NEW YORK — Clifford Rosenthal, the executive director of the National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, has spoken up for credit unions playing a significant role in New York's new anti-poverty effort.

Rosenthal responded to an opinion piece published a week earlier by Rourke O'Brien in the New York Times. O'Brien, a policy analyst with the New America Foundation, asserted in his opinion piece that all low-income New Yorkers receiving conditional cash transfers in a new pilot project “should be required to have a checking account at a federally insured bank.”

In a letter to the editor, Rosenthal recommended that O'Brien's assertion should be expanded to include credit unions, many of which already play a major role of in filling banking gaps in New York City's underserved neighborhoods.

“The idea that low-income consumers should be banked is absolutely correct,” said Rosenthal. “I commend Rourke and others in the asset-building field for promoting this idea, but what is most important to me is that credit unions, and particularly community development credit unions, who have been providing life-line financial services to communities red-lined by banks be made an integral part of the solution.”