NYS Community Equity Agenda 2018 Highlights

For the 2018 NYS legislative session, a statewide coalition of community, labor, civil rights, and faith-based groups, along with community-based financial institutions, came together to develop the NYS Community Equity Agenda. The platform sets forth practical steps New York can immediately take to ensure economic justice and self-determination in New York’s low-income and immigrant communities and communities of color.

During the 2018 legislative session, coalition members:

• Built unprecedented support for community-based financial institutions, including mission-driven community development credit unions. Sixty organizations from across the state called on state leaders to finally fund the NYS CDFI Fund – to invest in low-income communities and communities of color not adequately served by mainstream banks – laying important groundwork for next year’s state budget negotiations. For more information, check out this article in The Buffalo News.
• Kept payday lending out of New York. For the first time in recent memory, no legislation was advanced in the state legislature that would permit predatory payday lending in New York.
• Played a key role in the introduction of new legislation to advance economic justice in New York, including a bill to eliminate all asset tests for New Yorkers applying to state public assistance programs, and another to vastly strengthen New York’s Consumer Protection Law.