The federal bank and thrift regulatory agencies today announced the availability of the 2006 list of distressed or underserved nonmetropolitan middle-income geographies in which bank revitalization or stabilization activities will receive Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) consideration as "community development." The 2006 list is the first to incorporate a one-year lag period for geographies that were designated as distressed or underserved in 2005, but were not designated as such in the 2006 release. Geographies subject to the one-year lag period are eligible to receive consideration for community development activities for the twelve months following publication of the 2006 list.

In addition, the 2005 list of distressed or underserved nonmetropolitan middle-income geographies was revised after discrepancies were identified in calculations that were used to qualify geographies as "distressed" or "underserved." Although the discrepancies were minor, the revised list includes several additional geographies that were not previously included, thus expanding the list of geographies eligible for CRA consideration.

"Distressed nonmetropolitan middle-income geographies" and "underserved nonmetropolitan middle-income geographies" are defined in CRA regulations. The criteria used to designate these areas are available on the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) web site (www.ffiec.gov/cra).

Both the 2006 list and the revised 2005 list can also be found on the FFIEC web site, along with the data source information used to generate the list of distressed or underserved geographies.

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FDIC-PR-54-2006