New Orleans   Since the financial crisis many of us who believe in decent and affordable housing have spent time making sure the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) didn’t become the goat for the financial meltdown and banking scandals. And, don’t get me wrong, that’s important!

In a 2015 Federal Reserve study the conclusion was clear: CRA was blameless. Only 6% of loans by banks in CRA-qualified census tracks would have qualified as high risk. The repayment rate for CRA-based loans was equal or better than other loans in banking portfolios.

Nonetheless recently I finally felt like I might have stumbled on a disturbing pattern when I started thinking about the array of CRA officers populating various banks and I then started to worry that there might be another side to the CRA story that needs attention, and that’s whether or not it has become a banking ghetto populated more by politicians and promises than real efforts to move families into housing and desperately needed resources and loans into lower income communities.

For example, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition claims that approximately $4 trillion in CRA commitments was promised between 1997 and 2005. And, that’s good news and ACORN’s experience was that much of it was delivered on our agreements, as I detailed in my 2009 book, Citizen Wealth. On the other hand the word “promised,” when it comes to minority lending and lower income communities always makes you wonder. The Federal Reserve report for example quoted testimony given by JPMorgan Chase to the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission that “less than one-fourth of the loans pledged in the largest-ever CRA commitment ($800 billion by JPMorgan Chase) were to the lower-income borrowers and neighborhoods targeted by the CRA.” When forced to fess up, Chase essentially was admitting that their pledge was a scam. They also quoted a “Citigroup managing director… that most CRA commitments ‘would have been fulfilled in the normal course of business.’” Having dealt with Citigroup for years, that’s simply a lie. Nonetheless, it’s worrisome that these big hitters in the CRA lending world are essentially saying they were playing all of us for fools. Admittedly, they were also trying to save their skins before the Commission, but I’m afraid the truth may also have been slipping out.

And, then there’s a pattern I started to wonder about when thinking about the CRA officers we run into from bank to bank these days. There’s a high incidence of what seem to be political appointees rather than real bankers who might be able to move money rather than simply bring calm to stormy seas. On the local scene just to think about a random selection, there were several current African-American legislators still in office, a relative of a former Mayor, and a social friend of the CEO…are you starting to see the picture? Nationally, I remember dealing with an African-American former mayor of Minneapolis and the scion of a long standing black political powerhouse family from Buffalo.

Maybe we need some solid research of our own on whether or not big and little banking is really committed to CRA objectives and non-discriminatory lending in minority and lower income communities, or whether or not we’re being played by politicians in banker’s suits making promises while continuing to grip the money with an ever tightening fist?