November 13, 2003 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Organizing Access to Capital: Advocacy and the Democratization of Financial Institutions
edited by Gregory D. Squires
This collection of essays by scholars and leaders of nonprofit community organizations explores the role advocacy groups have played in making it easier for low-income people and minorities to obtain loans and insurance to buy homes.
Gregory D. Squires, chair of the sociology department at George Washington University, in Washington, writes that in recent years homeownership rates have risen to an all-time high, in part because of the community-organizing efforts and protests of community groups.
The book describes how activists, recognizing that residents of some poor urban areas had trouble getting loans to improve homes or buy property, lobbied for laws to require banks to make loans in areas where the institutions receive deposits. Essays also show how organizations gathered data to illustrate that banks were not complying with these laws, and how the organizations sued or negotiated with banks to get them to increase their investments in needy neighborhoods.
Many of the authors argue that, without confrontation, such advances would not have taken place. For example, Joe Mariano, executive director of the National Training and Information Center, in Chicago, describes how one nonprofit organization was able to get bank representatives to discuss community reinvestment only after the group staged a “bank in”—local residents disrupted business by asking tellers to count and deposit large bags of pennies.
In addition to discussing challenges that lie ahead for groups seeking to help low-income neighborhoods improve economically, other chapters offer suggestions on how community-development proponents might work with other advocates, including labor groups, to continue to revitalize inner cities.
Publisher: Temple University Press, 1601 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19122-6099; (215) 204-8787; fax (215) 204-4719; http://www.temple.edu/tempress; 248 pages; $69.50 cloth; $22.95 paper; I.S.B.N. 1-59213-026-7.
