Just days after Bank of America Corp. said it was suspending its business ties with the community group ACORN and its housing arm, a bank executive has resigned from the board of ACORN Housing, according to a Wall Street Journal report. A spokesman for J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. confirmed that Guillermo Loaiza, a loan officer with the bank, stepped down from his position as one of ACORN Housing’s five board members. The spokesman did not elaborate on Loaiza’s reasons for resigning, except to say that they were

his reasons alone and not the company’s. An ACORN spokeswoman said only that Loaiza’s term on the board “is up in October and he decided not to renew for personal reasons.” As DS News reported earlier this week, ACORN Housing and its parent group — the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now — have faced right-wing rancor that culminated several weeks ago, when conservative critics visited an ACORN office posing as a prostitute and her “pimp” and secretly videotaped employees advising them on how to avoid taxes, set up brothels and smuggle illegal aliens. On learning of the antics, ACORN fired the employees and appointed an independent investigator. On the basis of those developments, BoA decided last week to sever its ties with ACORN. The group has a long record of partnering with BoA and other major banks to educate and counsel prospective home buyers and troubled borrowers. A spokeswoman for ACORN Housing earlier this week said the group “has made 18,626 proposals to lenders on behalf of distressed homeowners to help them avoid foreclosure in the past 12 months.”