Editorial: An urgent task for City Hall. Tackle the lending gap that holds back the South, West sides.

A city neighborhood isn’t merely a hodgepodge of housing and businesses. It’s an amalgam of anchoring entities that keep it alive and thriving, that gives it a defining sense of community. Those anchors include schools, of course. Churches. Parks. And, fundamentally, banks.

That’s not just because banks are repositories for paychecks. The level of commitment that banks make, or refuse to make, to lend in a given neighborhood can make or break that community.

Depriving a neighborhood of lending essentially consigns Chicagoans who live there to a future doomed by disinvestment, joblessness, street violence and worst of all, hopelessness.

Chicago Tribune editorial board, September 21, 2021