings banks, credit unions
and non-bank mortgage lenders.
It
provides that every institution covered by the law has a “continuing and
affirmative obligation to meet the financial services needs of the communities
in which its offices, branches, and other facilities are maintained.” It also
empowers the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation to
conduct examinations to measure each institution’s compliance with the law.
Much
like the federal law, the state law does not impose specific mandates or
establish any type of lending quotas on financial institutions. It does,
however, require them to report on a periodic basis such things as the number
and amount of mortgage loans and small business loans they make, the extent of
their marketing activities to make community members aware of their services,
and their participation in community development and redevelopment programs.
It
also gives IDFPR authority to review those reports and assign rating scores to
each institution, classifying their compliance record as either “outstanding,”
“satisfactory,” “needs to improve,” or “substantial noncompliance.”
Gov.
JB Pritzker signed the bill into law March 23, 2021, and the law was supposed
to be in full effect by Jan. 1, 2022.
That,
however, proved to be more difficult than originally thought. The process of
writing administrative rules to implement the law dragged on for nearly three
years while regulators and industry officials negotiated the details of what
information would have to be reported and how that information would be handled
by the agency.
Those
negotiations finally came to an end in April when the legislative Joint
Committee on Administrative Rules, or JCAR, gave its blessing to the final
rules, which now await publication in the Illinois Register before they
are considered official.
“I
knew it was hotly discussed and debated,” Sen. Chris Belt, D-Swansea, the
bill’s chief Senate sponsor, said in an interview. “I’m not on JCAR so I don’t
know why it took so long. I know it was a lot of issues and nuances that they
were discussing. I’m just glad that is over now.”
Belt
is also the lead sponsor of a follow-up bill this year, which calls on the
state’s Commission
on Equity and Inclusion to conduct studies that will provide baseline information
to identify geographies in Illinois where significant disparities exist in
access to financial products and services, along with a listing of existing
policies and practices that may have disparate impacts or discriminatory effects.
That
bill passed out of the Senate April 18 and now awaits action in the House.
Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state
government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations
statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the
Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the
Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.
This article appears in 2024 Women of Influence.