G. Cincotta; Won Lending Reforms

Community activist Gale Cincotta, whose concerns for her Chicago neighborhood grew gradually into a nationwide challenge to the banking industry and the federal bureaucracy, has died. She was 72.

Cincotta died early Wednesday of natural causes at Loyola University Medical Center in suburban Maywood, said Tracy Van Slyke, a spokeswoman for the National Training and Information Center, which Cincotta founded in the 1970s.

Cincotta was known as the “Mother of the Community Reinvestment Act,” and once threatened publicly to hang a “Loan Shark” sign over the Federal Reserve Board office in Washington, D.C.

The daughter of a Greek restaurant owner on Chicago’s West Side, Cincotta was drawn into activism in the 1960s while serving on her local PTA.

By 1972, she had become head of National People’s Action, a neighborhood network of 30 groups from 110 cities. The organization was instrumental in gaining passage of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975, which requires the nation’s lending institutions to disclose where they make home loans.

Under Cincotta’s leadership, National People’s Action helped pressure Congress into passing the Community Reinvestment Act in 1977.

She defended her confrontational style in 1982 while leading a major demonstration on Wall Street.

“They say we are not nice when we protest and demonstrate at people’s homes and offices,” Cincotta said. “But bad housing isn’t nice, redlining isn’t nice, high oil prices aren’t nice, crime in our streets isn’t nice.”

Cincotta regarded the late Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley as a foe, but Daley’s son, current Mayor Richard M. Daley, had nothing but praise for the veteran activist.

“Gale Cincotta was a visionary and active force for housing issues in the city and, in particular, for development of the West Side,” the mayor said.

She is survived by five sons; eight grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.