By Stephen Witt
On the second anniversary of Superstorm Sandy, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries asked some of the nation’s largest banks to pony up low-interest loans to rebuild Coney Island’s devastated houses of worship or risk being subject to financial industry compliance laws.
Jeffries announced his initiative in front of the gutted-out United Community Baptist Church on Mermaid Avenue and West 27th Street. Since Sandy ravaged the church, Pastor Connis Mobley, a popular and longtime community activist, has often been holding services in front of the building.
“Two years ago after Sandy struck, business and home owners impacted by the storm got direct federal funds, but houses of worship including churches, synagogues and mosques were prohibited from receiving any funds due to the separation of church and state doctrine,” said Jeffries, adding that the banks received taxpayer bailouts during the recession and now it’s an opportunity to pay some of it back to the community .
In a letter to the CEO’s of Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Citbank Jeffries called on the financial institutions to assist all of Coney Island’s houses of worship that were ravaged by the storm in compliance with the nation’s Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The measure was passed in 1977 to help meet the needs of borrowers in all segments of their communities, including low- and moderate-income neighborhoods, of which Coney Island fits the criteria.
“The CRA is specifically designed , among other things, to encourage investment in underserved communities like Coney island by providing benefits to banking institutions that assist in revitalizing designated disaster areas,” Jeffries wrote to the banks. “When a financial institution awards CRA-compliant loans to qualifying houses of worship in a designated disaster area, the bank will then be eligible for credit in subsequent charter, merger or acquisition proceedings before federal bank regulators.”
Mobley, who has seen his congregation shrink by about a hundred families since he had to shutter the church building said the lowest bid he has received to renovate the church was $2.2 million dollars. Mobley said his father, the former pastor of the church, bought the former bank building in 1971 from singing legend Frank Sinatra at a charitable price, and the church has been debt free for years.
Also on hand to support Jeffries’ initiative was Borough President Eric Adams and the local State Assemblyman Alec Brook-Krazny.
“Sandy did not distinguish between church and state when it ravaged through Coney Island,” said Adams. “Now corporate America must join in a partnership to make this city and its houses of worship whole.”
