Large disparities exist in the City of Rochester when it comes to getting access to credit.
That’s one of the findings in a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The report was discussed by the president of the New York Fed, William Dudley, who made stops across upstate New York this week including in Rochester.
He says this report on the availability of credit in Rochester is a first for the New York Fed, and it breaks down the situation by zip code.
“And what it shows is basically that there are some parts of the City of Rochester that aren’t getting any credit at all, and to the extent they’re getting credit, there’s a lot of distress in terms of that credit, so it’s really showing that the supply of credit is very uneven.”
While Rochester continues to rank among the lowest in the nation and the region according to various measures of credit access, progress is occurring relative to where the city was in the fourth quarter of 2007.
But the report also shows that some neighborhoods, especially those around the central part of the city, continue to lag.
Dudley says further study is needed as to why credit availability is worse in some neighborhoods than others; but he notes that being able to get credit can be critical in terms of buying a car to get to a job, or dealing with a medical emergency.
“Sometimes you think borrowing is a bad thing but borrowing is also a good thing because it can actually be used to finance things that actually can facilitate your ability to move up the ladder, if you don’t have a car, sometimes it’s hard to get to a job,” Dudley said.
While in Rochester on Tuesday, Dudley also met with people from the Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty initiative, and learned more about the city’s downtown revitalization and photonics industry.
City of Rochester Credit Profile 2016 by WXXI News on Scribd
