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Rallying alongside National People's Action Co-Chairperson Brenda LaBlanc, leaders from Syracuse United Neighbors, the East Side Organizing Project, Citizens United for Action and 100 NPA members crowded into a room in the Capitol building in Washington, DC to release a national report, called "This Old Reg: The Community Reinvestment Act Needs Renovation," with Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY).

The press conference took place in early March as part of the NPA Leadership Summit. The four NPA leaders up front took turns describing the key findings for reporters and went on to explain how bad lending creates abandoned buildings and puts families out into the streets. And then each leader gave the CRA exam a grade of "Needs to Improve."

"The banks studied are not doing their jobs when lending to minorities, which means that the CRA is not doing its job. The CRA gets a horrible, awful, despicable - needs to improve," said Barbara Anderson of ESO in Cleveland, OH.

This new report took a giant step in putting pressure on the four federal regulators that monitor and enforce the Community Reinvestment Act. Even though CRA is responsible for bringing trillion dollars of investment to neighborhoods throughout the country, the regulators and legislators over the years have allowed banks to create loopholes to sidestep serving the credit needs of the low-moderate income borrowers. The report revealed:
1. The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act is of little use in identifying the role of subprime lending in mortgage markets or the prevalence of predatory practices.
2. In five out of 10 cities, major lenders relied on their subprime affiliate to serve low and moderate-income neighborhoods.
3. In six out of the 10 cities, the prime affiliate studied had a higher denial rate for middle-upper income African Americans than lower income whites.
4. In spite of receiving "Satisfactory" and "Outstanding" CRA ratings for every lender, many questions about responsible lending to low and moderate-income communities surface in this report that are not answered in the lenders' CRA exam.

"Currently 97 percent of banks are passing their CRA exams. But you only need 60 percent of the total points to pass. A kindergartner couldn't pass with those kind of grades," said Amanda Pascall of Syracuse Untied Neighbors. The study, conducted by The National Training and Information Center, analyzed the lending pattern of a bank and its subprime affiliate in 10 cities around the country.

The bank was chosen based on its relationship with the community group or out of concern that the bank was not serving the credit needs of the community.