Luz Castro with Inclusive Action for the City and Public Bank LA’s Trinity Tran co-wrote an article on how a public bank in Los Angeles can help with investments and opportunities for LA’s immigrant communities.
Hi there, we’re so glad you’re here!
Through the Public Bank Los Angeles coalition, we’ve been working to transform our economic and financial systems so they actually work for working people in Los Angeles. When we talk about who gets left out of the U.S. financial system, immigrants are at the top of the list.
Recent data shows that about one in four Californians lacks full access to financial systems. Approximately 7% are unbanked, and another 18% use alternative financial services. Many of these Californians are minority, low-income, and immigrant households.
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Being shut out of banking access is expensive. It means paying check cashers to access your own paycheck, buying money orders to pay rent, and paying fees every time you send money back home. It means getting turned down for a small business loan, or never applying because you assume the answer will be no, and turning to predatory payday lenders that trap people in cycles of debt. This is the reality facing immigrants and entrepreneurs across Los Angeles today. Our current financial system isn’t cutting it, and immigrant families are paying the price.
What’s a Public Bank?
A public bank is a financial institution owned by a local government. It keeps public money local so it can be reinvested in the community, and it lends to projects that are important for the city, like small businesses, affordable housing, infrastructure, green energy projects, and disaster resilience.
The City of Los Angeles keeps billions of dollars in Wall Street banks — including Chase and Bank of America — that prioritize maximizing profits for their private shareholders, regardless of local crises facing our communities. Those banks have the power to decide where that money goes, and it’s usually not to our neighborhoods. A public bank could change that because it is obligated to operate in the interest of the public. Our money would work for us, not against us.
How a Public Bank Can Help Immigrant Communities
It can put more money behind the lenders that immigrants already trust. Credit unions and Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) across Los Angeles already accept ITINs, matrícula consular cards, and other forms of identification from countries of origin, and offer loans in multiple languages. What they’re missing is access to more capital. A public bank can partner with them so they can lend more. That’s how the 100-year-old public bank, the Bank of North Dakota, works. It partners with local lenders instead of competing with them.
A public bank in LA would mostly work behind the scenes like this, investing through local lenders rather than opening personal accounts. For that, we’re also working on CalAccount, a statewide program designed to give every Californian access to a free, no-fee bank account.
Street vendors, family-owned restaurants, swap meet markets — so much of LA’s small business economy runs on immigrant families. Affordable financing through a public bank can help micro and small businesses grow, hire workers, and stay in the neighborhoods they helped build.
The neighborhoods where immigrant families live deserve safer streets, cleaner air, and better infrastructure. A public bank can help make those investments possible by funding community development and directing capital to immigrant-owned small businesses that big banks overlook or turn away. With lower-cost financing, a public bank can invest in our neighborhoods and put money back into the communities that need it.
A public bank can also help communities recover from disasters and economic shocks. During the January 2025 LA wildfires, families across the region lost their homes, business owners lost their shops, and workers lost their jobs and livelihoods, all while rebuilding costs skyrocketed. Many struggled to access federal aid and other resources they needed to recover. We saw similar challenges this June during the Lineage fires in Boyle Heights.
And when immigration raids surged across LA in the summer of 2025, UCLA researchers found customers stayed away from immigrant-owned businesses out of fear. These moments show how quickly a crisis can destabilize families, workers, and small businesses. Every time a crisis hits, the same communities get hit hardest and get helped last. A public bank can be the financial system that we need to get relief money out fast and make sure it reaches them.
A public bank is accountable to Angelenos, not shareholders. When big banks fail, taxpayers bail them out. If public money is going to prop up our financial system, we should build institutions designed to serve the public from the start.
The Public Bank Coalition advocating outside of LA City Hall, May 2025
How Los Angeles Can Get There
In 2019, the California Public Banking Act (AB 857) became law, giving cities and counties a legal path to start their own public banks. Its regulations took effect in 2022. In LA, that would mean a nonprofit, city-owned and city-operated bank built to serve local communities, including immigrants.
In October 2021, the City Council voted to start the process and asked for a consultant to write a business plan. In 2023 and in 2024, the Council unanimously voted to keep moving forward. That plan would study what a public bank would cost, how it’d be governed, and what it could do for the city. Once the study is done, it will help us understand what a public bank could look like in LA. City Council will vote on the plan, and then the city will apply to state and federal regulators for authorization and approval.
From left to right: Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martinez, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado, Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez supporting Public Bank LA at a press conference outside City Hall in May 2025.
This Isn’t a New Idea
North Dakota has had a publicly-owned bank since 1919, and it’s been profitable every year for over a century. The Bank of North Dakota prioritizes its residents while delivering a 17.2% return on investment and returning $353 million to the state in 2025. It’s returned over $1 billion in profits to public coffers since its founding, while supporting small businesses, schools, and public services. And it’s rated A+ by the S&P, safer than Wall Street banks, and exceptionally stable for a public institution. Public banking is a proven global model. There are over 1,000 public banks worldwide, with combined assets nearing $91 trillion.
If North Dakota can do it, Los Angeles can too.
Let’s Finish the Job
We’ve come a long way. As of 2026, a majority of nine city leaders have already committed $135,000 in discretionary funds to the public bank feasibility study: Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson, Council President Pro Tempore Bob Blumenfield, and Councilmembers Hernandez, Raman, Padilla, Price, Hutt, Soto-Martínez, and Jurado. We’re grateful for their leadership.
The full study costs just $460,000. The City of Los Angeles runs a $14.9 billion budget, and it relies on big Wall Street banks to hold and move that money. For a tiny fraction of that budget, the second-largest city in the nation could take the first step toward its own public bank and put LA’s money to work for the people who built this city. It’s long overdue. We’re calling on city leaders to finish the job.
Immigrants built this city. Their labor, their businesses, and their tax dollars keep it running. It’s time our public money worked for them too.
Read it on Substack: https://luzcastro.substack.com/p/a-public-bank-for-los-angeles-an
