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92_HR0551
LRB9210163RHrh
1 HOUSE RESOLUTION
2 WHEREAS, The members of the Illinois House of
3 Representatives wish to express their sincere condolences to
4 the family and friends of Gale Cincotta, who recently passed
5 away; and
6 WHEREAS, Gale Cincotta was a plainspoken mother of six
7 who became a neighborhood activist who went on to help ignite
8 the national debate over bank lending policies that
9 discriminated against minority home buyers; and
10 WHEREAS, Gale Angeles was born on December 28, 1929 in
11 Chicago, Illinois; she achieved fame for her spirited fights
12 for the residents of the Austin neighborhood on Chicago's
13 West Side; and
14 WHEREAS, Ms. Cincotta began her political career as an
15 activist against school crowding in the 1960s; by the late
16 1960s she became president of the Organization for a better
17 Austin and undertook other concerns, including fighting real
18 estate agents' encouragement of panic selling by homeowners
19 as minorities began looking for homes; and
20 WHEREAS, Ms. Cincotta moved on to national issues,
21 especially her challenge to the banking industry and the
22 federal bureaucracy over the practice of refusing to lend to
23 residents of minority neighborhoods, or redlining; in 2000,
24 she successfully lobbied for a Chicago ordinance to ban
25 predatory lending which included offering high mortgage rates
26 and other confiscatory financial terms to minority members
27 and the poor that often resulted in the loss of homes and
28 foreclosures; and
29 WHEREAS, People in other cities began turning to Ms.
30 Cincotta and her colleagues for advice; as a result, she
31 became head of National People's Action, a network of 30
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1 groups from 100 cities; the group successfully pressed
2 Congress to pass the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975,
3 which requires lending institutions to disclose where they
4 make home loans and persuaded Congress to pass the Community
5 Reinvestment Act of 1977 which required banks to invest in
6 neighborhoods where they did business; and
7 WHEREAS, In addition, National People's Action, along
8 with other neighborhood groups, persuaded three large Chicago
9 banks to commit themselves to making $173 million in
10 low-interest loans for housing and industrial development in
11 poor neighborhoods; and
12 WHEREAS, The passing of Gale Cincotta will be deeply felt
13 by all who knew and loved her, especially her sons; her
14 grandchildren; and her great-grandchildren; therefore, be it
15 RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
16 NINETY-SECOND GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that
17 we mourn, along with all who knew her, the death of Gale
18 Cincotta of Oak Park, Illinois; and be it further
19 RESOLVED, That a suitable copy of this resolution be
20 presented to the family of Gale Cincotta with our sincere
21 condolences.