Should the Community Reinvestment Act apply to credit unions?
No. But it should not apply to banks either. The Community Reinvestment Act attempts to prevent “redlining” and encourage lending institutions to serve all areas of the communities in which they operate. CRA does not apply to credit unions, because credit unions had even more severely limited fields of membership when CRA first went into effect, so it would have been nearly impossible for them to engage in redlining. Today, some credit unions have fields of membership that include entire states or large cities and, in theory, could engage in redlining—yet there is no evidence that any credit unions have done so. More importantly, there is very little evidence that CRA has achieved its stated goals with regard to banks. If legislators want more credit union lending in low- and middle-income or minority neighborhoods, they would do better to make it easier for credit unions to enter those neighborhoods—something that CURIA would do. Fundamentally, it is unfair that CRA applies to banks a
