Urban Omnibus - Community banks like Ponce make loans that shape the New York where most of us live and many of us work, shop or play.

Accounting for Community

Community banks still make sure New York looks and feels like New York — a multi-race, multi-class, multi-cultural, multi-everything city.

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Article Excerpt

In many ways, Ponce Bank is simply carrying on that tradition for a more recent set of migrants. By themselves, community banks can’t stop global capitalism from financing megaprojects that may or may not actually make the city a better place. But community banks continue quietly financing development that serves New Yorkers across every class, race and immigrant status. Amidst the unbridled shareholder-first capitalism mining New York for pure financial gain and cementing the city into a homogenized playground for the rich and famous, community banks still make sure New York looks and feels like New York — a multi-race, multi-class, multi-cultural, multi-everything city...

community banks like Ponce make loans that shape the New York where most of us live and many of us work, shop or play.

Ponce Bank was founded in 1960 by a group of Puerto Rican activists and business leaders in the Bronx who were fed up with the redlining they were facing from other banks. Though its namesake is a symbol of colonialism, the Spanish Conquistador Ponce De Leon, Ponce shares the name with what was Puerto Rico’s largest city when the US occupation arrived in 1898. The city of Ponce was the island’s economic heart, and later became a hub of resistance to US imperial aggression.

when a bank depends on its personal connections with borrowers and understanding of their communities to make lending decisions — not simply credit scores, collateral, and algorithms that spit out split-second decisions.

The demands on a mutual bank board can be intense... But that’s what’s required when a bank depends on its personal connections with borrowers and understanding of their communities to make lending decisions — not simply credit scores, collateral, and algorithms that spit out split-second decisions.

If this city is still going to be here tomorrow — and not just in the form of a bunch of supertalls poking out above the ocean like some dystopian archipelago — community banks will be the banks that do the most to help the city we love to survive. If we need little banks to do even bigger things, we may need more of them around.

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Published on August 9, 2023

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