PITTSBURGH COMMUNITY REINVESTMENT GROUP
September 20, 2004
Mr. Robert E. Feldman
Executive Secretary
Attention: Comments/Legal ESS
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
550 17th St. NW
Washington, DC 20429
RE: RIN 3064-AC50
Dear Mr. Feldman:
The Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group (PCRG) urges you to
withdraw your proposed changes to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA)
regulations. PCRG's 21 Community groups have been working for 16 years
in Pittsburgh to ensure equable lending. CRA has been instrumental to
engage the smaller banks, and has enabled our communities to increase
homeownership, boost economic development, and expand small businesses
in the nation's minority, immigrant, and low- and moderate-income
communities. Your proposed changes are contrary to the CRA statute and
Congress' intent because they will slow down, if not halt, the progress
made in community reinvestment.
The proposed changes will thwart the Administration's goals of
improving the economic status of immigrants and creating 5.5 million new
minority homeowners by the end of the decade. The proposed changes bring
into question, the sincerity of the Administration's commitment to
expanding homeownership and economic development. How can an
administration hope to promote community revitalization and wealth
building when it proposes to dramatically diminish banks' obligation to
reinvest in their communities?
Under the current CRA regulations, banks with assets of at least $250
million are rated by performance evaluations that scrutinize their level
of lending, investing, and services to low- and moderate-income
communities. The proposed changes will eliminate the investment and
service parts of the CRA exam for state-charted banks with assets
between $250 million and $1 billion. In place of the investment and
service parts of the CRA exam, the FDIC proposes to add a community
development criterion. The community development criterion would require
banks to offer community development loans, investments or services.
The community development criterion would be seriously deficient as a
replacement for the investment and service tests. Mid-size banks with
assets between $250 million and $1 billion would only have to engage in
one of three activities: community development lending, investing or
services. Currently, mid-size banks must engage in all three activities.
Under your proposal, a mid-size bank can now choose a community
development activity that is easiest for the bank instead of providing
an array of comprehensive community development activities needed by
low- and moderate-income communities.
The proposed community development criterion will result in
significantly fewer loans and investments in affordable rental housing,
Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, community service facilities such as
health clinics, and economic development projects. It will be too easy
for a mid-size bank to demonstrate compliance with a community
development criterion by spreading around a few grants or sponsoring a
few homeownership fairs rather than engaging in a comprehensive effort
to provide community development loans, investments, and services.
Your proposal would make 879 state-chartered banks with over $392
billion in assets eligible for the streamlined and cursory exam. In
total, 95.7 percent or more than 5,000 of the state-chartered banks your
agency regulates have less than $1 billion in assets. These 5,000 banks
have combined assets of more than $754 billion. The combined assets of
these banks rival that of the largest banks in the United States,
including Bank of America and JP Morgan Chase. Your proposal will
drastically reduce, by hundreds of billions of dollars, the bank assets
available for community development lending, investing, and services.
The elimination of the service test will also have harmful
consequences for low- and moderate-income communities. CRA examiners
will no longer expect mid-size banks to maintain and/or build bank
branches in low- and moderate-income communities. Mid-size banks will no
longer make sustained efforts to provide affordable banking services,
and checking and savings
accounts to consumers with modest incomes. Mid-size banks will also not
respond to the needs for the growing demand for services needed by
immigrants such as low cost remittances overseas.
Banks eligible for the FDIC proposal with assets between $250 million
and $1 billion have 7,860 branches. All banks regulated by the FDIC with
assets under $1 billion have 18,811 branches. Your proposal leaves banks
with thousands of branches "off the hook" for placing any branches in
low- and moderate-income communities. Locally in Pittsburgh this means
the exclusion of four small banks that only through CRA have come to
bring needed banking products to low-moderate communities and business
districts.
Another destructive element in your proposal is the elimination of
the small business lending data-reporting requirement for mid-size
banks. Mid-size banks with assets between $250 million and $1 billion
will no longer be required to report small business lending by census
tracts or revenue size of the small business borrowers. Without data on
lending to small businesses, it is impossible for the public at large to
hold the mid-size banks accountable for responding to the credit needs
of minority-owned, women-owned, and other small businesses.
Data disclosure has been responsible for increasing access to credit
precisely because disclosure holds banks accountable. Your proposal will
decrease access to credit for small businesses, which is directly
contrary to CRA's goals. PCRG has been able to use this information to
increase minority & women owned business lending, as well as provide
creative mortgage lending to revitalize abandon mix use buildings and
create investment in forgotten low-moderate communities.
In sum, your proposal is directly the opposite of CRA's statutory
mandate of imposing a continuing and affirmative obligation to meet
community needs. Your proposal will dramatically reduce community
development lending, investing, and services. You compound the damage of
your proposal in rural areas, which are least able to afford reductions
in credit and capital. You also eliminate critical data on small
business lending. Two other regulatory agencies, the Federal Reserve
Board and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, did not embark
upon the path you are taking because they recognized the harm it would
cause.
If your agency was serious about CRA's continuing and affirmative
obligation to meet credit needs, you would be proposing additional
community development and data reporting requirements for more banks
instead of reducing existing obligations. A mandate of affirmative and
continuing obligations implies expanding and enlarging community
reinvestment, not significantly reducing the level of community
reinvestment.
CRA is too vital to be weakened by regulatory fiat and neglect. If
you do not reverse your proposed course of action, we will ask that
Congress halt your efforts before the damage is done.
Sincerely,
Ernest E Hogan, First Chair,
Pittsburgh Community Reinvestment Group
Cc: National Community Reinvestment Coalition
President George W. Bush
Senators John Kerry and John Edwards
Pennsylvania State Senate
Pennsylvania House of Representatives
Senator Rick Santorum
Senator Arlen Spector
Congressman Mike Doyle
