Gale Cincotta, sometimes known as "The CRA Lady" because of her work in lobbying for the Community Reinvestment Act, died Wednesday. She was 72.

A tireless community activist, Ms. Cincotta and National People's Action, the coalition of grass roots neighborhood groups she founded, also helped create the "Credit Watch" and "Home Buyer's Protection" plans that were implemented by the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1999.

"She set the bar," said Joseph Ventrone, a staff member of the House Housing Subcommittee for 18 years before moving to HUD recently. "She's done so much to advance the cause of housing and housing finance in the true sense. Her work is going to live on."

"I'm bummed." said Mark Goldhaber, vice president of affordable housing at GE Mortgage Insurance, Raleigh. "It's like losing a legend."

Because she often led protests at the homes and offices of leaders of the financial services industry, including the residence of then Fannie Mae President James Johnson, Ms. Cincotta was sometimes thought of as a rather "bizarre" character and a somewhat dirty fighter. Indeed, she once threatened Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volker that she would put a "loan" shark over the front door to the Fed's offices in Washington.

"She had guts," said ex-Congressman Rick Lazio, R-N.Y, who chaired the Housing Subcommittee before losing his bid to move up the Senate.

But Ventrone said he always believed she was "one of the more moderate" of the numerous community activists with whom he dealt. "She was a great lady who furthered the cause of mortgage finance for those who could not fight for themselves," he said.

Ms. Cincotta believed her rather radical actions were more than justified.

"They say we are not nice when we protest and demonstrate at people's homes and offices. But bad housing isn't nice, redlining isn't nice, high oil prices aren't nice, crime on our streets isn't nice," she said in 1982 during "Reclaim America" when National People's Action virtually shut down Wall Street.

The event was little reported, an anomaly in Ms. Cincotta's more than 30-year career in community organizing that began in the late 1960s when she became president of the Organization for a Better Austin, the West Side Chicago neighborhood where she grew up.

The group drew on the tactics of community organizing made popular by Saul Alinsky to fight panic peddling, blockbusting, slum landlords and to bus area elementary students to other neighborhoods.

Ms. Cincotta was one of the first local community organizers to look beyond the geographical boundaries of such groups. She built coalitions around specific issues such as abuses in the Federal Housing Administration's housing programs.

And when a HUD official told her in 1972 that her demands were beyond his power to grant, she and others organized a national housing conference that drew thousands of white ethnic, African American and Hispanic grassroots activists to Chicago.

"We have met the enemy, and it isn't us," she told the group at a meeting that drew two presidential candidates and Mayor Richard J. Daley. Rather, she said, the enemy was bankers and others.

The group re-convened one month later in Baltimore, where the target of their first organized protest was then-HUD Secretary George Romney, who was attending a Republican fund raiser when hundreds of activists poured in with demands for FHA reform.

Ms. Cincotta spearheaded efforts to organize activists against redlining. She testified before Sen. William Proxmire, D.-Wisc., numerous times throughout the 1970s in support of what became the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, which became law in 1975.

"This disclosure bill," Proxmire said in 1976, "would never have become a law but for the research and local organizing activity undertaken by NPA."

She also lobbied persistently in favor of the Community Reinvestment Act, Congress' anti-redlining law. CRA requires banks to make loans in the neighborhoods where they maintain branches. After the law took effect in 1979, she had to force federal banking regulators to enforce it.

"When people thought reinvestment was academic, Gale stuck with it, and the result was reinvestment went through the roof in the early 1980s after the rates fell," said Calvin Bradford, an expert in the nuances of mortgage discrimination.

More recently, Ms. Cincotta and NPA negotiated for the development and implementation of Credit Watch and the Homebuyers Protection Plan in.

Under Credit Watch, HUD has the power to deny participation in the FHA mortgage insurance program to lenders with excessive foreclosure rates. Prior to the creation of the program, Ms. Cincotta's group maintained more complete foreclosure data than the government.

Under the Homebuyers Protection Plan, appraisers are required to provide lenders with a detailed list of defects. Lenders, in turn, must make the findings known to borrowers.

Her latest battle was being waged against abusive lending practices. She founded the Illinois Coalition against Predatory Home Loans, which compelled the City of Chicago to pass one of the first local anti-predatory lending ordinance in the country and led the state to pass prohibitions against predatory lending.

Ms. Cincotta maintained a full schedule until the end of her life. She was most recently in Washington at the home of Vernon Jordan, whose wife serves on the board of Citigroup, a target in NPA's predatory lending campaign in March.

The evening before her death, from her hospital bed, Ms. Cincotta told the new executive director of the National Information Training Center, Joe Mariano, to "get the crooks."

For more articles by Lew Sichelman, please press here.

Published: August 20, 2001

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When Lew Sichelman first started writing about housing in 1969, he was the youngest real estate writer in the country. Now, 37 years later, he's one of the oldest -- and most decorated. He has been rated the top housing columnist in the country by the National Association of Realtors as well as by his peers in the National Association of Real Estate Editors. Indeed, NAREE has recognized his work on numerous occasions. One year - due to his advancing age, he can't recall which one - he earned top honors in the annual NAREE Journalism Contest in three out of the four major writing categories. It was the first time one writer has won so many NAREE awards in a single year. Known for his ability to make even the most difficult topics understandable, Sichelman also has been honored by the National Association of Home Builders and the Mortgage Bankers Association. He began providing in-depth coverage of and consumer-oriented information about housing and housing finance at the Washington Daily News, where he was real estate editor. He held that same position for nine more years at the Washington Star, which purchased the News in 1972. The Star, a so-called "writer's newspaper" which also had the misfortune of being an evening paper, was put out of its misery in 1981, and Sichelman, who had begun self-syndicating his column in 1978, decided to become a full-time columnist. Today, his column, "The Housing Scene," is distributed by United Media to newspapers throughout the country. He also is on the staff of National Mortgage News, an independent newspaper which is considered the bible of the mortgage business. And he writes for numerous other publications, including MarketWatch.com, where he answers readers questions once a week, Sports Illustrated (don't ask), RealtyTimes.com, BigBuilder and others. Sichelman is married, the father of five and grandfather of eleven.