Housing residents lack access to bank

Nearly 800,000 New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) residents have little to no access to banks, according to a recent report issued by City Councilmember Eric Gioia.
The report, entitled “Access to Financial Institutions for New York City Housing Authority Residents,” found that 74 percent of public housing developments are closer to check-cashing stores than actual banks, depriving many residents of essential financial services.
“This is a huge but often invisible problem,” Gioia said. “When the only financial institution in your area is a store that cashes checks, you’re put out of the financial mainstream.”
The report’s findings suggest that more than 98,000 (almost one in four) NYCHA residents are not accessing financial services at banks or credit unions. It also cites statistics from the Federal Reserve Bank, which found that one in four families earning less than $18,900 a year do not have a bank account.
“It’s not that there aren’t enough banks,” Gioia said. “Some people have three banks right around the corner from them. But other neighborhoods don’t even have banks within walking distance, so it’s really the distribution that’s the problem.”
The report recommends that the Mayor’s Center of Economic Opportunity should expand financial education for NYCHA residents and create a strategy on how to support cooperative banking. It also suggests the NYCHA look into renting retail space to banks.
Gioia believes that a citywide public credit union would be the best solution.
“I think that would stop this problem very quickly,” he said. “It’s only common sense that the government should help the people help themselves.”
According to Gioia, the recent report comes out of his “own experience” working for “five years to rally residents and community leaders to bring banks to NYCHA.”
Most notably, after years of work, Gioia finally helped bring an Amalgamated Bank to Queensbridge, New York’s largest public housing development, last April.
“From that, I could tell this was not an isolated experience,” he said.
Bishop Mitchell Taylor, President and CEO of the East River Development Alliance (ERDA), worked with Gioia to bring the bank to Queensbridge, and he recognizes the problem of un-banked New Yorkers.
“We believe that financial counseling is not a service that should be reserved for the wealthy,” Taylor said in a statement. “Rather, it is a critical resource to which all families, regardless of income, should have access.”
Located on 21st Street in Long Island City, the Queensbridge Amalgamated bank has been “a main thoroughfare for residents of Queensbridge and Ravenswood houses,” according to Taylor. Thanks to the bank, Taylor said, the ERDA has been able to open 200 bank accounts for people who were “either un-banked or under-banked.”