ADVOCATES CRITICIZE PROPOSED CRA CHANGES AS wORSENING LENDING DISCRIMINATION

The organizations hold that the proposed notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) for changes to the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will make lending discrimination worse. In the statement by Jesse Van Tol, CEO of NCRC, he says:

“The ratio would measure the overall value of a bank’s CRA activities against the value of its deposits. This will encourage banks to seek the largest CRA financing deals, regardless of whether the deals make the most sense for local community needs. That’s why many banks as well as community-based organizations oppose the ratio being the primary determining factor on CRA exams. While the proposal looks at assessment area performance, it sets up a scenario where a bank could run up the dollar volume in 50% of its assessment areas, and still pass. The FDIC seems to have gotten a carve-out for community banks. In other words, many FDIC-regulated banks will be able to opt out of the new evaluation system and keep their CRA exams the way they are now. This  further confuses the regulatory landscape, the exact opposite outcome of what new rules were supposed to achieve.

“Discrimination in lending is still widespread and devastating for families and their communities. And yet 98% of banks pass their CRA exams. Taking steps to weaken the rules makes no sense. New rules should add clarity to the compliance process for banks, as well as reflect changes in how people interact with banks and how banks do business. But most critically, new rules should help low- and moderate-income borrowers in the communities that are most in need of CRA-based lending.”

Read the complete December 12, 2019 NCRC press release.

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IF YOU ARE A HOMEOWNER IN MARYLAND, YOU BETTER HAVE A DEED! HERE'S WHERE TO CHECK FOR FREE, AND POSSIBLY GET TAX CREDITS, TOO

Too many Marylanders think they own their home, but actually do not have a legal deed to the property. You need a deed or you cannot put it in your will, cannot leave the home to family, cannot quality for rehab grants, etc. Here is a link to a site for checking if you have a deed: http://www.myhomemydeed.org/. On the bottom of the page, you can check to see if you might qualify for a homeowners' tax credit. The page in Spanish is: http://www.myhomemydeed.org/my-deed-en-espanol/.

My Home, My Deed, My Legacy is a project of Maryland Volunteer Lawyers Service (MVLS) and Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development

Renters also are possible eligible for a tax credit. You might get a check for hundreds! To see if you qualify, go to: https://dat.maryland.gov/realproperty/Pages/Renters'-Tax-Credits.aspx.

EDNA SMITH PRIMUS, PIONEERING CIVIL RIGHTS LAWYER, 75

Primus was the first black women to practice law in South Carolina, and is probably best known for her work as a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in the 1970s. She won the US Supreme Court case that widened free speech rights for attorneys at nonprofit organizations.

In 1978, she was publicly reprimanded by the South Carolina Supreme Court for simply suggesting to a group of women who had received involuntary sterilizations that the ACLU could sue for them. At the time, South Carolina and some other states required poor women to be sterilized in order to receive public assistance through Medicaid. Because these forced sterilizations in the South were mostly performed on black women, many African Americans considered this genocide. 

Later that year, the US Supreme Court overturned the state court’s reprimand, finding in their ruling that she was protected by the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech and expression. The court declared a lawyer could recruit clients when this concerned political expression and advocating for public rights. This ruling helped lead to current rules that attorneys working with nonprofits have wider constitutional protections than those motivated primarily by financial gain. 

Up until the 1980’s, South Carolina kept its sterilization laws. In 2003, South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges (b.1956) made a public apology for the forced sterilizations that had occurred in the state, and for the people who had their rights to have children violated. 

After the case, Primus continued to work for several decades in civil rights and social justice law.

Primus was praised by Wilbur Johnson, who worked for her at Palmetto Legal Services (Spartanburg, South Carolina): "Edna always demonstrated a quiet but serious commitment to the agency’s central mission; that is, delivering quality legal services to those citizens who otherwise could not afford them.” 

Read the December 6th The Post and Courier (Charleston, South Carolina) obituary.

Read an academic article about sterilization in South Carolina.

New Website Tool Shows the Impacts of School Segregation by School District

The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University has released an excellent new interactive website describing access to educational opportunity for every school district in the U.S., which includes a series of tables explaining the persistent effects of racial and economic segregation on student achievement. 

The research papers underlying the new website are also collected here.

