The challenge

Throughout the past decade, an increasingly two-tiered credit system has emerged in the United States, with one system serving middle and upper income, predominantly white communities, and a second, exploitative system aimed at predominantly low-income, nonwhite and immigrant communities. Longstanding practices of “bank redlining” — denying access to financial services based on a community’s race and income composition — continues to make it difficult for people in neighborhoods of color to get conventional loans to start small businesses, or to buy or improve their homes.

Sweeping changes in banking technology, more than a decade of mega-mergers and consolidation, and other factors have helped create a vacuum in low income neighborhoods, where high-cost lenders now flourish. Communities where people were once hard-pressed to obtain loans are now flooded with fringe products and services – among them, high-interest loans made against future paychecks or income-tax refunds; rent-to-own stores; and overpriced mortgages. This trend has not only relegated lower-income people to a substandard system of credit, but also has destabilized entire neighborhoods.

Seeds of commitment

When Monifa Akinwole-Bandele was growing up in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, her family participated in a multi-building rent strike against one of New York’s worst slumlords. The strike lasted a decade — until a judge sentenced the landlord to live in one of his own buildings as punishment. “I was raised in a climate of community organizing and direct action, not just for my own family but for others in the neighborhood,” she says. “I carry that responsibility forward in my life now.” With a track record of human rights activism and a longtime commitment to social justice, Akinwole-Bandele serves as president of NEDAP’s board of directors.

Growing up as a second-generation Chinese-American, in Oakland, Calif., Pamela Sah saw her mother move from direct services work, as a psychiatric nurse, into activism for mental health and reproductive rights. Sah works as a staff attorney and the fair-lending coordinator for South Brooklyn Legal Services’ Foreclosure Prevention Project, and has been a member of the NEDAP board of directors since 2001. Sarah Ludwig founded NEDAP in 1995, and has served as its executive director since then. “My work follows the vision of a just society that my grandparents brought to this country. They, and my parents, made clear that we have a collective obligation to one another, and that one may not sit idly by in the face of injustice.

Accomplishments

NEDAP promotes economic justice in New York City communities by serving as a resource center for community groups in low-income neighborhoods and communities of color. Under the leadership of Akinwole-Bandele, Ludwig, and Sah, NEDAP is a persistent watchdog of government regulatory policies and brings groups together to challenge bank mergers and press for corporate and regulatory accountability to communities. NEDAP also conducts an aggressive outreach and education program to equip groups with information needed to avoid predatory loans and protect community economic rights. NEDAP’s staff, for example, offers public education about fair lending, consumer credit, and rights of undocumented immigrants in the financial system. The organization promotes community-based development, including financial institutions such as credit unions and loan funds.

Among other accomplishments, NEDAP has been at the forefront of efforts in New York State to expose and combat predatory mortgage lending. NEDAP has produced neighborhood lending and foreclosure maps that have been used by groups to educate their members and influence policymakers about discriminatory abuses in the high-cost mortgage market. The mapping has revealed what Ludwig calls “a tidal wave of foreclosures,” particularly in Central Brooklyn, Southeast Queens, and other neighborhoods of color in New York City. NEDAP also convenes coalitions to address broad financial justice issues at the city and state levels. In 2000, NEDAP launched New Yorkers for Responsible Lending (NYRL), a statewide coalition of more than 100 community and consumer groups and community-development financial institutions. NYRL successfully moved the state to pass one of the country’s strongest laws against predatory lending. More recently, in response to the Patriot Act and anti-immigrant measures, NEDAP has convened grassroots and advocacy groups throughout New York to address barriers faced by undocumented and low-income immigrants in the banking system.

Leadership style

As an all-women leadership team, Akinwole-Bandele, Ludwig and Sah feel a special responsibility to mentor young women interns from undergraduate, law and other education programs. “These are great women role models, in a field traditionally dominated by men,” says Kat Aaron, who directs Resources for Youth Seeking Economic Justice, a new project at NEDAP that provides economic-justice training to youth-activist groups in New York. Akinwole-Bandele, Ludwig and Sah draw on their cultural and personal diversity to build bridges between grassroots activists, government regulators, credit-union leaders and corporate bankers. “It was striking to have AARP in the same room with environmental activists and members of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, for instance, all in support of state legislation to outlaw predatory lending,” says Errol Louis, a columnist with the New York Daily News, and founding NEDAP board member. “They laid the basis for future coalitions by making sure they had partners upstate who were rural and conservative.”

Mark Winston Griffith, Executive Director of Talking Democracy Media, cites NEDAP’s leadership: “She [Sah] persuaded us to stop referring to aggrieved borrowers as passive ‘victims,’” he says.

The future

With a widening influence beyond New York’s borders, NEDAP will continue to challenge the acquisition of high-cost consumer-finance companies by major banking institutions. “We strive to be flexible in our actions and decision-making,” Akinwole-Bandele, Ludwig, and Sah wrote in a recent essay. As major financial institutions devise new gimmicks — for instance, “bounce protection,” a high-cost and deceptive form of overdraft protection -- NEDAP will work to expose them. NEDAP’s leadership also hopes to create a New York Financial Justice Center as a hands-on training institute for community organizers and financial justice advocates. “The next set of challenges we anticipate is, ironically, a consequence of our very successes,” the leaders wrote. Successful state and local efforts against predatory lending in New York and elsewhere have led the financial services lobby to press for federal-level legislation and regulatory changes to block state consumer protections. Now, NEDAP must reinvigorate the New York coalition that worked for the state anti-predatory lending law passed in 2002 — and join forces with its allies around the country.

More about Akinwole-Bandele, Ludwig, Sah and NEDAP

“There was a concern at one time that unscrupulous lenders would flood into New York City to capitalize on poor communities. New York has turned the corner on predatory lending thanks in no small measure to NEDAP’s efforts.”
— Errol T. Louis, Columnist, NY Daily News

“Though distinct in personality and leadership styles, Monifa, Pamela and Sarah are each known for their sharp, problem-solving intellects. Ever aware of ‘the big picture,’ they are also deeply grounded in everyday issues. They combine diligence and rigor with personal amiability. In other words, they get things done, and it’s a pleasure to work with them.”
— Mark Winston Griffith, Executive Director, Talking Democracy Media

Contact Information

Neighborhood Economic Development Advocacy Project (NEDAP)
73 Spring Street, Suite 506
New York, NY 10012
Phone: 212-680-5100
Fax: 212-680-5104
Web: www.nedap.org

Monifa Akinwole-Bandele
Board President
Email: monifabandele@hotmail.com

Sarah Ludwig
Executive Director
Email: sarah@nedap.org

Pamela Sah
Board Member
Email: pamelas@sbls.org