Carver’s Financial Literacy Center is Open
The deluge of predatory mortgage lenders that target the elderly, immigrants and minority homeowners throughout the city has led Carver Federal Savings Bank officials to create its first financial literacy center in Harlem. The center, located at 300 W. 145th St. in Manhattan, opened two weeks ago and will serve as an information resource for homeowners in the five boroughs who want to refinance their properties to make home improvements, obtain reverse mortgages or obtain new home loans.Last year, a Federal Reserve Bank study indicated that in 2004, regardless of income levels, African-Americans were three times as likely as whites to obtain mortgages with excessively high rates, said Neill Coleman, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Also, The Center for Responsible Lending in Durham, N.C., contends on its Web site (www.responsiblelending.org) that “subprime mortgage lending costs Americans more than $9.1 billion each year.”
Armed with a grant of more than $600,000 from the Treasury Department’s Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI), Carver Federal Savings Bank launched the Carver Literacy Center to work with nonprofits like NHS of Bedford-Stuyvesant and the Harlem Congregations for Community Improvement (HCCI). Workshops and seminars will be set up for issues that will range from budgeting to preparing income tax forms, as well as assisting small business owners, Bolden-Rivera said.
Both organizations, she stressed, have close ties to their respective communities and strong desires to maintain affordable housing.
Carver Federal Savings, which is the largest African and Caribbean American operated bank in the country, has 10 branches in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. Bolden-Rivera said the Harlem-based financial literacy center will likely be replicated in other communities that have Carver branches.
The center will be staffed in the future. For now, the new facility will operate by appointment only. To make an appointment or obtain more information, e-mail Carver at the Web site www.carverliteracycenter.com or call (212) 360-4798.
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Ihave to second the “no confidence” vote for their general bank services.It has now been over 5 months, multiple visits and email for my block association to establish signatory priveleges to our own account!
I definitely appreciate the effort put together by Carver to reach out to the community – but they really suck as a bank. My wife and I tried to use them for and they completed mismanaged our account. I hope that they are more professional within this endeavour.