Three federal regulatory agencies announced the 2013 list of  “distressed or underserved, nonmetropolitan and middle-income” regions.
Westchester County was not on the list, which was released June 13; neither were the counties of the Hudson Valley.
The report is in keeping with the tenets of the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), which was designed to oversee lending in underserved, mainly poor and rural markets ”“ termed by the government “nonmetropolitan” ”“ and in urban poverty centers. Middle-income regions also are scrutinized by the agencies, their sights set on lending discrimination in any form. Their reviews are called “exams.”
Regions named to the list, which is based on a trove of banking metrics, and that are in need of revitalization or stabilization activities, will receive CRA help in redressing grievances.
The practice by which loans are denied based on geography is known as “redlining.”
New York state had 19 such distressed and underserved geographical regions clustered in three upstate counties: Franklin, Hamilton and Schuyler. Alabama, by comparison, which possesses a population half New York’s size, had 155 distressed geographies.
“Distressed nonmetropolitan middle-income geographies” and “underserved nonmetropolitan middle-income geographies” are designated by the agencies in accordance with their CRA regulations. “The designations continue to reflect local economic conditions, including triggers such as unemployment, poverty, and population changes,” the FDIC reported.
CRA exams are conducted by the federal agencies that are responsible for supervising depository institutions: the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System; the FDIC; and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
