In Memoriam

Gale Cincotta leaves activist legacy

Gale Cincotta, a prominent community activist who was known as the ‘mother of the Community Reinvestment Act,’ passed away August 15, 2001. She was 72.

Cincotta's active 30-year career included fighting for neighborhood and community groups and working to eliminate "redlining" and discriminatory practices against low-income and minority communities.

In 1972, Gale co-founded the National Training and Information Center (NTIC) with Shel Trapp and Anne-Marie Douglas. The group provides technical assistance and training for community organizers and neighborhood leaders. NTIC’s objective is to help community residents by building grassroots leadership, reducing neighborhood crime andstrengthening neighborhoods through issue-based community organizing.

In the same year, she also created National People’s Action, a coalition of grassroots neighborhood organizations that has fought to represent neighborhood interests with federal banking and housing agencies. She led numerous sit-ins at HUD, and organized protests about the lending policies of major banks.

Cincotta and her groups were known to take over the boardrooms of banks and the HUD Secretary’s office to make a point. “You couldn’t ignore Gale,” said Andre Shashaty, publisher of Affordable Housing Finance. “She took it to the streets and she took it to the boardrooms. HUD secretaries and presidents of banks were compelled to listen when Gale and her organizations confronted them. She accomplished an incredible amount for the affordable housing cause.”

Through her work at the NPA she organized housing conferences, protests and campaigns, fighting social injustices as she saw them, including crime, drug use and unemployment.

“Gale Cincotta provided (us) with a roadmap to champion the neighborhood reinvestment movement,” said National Community Investment Coalition (NCRC) president LawrenceBroadwell in a statement. “She has left a proud legacy for her community and every individual fighting for economic justice. We will miss her leadership, wisdom and tenacity.”

Cincotta’s career as an activist began in the late 1960s as the president of Organization for Better Austin, an active community organization that fought against slum landlords and “panic peddling.” She organized coalitions around housing issues, pinpointing abuses inFHA housing programs.

Through her work at NPA, she attacked the government’s role as a ‘lender of last resort’ and organized groups against redlining, or the practice of banks to delineate certain areas of the community where the bank would not lend on account of its racial or economic makeup.

She was known as ‘the mother of the CRA.’ In 1973, the Metropolitan Area Housing Alliance (MAHA) in Chicago, which was organized by the NTIC, worked with the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to prove that redlining was a problem in the city and made it illegal. This eventually led the Illinois State Legislature to pass anti-redlining regulations in 1974.

Cincotta campaigned in support of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), testifying before Sen. William Proxmire several times. After the HMDA was signed into law in 1976, requiring lenders to disclose the basis on which they refused or granted loans, Proxmire stated that “this disclosure bill would never have become a law but for the research and local organizing activity undertaken by NPA.”

After the data released by the HMDA revealed that redlining was a problem in cities across the nation, the Community Reinvestment Act was passed in 1977.

President Carter appointed her to the National Commission on Neighborhoods in 1977, and she chaired the Reinvestment Task Force. She also served on HUD Secretary Jack Kemp’s National Commission on Regulatory Barriers to Affordable Housing and was a member of the Community Investment Advisory Council in 1986.

Cincotta received several awards throughout her career as a community activist and organizer. She received the Chicago Commission on Human Rights Award in 1985, the Ms. Foundation Woman of the Year Award in 1986, and the first Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago Neighborhood Partnership Award.

Her devotion to her work remained with her up until the very end. She remained active on national campaigns targeting predatory lending, and still remained focused on ensuring that lending institutions upheld their CRA requirements.

Working with the NPA, Cincotta negotiated with the Federal Housing Administration for the development and implementation of the FHA’s Credit Watch and Homebuyers Protection Plan in 1999. She also founded the Illinois Coalition against Predatory Home Loans. The coalition worked with the city of Chicago to pass the first anti-predatory lending ordinance in the country, and led the state to pass regulations against predatory lending in April.

She is survived by five sons, eight grandchildren and two great grandchildren.

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