| As Brookline
Bancorp Bids to Buy PCSB Fair
Finance Watch Cites Community Reinvestment
Act
By Matthew
Russell Lee, Patreon Story
BBC
- Guardian
UK - Honduras
- ESPN
FEDERAL COURT / S
Bronx, August 13 – Whether or
not the U.S. Community
Reinvestment Act will actually
be enforced under this
Administration and its
regulators remains an open
question. Now a litmus test,
for the Federal Reserve and
NYSDFS:
Dear Chair
Powell, Secretary Misback and
others in the FRS [also sent
to NYSDFS]
This is a
request for a full copy of,
and a timely first comment on,
the Applications by Brookline
Bancorp, Inc., Boston,
Massachusetts; to acquire PCSB
Financial Corporation, and
thereby indirectly acquire
PCSB Bank, both of Yorktown
Heights, New York.
Fair
Finance Watch has been
tracking Brookline Bancorp and
finds it lending patterns,
including in the newly
released 2021 HMDA data not
taken into account in CRA
exams, troubling. In
2021 Brookline Bank made 434
mortgage loans to whites - and
only NINE to African
Americans, while denying SEVEN
applications by African
Americans, and denying only
(in context) 71 applications
by whites. This bank should be
referred to the DOJ for fair
lending prosecution, and this
application denied.
Speaking
of the law, Brookline Bancorp
has been sued for
discrimination in employement,
in the U.S. District Court for
the Southern District of New
York, the underlying facts of
which the FRB should inquire
into in connection with this
application including at the
requested evidentiary hearing:
Ahmed v. Brookline Bancorp
Inc.
(18-cv-06886)
FFW and
Inner City Press have been
deeply concerned about the
rush by the Federal Reserve to
rubber-stamp mergers by
redliners. This has been
killing the Community
Reinvestment Act and we timely
request public hearings.
Back in December 2021 Inner
City Press reported on BMO
Harris' application to buy
Bank of the West and its more
than 500 branches from BNP.
Fair
Finance Watch noted, from Day
1, that in 2020 BMO Harris
denied many more mortgage
applications from African
Americans than it approved:
509 denied versus only 223
loans made to African
Americans, nationwide. BMO's
numbers for whites were the
reverse: 9270 loans made,
versus less then six thousand
denials.
On May 17 the
Federal Reserve and OCC
announced that they would at
least hold a public meeting.
And they did - it is pending.
And this?
Inner City
Press (and Fair Finance Watch,
on the HMDA) will have more to
say about this. Watch this
site.
***
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