The Project utilizes the Stanford Education Data Archive (SEDA), an initiative directed at providing data to assist scholars, policymakers, educators, and parents learn how to improve educational opportunity for all children. It includes various detailed data on educational conditions, contexts, and outcomes in US school districts and counties. Specifically, SEDA has measures of academic achievement and achievement gaps for school districts and counties, as well as district-level measures of racial and socioeconomic composition, racial and socioeconomic segregation patterns, and other measures. 

Research papers include "Is Separate Still Unequal? New Evidence on School Segregation and Racial Academic Achievement Gaps" by Sean F. Reardon, Ericka S. Weathers, Erin M. Fahle, Heewon Jang, Demetra Kalogrides. September, 2019.

The website and SEDA are supported by the Russell Sage Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and several others.

NEW MTO STUDY FINDS YOUNG CHILDREN'S HEALTH BENEFITS FROM HOUSING VOUCHER PROGRAM 

In a just-released analysis, a team at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health found evidence of moderately reduced hospital costs for children whose families had received housing vouchers in the Moving to Opportunity for Fair Housing Demonstration Program (MTO), with additional cost savings associated with moves to lower poverty neighborhoods. Read a summary of the research here and the abstract here. The MTO Program was begun in 1994 by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), with the objective of determining the benefits of offering housing and neighborhood mobility opportunities to low-income families.

The analysis was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) on December 3, 2019. It was written by Alexandra Yurkovic, Michael Silverstein, and Alastair Bell.

This research builds on prior research on the health benefits of housing mobility, and work by the Poverty & Race Research Action Council's own estimates of long term health system cost savings.

Released by the League of Women Voters of Maryland on November 24, 2019

RSVP for the BIG climate summit in Maryland On December 14, at the University of Maryland College Park campus, a coalition of advocacy groups large and small — faith leaders, labor activists, environmental groups, and others — will be hosting an exciting one-day conference called Rebuild Maryland: Climate Action Summit. Please click here to register for the event. The conference will be co-sponsored by a growing list of organizations including: The League of Women Voters of Maryland, Maryland Climate Coalition, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Maryland League of Conservation Voters, Maryland Chapter of the Sierra Club, Interfaith Power & Light, Maryland Legislative Coalition, 350 dot org, Howard County Sunrise, HoCo Climate Action, MoCo Students for Climate, Climate Law & Policy Project, ClimateXChange,  Takoma Park Mobilization Environment Committee, Climate Reality Montgomery County, Elders Climate Action, DoTheMostGood and Eastern Panhandle Green Coalition. There will be inspiring speakers and you will be given the opportunity to discuss what climate solutions inspire you the most. You don’t want to miss this day-long conference. Register here for the Rebuild Maryland: Climate Action Summit The conference is free to attend, and includes bagels, coffee, and lunch. BUT A SUGGESTED DONATION OF $25 WILL HELP COVER THE COSTS of the food and the space rental. Time: 9:00am - 4:30pm Date: Saturday, December 14, 2019 Location: University of Maryland in College Park, Colony Ballroom in the Stamp Student Union Suggested donation: $25 Nancy Soreng, http://www.lwvmd.org/ P.S. You might also want to consider attending THE MARYLAND LEGISLATIVE SUMMIT sponsored by the Maryland Legislative Coalition at the campus of the University of Maryland Baltimore County this event will showcase a presentation of top 2020 environmental bills as well as legislation designed to fund our schools, lower health care prices, and more. Tickets are available here.

League of Women Voters of Maryland · 121 Cathedral St, Ste. 2B, Annapolis, MD 21401, United States This email was sent to kladky7@gmail.com. To stop receiving emails, click here.

Released by the Community Development Network of Maryland on November 27, 2019

HUD CERTIFICATION COACHING 

 This is it!  August 2020 will be here before you know it!

It's time to stop procrastinating and start studying.

Come to this session and make a written plan for 

studying and time and space to carry out

We will give counselors with different learning styles 

tools to help them successfully pass the test.

Also, if you have taken the test before, let's dust

yourself off and try again. You CAN do it!

Baltimore

DECEMBER 5, 2019

12:00 PM - 3:00 PM

Druid Heights CDC

Register here

 Visit CDN's brand new website

for more information and

how to become a member today.