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By Matthew Russell Lee, Patreon
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UN GATE / SDNY COURT, May 31 – The ineffective response to the Coronavirus crisis is not limited to lenders taking Paycheck Protection Program funds and refusing even basic disclosure. From New York City for June 1, this:

"Immigrant tenants from Chinatown to Western Queens will hold two actions on June 1st in opposition to the Emergency Rent Relief Act of 2020.  The Chinatown Tenants Union will drop a banner demanding that the state legislature cancel rent for every New Yorker, create long-term housing for people without homes and create a rental assistance fund for small landlords.   In the afternoon, public housing tenants at the Queensbridge Houses will hold an in-person protest at the Queensbridge Park. The Emergency Rent Relief Act of 2020 replicates the failed NYCHA Rent Hardship Program, which has routinely created layers of impossible bureaucracy and red tape for tenants who need support now. The Act also does not allocate any funding to NYCHA, which desperately needs funding to sanitize and repair buildings during this health crisis.   Members of CAAAV’s Asian Tenants Union are demanding that Senator Chuck Schumer join Representative Carolyn Maloney, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other federal representatives of New York State in endorsing Representative Ilhan Omar’s Rent and Mortgage Cancellation Act and pressure the federal government to Fully Fund NYCHA and all public housing."

   May 29 was the last day for Joseph Otting as US Comptroller of the Currency, a position he has misused to attack the Community Reinvestment Act he came to despise as head of OneWest Bank.

  We have only two words: Good riddance.

   It has not only been a policy dispute. Under Otting, the OCC immediately started denying Freedom of Information Act fee waivers, even for copies of pending merger applications subject to public comment. He debased certain longtime OCC staff, or perhaps they had alwasy been ready to take this turn. Time will tell.

Otting started refusing to consider timely comments on mergers, such as the take-over of Chinatown FSB by a national bank. Such contempt for the public and the public process is Otting's legacy.

  What will change under Otting's successor Brian P. Brooks? Brooks was vice chair of OneWest, before going to FannieMae then CoinBase, which he left only in March. Inner City Press has heard a number of things about Brooks, but as always goes into it with an open mind. Watch this site - and this project:

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, fair lending and Community Reinvestment Act are taking a back seat, or worse.

While Otting pushed forward with his proposal to weaken the CRA, his new chief national bank examiner Blake Paulson, installed just before Otting left, said bank examinations have gone 95% off-site.

   Fintechs and other non-bank financial firms are now at the PPP trough and are getting sued. For example, there is the lawsuit filed as a class action against Fountainhead Commercial Capital LLC on May 6, noting the finance firm advertised that it would process loan requests on a first-come, first-served basis and then stealthly shuffled its line of PPP applicants so that it would lock down the largest lending fees first.

     Meanwhile the OCC, which wants to admit fintechs into banking without regulation, says no one is in PPP for the money. This while in response to Inner City Press' FOIA request for Otting's schedule the OCC redacted the names of banks that he met without, and obscured others. (A FOIA appeal has been filed.)

   Amid all this, Fair Finance Watch and Inner City Press / Community on the Move are launching a new project. And so far, Otting's national banks have been among the worst. Watch this site.

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