Communities Must be Vigilant: The Financial Turn in National Urban Policy

This research comes from a book project entitled "Neighborhoods First: The Urban Reinvestment Movement in the Era of Financial Deregulation." It explores how the U.S. financial system shaped, and was shaped by, the community organizing of low- and moderate-income urbanites during the last third of the twentieth century. This particular chapter explores the mixed results of 1970s efforts to revitalize neighborhoods through community-bank partnerships. In 1977, reinvestment activists successfully lobbied for the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which gave them standing to stall bank mergers if banks redlined, or refused to lend in, the communities outside their offices. In effect, the CRA gave activists leverage to win new loan commitments from local banks. But just as activists gained traction here, new challenges emerged. The CRA offered no protection from gentrification, high interest rates, and bank deregulation that threatened neighborhood stability by decade's end.