Category: Finance & Banking

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SBA reduces criminal history restrictions in one of its business development programs

We are very pleased to see that the U.S. Small Business Administration has taken a significant step toward ending discrimination against justice-affected small business owners in the programs it administers. In a new rule governing certification of veteran-owned businesses for preferential treatment in the award of VA contracts, the SBA has omitted a requirement that business owners must have “good character” to be certified.  This is a step we recommended in commenting on the rule when it was proposed last summer, and we are gratified that the SBA accepted our recommendation.

CCRC’s study of the SBA’s record-based restrictions has identified the “good character” requirement as that agency’s long-established way of weeding out people with a criminal history from the programs it administers, including business loans, disaster assistance, and federal contracting opportunities like the one at issue here. Typically, SBA operating procedures give agency staff broad discretion to deny assistance to justice-affected business owners based solely on untested assumptions about perceived risk and desert embodied in the “good character” requirement. Broad inquiries into criminal history on application forms deter many from even applying.

It was therefore a matter of concern to see a “good character” criterion included when the SBA proposed its veteran-owned business rule last summer. The good news was that this offered a first chance for public comment on how this criterion limits opportunities for justice-affected business owners. And it appears that it has led to a very favorable outcome that augurs well for future SBA criminal record reforms.

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Webinar: Credit barriers for entrepreneurs with a criminal history

Webinar November 10 at 1 EST

Generational Wealth: Credit Barriers for People with a Criminal History

Tune on Thursday Nov. 10 at 1 EST for a webinar hosted by the National Community Reinvestment Coalition on barriers to credit for small business owners with a criminal record.  Panelists, including CCRC’s Margaret Love, will describe the many formal and informal restrictions on access to credit that make it difficult for an entrepreneur with a criminal record to build a business, including those imposed by the U.S. Small Business Administration on access to federally-guaranteed bank loans. These are issues that CCRC has been exploring since the early days of the pandemic when the SBA’s restrictions on the Paycheck Protection Program came to light.

Panelists:

  • Margaret Love, Executive Director, Collateral Consequences Resource Center
  • Lettisha Boyd, Owner and Principal Consultant, Beyond Savvy Consumers
  • Bonnie Crockett, Director of Small Business Lending at Baltimore Community Lending Inc.
  • Susan Grutza, Policy Counsel of the Office of Fair Lending & Equal Opportunity, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Register for the webinar here:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/generational-wealth-credit-barriers-for-people-with-a-criminal-history-tickets-453347894757

The NCRC’s announcement is here:

Nearly 1 in 3 Americans have a criminal record. Each year over 600,000 Americans are released from state or federal prisons and re-enter society. Re-entry into society poses barriers to everyone but disproportionately affects African Americans and other minorities as African Americans and Hispanics make up 56% of the incarcerated population. This disproportionate representation within the criminal justice system impacts these communities and their ability to build generational wealth due to the barriers that exist upon re-entry.

Join us on November 10th as we speak with advocates, a CDFI, and the CFPB about the barriers that exist for people with a criminal record to build wealth and what can be done to overcome these barriers.

 

SBA proposes rules affecting businesses owned by veterans with a record

Over the past two years, CCRC has been studying the restrictions imposed by the U.S. Small Business Administration on loans to small businesses owned by justice-affected individuals. Many of those same restrictions, which are grounded in an operating policy that recipients of federal assistance have “good character,” also apply by formal rule in the SBA’s business development program under 8(a) of the Small Business Act.

For more than half a century, the so-called “8(a) program” has earmarked federal contracts for businesses owned by socially or economically disadvantaged individuals, and it has been a key driver of community development in urban areas. But the program’s “good character” test has historically excluded from participation many if not most business owned or managed by individuals with a criminal history. The 8(a) program also has satellite programs, including ones offering preferential treatment to businesses owned by women and veterans, though it is less clear whether these programs have similar criminal history restrictions.

Recently, Congress returned responsibility for certifying program eligibility for veteran-owned business from the VA to the SBA, and the SBA has now published proposed certification rules for public comment. These proposed rules offer a first chance to speak to the SBA’s “good character” requirement.

CCRC worked with the Washington Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights to draft comments on the proposed rule that are critical of the SBA’s vague and open-ended test of business owners’ “character” that results in disqualification of many deserving individuals from this and other federal programs administered by the SBA. Those comments, which are joined by 24 other organizations, were filed on August 5 and are available here.

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Applying for a USDA loan with a criminal record

This post is a part of CCRC’s Fair Chance Lending Project (FCLP), and was prepared by students from Yale Law School’s Community Economic Development Clinic, which is working with CCRC on the project. The FCLP promotes greater access to government-sponsored loans to justice-impacted small business owners and managers, particularly within the Small Business Administration loan guarantee programs. The post builds on briefing materials originally prepared by CCRC staff, including its former intern Jack Keating.

Applying for a USDA Loan with a Criminal Record

The United States Department of Agriculture offers a selection of guaranteed loan programs for farms and other small businesses in rural communities. While these USDA loan programs are broadly analogous to the Small Business Administration’s business loan guarantee programs, their eligibility requirements differ in at least one significant way: the USDA imposes no general criminal record restrictions on loan eligibility for justice-impacted individuals who own or manage small businesses. Instead, USDA imposes only narrow record-based restrictions that are specifically required by statute, and that are likely to apply to very few loan applicants. Because applicants for SBA loans are more likely to be racial or ethnic minorities than applicants for the USDA’s financial products, the disparate impact of the SBA’s uniquely stringent criminal background requirements is amplified

In this post, we describe the restrictions on lending to justice-impacted individuals within programs administered by the USDA, focusing mainly on the agency’s flagship Business & Industry Loan Guarantees Program. CCRC’s Fair Chance Lending Project is focused on advocating for changes to SBA lending policies, and we believe that other agencies’ practices may provide instructive alternative models that can guide the SBA as it modernizes its rules.  Thus, in a final section we discuss the implications of USDA loan policies for those of the SBA.

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CFPB documents the financial burdens imposed on justice-involved individuals

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has just issued an extraordinary new report on the financial challenges faced by justice-involved individuals in navigating each stage of the criminal justice system. The report, which describes itself as “the first of its kind done by the CFPB,” paints a devastating picture of how the criminal law enforcement system conspires at every step to exacerbate the financially precarious situation in which many entering the justice system already find themselves.

“Justice-Involved Individuals and the Consumer Financial Marketplace” documents in clear and compelling prose how the financial products and services marketed to individuals and families entangled in the criminal justice system “too often contain exploitative terms and features, offer little or no consumer choice, and can have long-term negative consequences for the individuals and families affected.” What the CFPB researchers found “raises serious questions about the transparency, fairness, and availability of consumer choice in markets associated with the justice system, as well as demonstrating the pervasive reach of predatory practices targeted at justice-involved individuals.”

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