ABSTRACT
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), passed in 1977 in response to a nationwide grass roots movement against bank redlining of low-and moderateincome neighborhoods, formally established banks' "affirmative obligation to help meet the credit needs of the local communities in which they are chartered." Twelve years later, reactivated by mounting evidence that neither banks nor their federal regulators were taking their obligations under the law seriously, a resurgent community reinvestment movement helped to obtain amendments to the CRA-and to its companion, the Horne Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA)-- that required increased public disclosure of information on bank performance.
