Jonathan Brown, a public interest lawyer and consumer advocate whose data-driven research and meticulous reports on financial regulations, excessive banking fees and lending patterns of mortgage companies helped spur changes in housing and banking policies, died April 27 at a hospital in Portsmouth, N.H. He was 76.
The cause was cardiac arrest, said his wife, Marcia Carroll.
Mr. Brown, who monitored federal banking agencies and fought against housing inequality, spent his 33-year career as one of “Nader’s Raiders,” working in Washington for nonprofit advocacy organizations founded by consumer activist Ralph Nader. In the 1980s, Mr. Brown served as the director of the Public Interest Research Group and the director of the BankWatch consumer advocacy project of the Center for Study of Responsive Law.
In the early 1990s, while working for Nader’s Essential Information, Mr. Brown ran a computer analysis of 1.25 million mortgage applications compiled by the Federal Reserve Board. He published his findings and color-coded computerized maps in a 1993 report that accused some of the nation’s largest lenders of violating federal Fair Lending laws by avoiding making home loans to Black and Latino residents in 16 major cities.
The lenders strongly disputed the characterization of the report, which generated newspaper headlines across the country. In interviews at the time, Mr. Brown said the problem was largely a result of mortgage lenders focusing their business and marketing efforts in affluent communities and neglecting minority neighborhoods as well as banks engaging in pre-screening tactics to dissuade would-be minority applicants.
The former Washington resident spent 20 years working for Essential Information before retiring in 2008 and moving to Rye, N.H., to care for his parents.
“Jon had a perfect civic personality for his quest,” Nader said. “He was calm, earnest and focused. And what was his quest? To get the federal laws enforced so the banks are compelled to provide accessible and affordable credit to minorities for their residential housing needs.”
Jonathan Arthur Brown was born in Clairton, Pa., on July 9, 1944, and grew up in Riverside, Conn., and Rye. His father, a former MIT professor, worked as an executive for Exxon Corp., and his mother was a homemaker.
He graduated in 1969 from the University of New Hampshire, then worked as a lumberjack in Washington state, a deckhand on an oil tanker in the Mediterranean Sea and a ranch hand in Wyoming. He served a stint in the Army before receiving a law degree from Temple University in 1974.
Interested in pursuing a legal career to advance social justice issues, he joined Nader’s Public Interest Research Group as staff lawyer in 1975. He wrote position papers, legislative proposals and reports on a range of issues, including strengthening the Federal Home Loan Bank System and bank deposit insurance reform. He testified before Congress in support of the Safe Banking Act of 1977 and represented neighborhood organizations pushing for the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977.
He served on the Consumer Advisory Council of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and on the advisory committee on National Banks of the Comptroller of the Currency.
In addition to his wife of 35 years, of Rye, survivors include a sister.
Source: Washington Post
