Members of the Florida Minority Community Reinvestment Coalition will stage a protest against the minority lending practices of the Bank of America which they believed contributed to its high bank foreclosure property rate. Coalition President Al Pina is set to stage a hunger strike to protest what he believed to be a lack of transparency by the Bank of America on low-income minorities.

Pina pointed out that the banking institution has a high bank foreclosure property rate, high interest rates for credit card and failed to increase available credit for struggling businesses. All these, Pina said, while the bank is accepting federal bailout funds.

The coalition believed that the lending practices of the Bank of America violated the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. The law was passed to stop banks from practicing redlining, which means denying loans to borrowers in underserved areas.

A representative of the bank disputed charges of the coalition, pointing out that Bank of America has been the recipient of outstanding Community Reinvestment Act ratings for six consecutive terms.

However, Pina claimed that Bank of America is one of the three major banks in Florida that refuses to accept and follow the rules of transparency. The other two banks are Wachovia and Washington Mutual which were acquired by Wells Fargo and Chase Bank, respectively.

The coalition is convincing minority customers in the state to stay away from the Bank of America and instead, patronize Wells Fargo. In line with this, the coalition launched the Wells Fargo YES-Bank of America No campaign.

Bank of America Florida’s Mike Fields said that the bank is aware of the needs of low-income and minority communities in the state and nationwide. In fact, the bank started delivering its $750 billion investment and community development lending goal in 2005, Fields said.

Meanwhile, Pina pointed out that transparency and accessibility are the biggest problems with Bank of America. He said that some major banks have allowed the coalition to monitor their minority lending practices to prevent high bank foreclosure property rate.

Furthermore, Pina claimed that Bank of America’s sub-prime mortgages, which are the root cause of bank foreclosure property crisis that the housing market is experiencing right now, is worse than Wells Fargo. He said that 65 percent of mortgage loans issued by the bank to Florida minorities in 2005 to 2006 were sub-prime.