Ranking Member Waters Urges First Citizens Bank to Support Housing for Vulnerable California Communities by Honoring Silicon Valley Bank’s Community Benefits Plan
This letter follows an initial March 18th letter Waters sent to the Federal Deposit Insurance (FDIC) following its receivership of SVB, where Waters urged the FDIC to ensure that the ultimate buyer of SVB continued to deliver these critical investments.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, sent a letter to First Citizens Bank following its acquisition of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 26th. In the letter, Waters urges First Citizens to ensure the continued implementation of SVB’s $11.2 billion Community Benefits Plan, which SVB agreed to in 2021 and is aimed at providing urgently needed housing, small business, and other community development support to communities of color and low-income communities in California.
This letter follows an initial March 18th letter Waters sent to the Federal Deposit Insurance (FDIC) following its receivership of SVB, where Waters urged the FDIC to ensure that the ultimate buyer of SVB continued to deliver these critical investments.
“Following my March 18, 2023 letter to Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chairman Gruenberg, as well as First Citizens Bank’s subsequent acquisition of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) on March 26, 2023, I write to urge you to honor the commitments made to communities across California, including many communities of color and low-income communities in my district, as outlined in an $11.2 billion five-year Community Benefits Plan that SVB began implementing in 2022,” said Ranking Member Waters. “These investments are urgently needed in California, where there is a shortage of nearly 1 million affordable rental homes, more than half of renters are housing cost-burdened, and the price of a median home is more than double the national median as over 171,000 Californians experience homelessness. California is also home to more than 4.1 million small businesses, many of which are owned by women and people of color, who are not only still struggling to recover from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic,7 but in the wake of recent bank closures, are also finding it challenging to obtain loans needed to expand and keep their businesses afloat.”
See the letter here. |
