Recent News
We are seeking a high energy and dynamic candidate for the position of Public Policy Manager. The Manager will advance our public policy advocacy agenda. The position reports to Chief Executive Officer, but works with all members of the team. This is a full time 40 hour per week position. The position is located at CDBA's offices in Washington, DC. Click here to read the full description.
The tax reform law enacted in late 2017 is already threatening to exacerbate the affordable housing crisis. The law is expected to eliminate 300,000 affordable housing units over 10 years, partly because it will reduce the value of banks' low-income tax credits, which finance half of all affordable housing units, according to a report by the nonprofit real estate firm NHP Foundation. Lowering the corporate tax rate reduces the value of the tax credits by roughly 15% because banks and partnerships that use the tax credits are limited in deductions on appreciating expenses.
In Portland, Oregon, a movement is building to establish a public bank. After debating divestment from companies whose practices might be harmful to people or the environment, the City Council voted in April to stop investing city money in all corporations. Portland is also one of the numerous US cities that decided to stop banking with Wells Fargo. "My hope is that a public bank wout be a profit-making institution, expect the profit would be for public purposes," said David Delk, of the Portland Public Banking Alliance. "The possibilities are limited really only by our imagination because... Read more
A growing number of cities across the United States are considering launching city-owned public banks. Among these are Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Philadelphia, Santa Fe, and Washington DC. The Public Banking Institute, a national advocacy nonprofit, has been supporting these and many other campaigns. At the state level, New Jersey's governor-elect Phil Murphy, who spent 23 years at Goldman Sachs, has expressed interest in establishing a state public bank.
Commerce Bancorp, of Greenwood, MS, is acquiring all of the issued and outstanding capital stock of Tallahatchie Holding Co. of Charleston. The share exchange deal was signed on November 29, 2017, and will see Tallahatchie County Bank's single branch and $58 million in assets merge to Bank of Commerce, with five pre-existing branches and $395 million in assets.
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In Mississippi, Commerce Bancorp Inc. of... Read more
Old Second Bancorp. A $2.4 billion-asset bank in Aurora, IL, has agreed to buy Greater Chicago Financial, the parent of $350.4 million-asset ABC Bank. The deal, which is expected to close in the second quarter, values Greater Chicago at 119% of its tangible book value. "ABC Bank's four offices and more than a century of service in the Chicago market are a great complement to our existing footprint," said James Eccher, Old Second's President and CEO.
The First, A National Banking Association is serving as the title sponsor to the Economic Outlook 2018 Forum hosted by the University of Southern Mississippi. The forum will convene experts from banking, finance, and academia to explore a number of issues and research related to the economic outlook for 2018. "The Economic Outlook Forum continues to grow every year, and we expect another large turnout," said Hoppy Cole, President and CEO of The First. "It gives us an opportunity to visit with people from the Gulf South region, to find out what is going on and how our... Read more
Wells Fargo has donated a 105-year-old iconic bank building in downtown Roanoke to Virginia Community Capital, which plans to open a dialogue with residents about what the structure could become. Leah Fremouw, Director of Community Impact at VCC, said that their organization intends to "direct the redevelopment off the 55,000-square-foot property into a practical use that further strengthens the central core of the city, enhances economic development, creates jobs, and potentially expands downtown development opportunities for others."
This article highlights Spring Bank's Grow Loan Program for small businesses with capital needs of less than $150,000 -- a typical cutoff for small business loans from a bank. It highlights the beneficial effects of the program on specific ventures spearheaded by women and minority entrepreneurs. "If you look at every one of our Grow Loan clients, you will find a really compelling story in every one of them," said Ines Marino, Spring Bank's director of small business lending.
Amalgamated Bank in New York, which recently agreed to buy a West Coast institution, has big plans to operate in a number of major U.S. cities. Amalgamated, for its part, envisions becoming an institution with operations in other left-leaning cities such as Austin, Texas; Boston; and Chicago, said Keith Mestrich, the bank's president and CEO. Expansion could involve branches or acquisitions. Amalagamated Bank, alongside CDBA members Southern Bancorp, Sunrise Banks, and Beneficial State Bank, is a part of the Global Alliance for Banking on Values -- a group focused on reaching underserved... Read more
In this article, Carl Hairston, Executive Vice President and Chief Lending Officer at City First Bank, is interviewed by the Huffington Post on corporate social responsibility and the ideal framework for deepening company impact. "98% of bank deposits in DC are placed within 24 banks, and those 24 all make more investments outside of the DC market than they do within it," Hairston explained. "Our mission is to go to whatever prudent and reasonable lengths we can in order to help those individuals access the working capital they need for viable credit opportunities."
