Contemporary Effects of the CRA

I am sitting here on a Saturday night, angry at the politicians and watching a great documentary on the crisis - explaining the effects of lending practices, the Community Reinvestment Act of 1978, and the subsequent policies used to push lenders into more and more subprime lending. Since I've already commented on the impact CRA has on inner city development, I thought I would talk about what this may mean going forward for the Inner City divide in metropolitan cities.

We will already see some issues with unemployment affecting people - meaning more foreclosures, more people with poor credit, less money to lend from failing banks. I fully expect that in the short term the CRA will be looked at. In the long term, we are going to see many fewer loans to inner city residents through these government entities. New policies and programs are going to have to be developed in order to meet reinvestment needs and have any sort of positive impact on the American Divide.

We could not ask for a more contemporary crisis in which to study these effects on Urban Policy and development. As terrible as this crisis is, we are at a point academically to capture the educational opportunity and use it to our advantage as we move into the workforce with NGO's, state and local government, and the federal government.