Federal Deposit
Insurance Corporation

October 19, 2004

Mr. Robert E. Feldman
Executive Secretary
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation
550 17th St. NW
Washington, DC 20429

Attention: Comments/Legal ESS
Re: RIN 3064-AC50

Dear Mr. Feldman:

The Foreclosure Prevention Project at South Brooklyn Legal Services is a comprehensive outreach, education, and legal service delivery program for low-and moderate-income homeowners who are at risk of foreclosure as a result of predatory mortgage lending practices. The Foreclosure Prevention Project is the primary resource in New York City and State for legal expertise on predatory lending issues, and has served as a model for legal services programs around the country that have set up foreclosure prevention units. We urge you to withdraw the FDIC's proposal to quadruple (to $1 billion) the minimum asset size for applying the full Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) exam to state chartered non-member banks. This proposed change in the CRA regulations would have a devastating impact on lending, housing, and access to financial services in urban and rural communities across America. Based on our extensive experience battling predatory lending practices aimed at low-income consumers, borrowers and homeowners, we believe that any actions that reduce communities' access to fair and affordable credit serve to fuel the growing predatory lending fire.

CRA has been instrumental in increasing homeownership, boosting economic development, and expanding small businesses in the nation's minority, immigrant, and low- and moderate-income communities. The FDIC proposal would dramatically diminish banks' obligation to reinvest in their communities. It revises the CRA rules to make the less rigorous CRA exam applicable to an additional 900 banks with assets totaling $401 billion. Adoption of the FDIC measure is likely to mean the loss of hundreds of millions of dollars in loans, investments, and services for local communities and would disproportionately impact rural areas and small cities where the market presence of these mid-sized banks is often great.

FDIC rulemaking on this matter is flawed both in terms of procedure and substance. The draft proposal was adopted on a divided vote at a board meeting that was called on unusually short notice, and that provided some board members with only limited opportunity for prior review. The board provided a minimal 30-day public comment period. A few days before the

schedule end of the comment period on September 20, the FDIC granted a 30-day extension. While the extension provides a needed additional opportunity for public comment, we cannot condone the "go it alone" course the FDIC has charted as an acceptable substitute for the joint rulemaking approach traditionally employed by the banking agencies for the promulgation of CRA regulations. Furthermore, the federal agencies have also held public hearings across the country when they have proposed changes of this magnitude to CRA and other fair lending laws.

The FDIC rule, as proposed, would greatly weaken or eliminate extremely important standards necessary to ensure that CRA is effective. The proposed change would weaken the lending test and also eliminate the investment and service parts of the CRA exam for FDIC supervised banks that have assets between $250 million and $1 billion.

The FDIC's plan to add a weak and trivial community development criterion in lieu of the investment and service tests applicable today (that collectively count for 50 percent of a bank's CRA grade) is a wholly inadequate substitute for the present exam standards. The new factor permits these banks to satisfy the community development criterion by choosing whether to provide community development loans, investments or services instead of assessing their performances for all three categories, as is currently required. This change is likely to result in a significant drop-off of lending, investments and services for affordable housing development, Low Income Housing Tax Credits, community service facilities, such as clinics, and economic development projects.

Another harmful element in the proposal is the dramatic weakening of the lending test for midsize banks which could decrease access to credit for many Americans. Under the proposal, banks with assets between $250 million and $1 billion will no longer be subject to the rigorous examination of their mortgage, small business, small farm, and consumer lending. Further, these banks would no longer be required to collect and report essential lending information such as small business lending by census tracts or revenue size of the small business borrowers. Without data on lending to small businesses and small farms, it is impossible for the public to know how well these midsize banks help to meet the credit needs of their local communities.

We also fear that the elimination of the service test will have harmful consequences for low- and moderate-income consumers. It takes away the regulatory incentive for midsize banks to maintain and open new branches and ATM machines serving low-and moderate-income geographies. It is also likely to undercut the extent to which these banks provide checking and savings accounts for low- and moderate-income consumers, affordable banking services necessary for bringing unbanked households into the financial mainstream, or money transfer and remittance services, which are particularly important to new immigrants and ethnically diverse communities.

According to the FDIC data, the rule change would mean that only 223 of 5,291 (about 4%) of all FDIC-supervised banks would continue to receive the full CRA exam. It would affect some parts of the U.S. more drastically than others. Ninety-nine percent of rural FDIC-supervised banks would be exempted from full coverage. We calculate that no FDIC-supervised banks in eight states (Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Minnesota, Montana, New Mexico, West Virginia and Wyoming) would be fully covered by CRA. Thirty-six other states would have five or fewer banks facing full CRA scrutiny.

In addition, this proposal would broaden the definition of community development in rural areas so that all FDIC-supervised banks could receive CRA credit even if these activities are not particularly directed at serving the needs of low- and moderate-income households, as is presently required. The proposal would be particularly harmful to rural counties, which already have fewer banks. Rural counties have 4.3 banks compared to 10.9 banks in urban counties, on average.

The FDIC proposal and the rule recently adopted by the OTS diminish the CRA requirements for midsize banks and work at cross purposes with the Act's statutory mandate. As you know, this mandate requires that banks, regardless of their asset size, have a continuing and affirmative obligation to serve the credit and deposit services needs of their local communities, including low- and moderate-income areas.

We urge you to withdraw this proposal.

Sincerely yours,

Brigitte Amiri
Jessica Attie
Pamela Sah
Josh Zinner
Foreclosure Prevention Project
South Brooklyn Legal Services
Brooklyn, NY 11201