This week, the Board of Trustees for Adams State University in Alamosa, Colorado approved the naming of the new First Southwest Bank Center for Economic Opportunity on campus. The center will open in January 2018 and will focus on community-based strategic planning and trainings to promote local business startups, thereby improving job creation, job retention, and local income levels. The University's expertise in business education and community partnerships will inform the project design and approach.
In this article, the American Banker discusses how OneUnited Bank in Boston has a plan to remain relevant while continuing to press for social justice. The nation's biggest black-owned bank has adopted a business model aimed at becoming a digitally-focused retail bank. It has scaled back its physical operations, closing a pair of branches in Los Angeles last year. It has also added thousands of ATMs that customers can access without a fee, and it plans to add Apple Pay to its menu of online services. The strategic shift comes at a critical time.
All Albina Community Bank branches are set to convert to Beneficial State Bank branches on February 1, 2018, after the two banks announced regulatory approval of their merger this week. Beneficial State, headquartered in Oakland, California, has owned a majority share of Albina in 2013, which it acquired in an effort to help stabilize the Portland-based bank after a period of industry turbulence. Three Albina members will join the Beneficial State board.
If Congress succeeds in passing regulatory relief, consumers in rural areas could soon find it easier to open accounts at banks and credit unions. Under a provision tucked into the Senate version of a regulatory relief bill that passed out of committee last week, financial institutions would be able to use a scan of a customer's driver's license or other photo identification to verify that person's identity when opening an account online. The Making Online Banking Initiation Legal and Easy, or MOBILE, Act, is intended to address a patchwork of state-level restrictions concerning how state-... Read more
This week, CDBA CEO Jeannine Jacokes contributed an op-ed to the American Banker urging that Congress preserve New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) funding in 2018-2019. The article provides examples of improved healthcare access and expanded manufacturing manufacturing capacity through NMTC. “Decades of community development experience have proven that tax breaks alone are simply inadequate to spur economic activity in the most distressed places,” Jacokes wrote. “If they don’t preserve the NMTC,... Read more
Today the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) approved Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's Underserved Markets Plans for 2018-2020. Under the Duty to Serve (DTS) program, the FHFA required each Enterprise to adopt a three-year Underserved Markets Plan that aims to increase the liquidity of mortgage financing to families with very low to moderate incomes in three underserved markets: rural housing; manufactured housing; and affordable housing preservation markets.
If you live in rural America and have a heart attack — or stroke — you may be in really big trouble. Over 30 million Americans live more than an hour's drive from a trauma center and an estimated 673 rural hospitals are at risk of closure, exemplifying a nationwide trend that threatens rural health care access. Yet an amazing thing happened at Monroe County Hospital in Monroeville, Ala. In 2017, it received a $6 million capital injection to renovate and expand its emergency room and oncology department thanks to a small, but potently impactful, federal program called the New Markets Tax... Read more
The Distressed Communities Index (DCI) combines seven complementary metrics into a broad-based assessment of community economic well-being in the United States. The 2017 DCI finds that 52.3 million Americans live in economically distressed communities, with over half residing in the South. Distressed communities exist in red states and blue states: 36.4 million constituents inside distressed zip codes are represented by the Republican party at multiple governments, and 16 million constituents inside distressed zip codes are represented by the Democratic party.
The Community Investment Explorer is a new tool to analyze community development transactions over the past 30 years. The data, sortable by year, investment purpose, and metropolitan area, comes from 3 sources: the work of CDFIs, New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC), and Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC). "We know there [are] a lot of groups, be it affordable housing, developers, CDFIs, tax credit investors, in addition to policymakers, interested in this information and to see the stories this data tells," said a community development specialist at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.