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Working Paper
CRA collaboratives and the San Joaquin Valley
California?s San Joaquin Valley is one of the nation?s most impoverished areas. Recent developments such as the foreclosure crisis and the Matosantos decision have heightened the Valley?s needs, and there is also evidence that the Valley is beginning to garner more attention from financial institutions and federal regulators. These developments create an opportunity for community-based organizations (CBOs) and financial institutions to work together in a mutually beneficial way. This paper describes how stakeholders have successfully collaborated to increase reinvestment in other locales, ...
Working Paper
Comparative advantages: creating synergy in community development
The goal of this paper is to provide insights and tools to help community development practitioners, policymakers, funders, and other stakeholders better understand how to maximize the effectiveness and impact of different types of organizations at the local and regional level. Understanding your comparative advantages is critical to addressing complex community development initiatives from foreclosure prevention, to sustainable energy, to urban education, to job creation.
Working Paper
The economic crisis and community development finance: an industry assessment
For thirty years, the community development finance industry?banks, credit unions, loan funds, community development corporations, venture funds, microfinance institutions?has quietly provided responsible, well-designed and well priced credit to lower-income people and communities. These entities have provided this credit with the support of the federal government, through the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund, the Low Income Housing and New Markets Tax Credits, the Small Business Association, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and various housing and facilities development ...
Working Paper
The enduring challenge of concentrated poverty in America: case study of Fresno, California
This report is an expanded version of a case study that appeared as one of 16 community profiles published in ?The Enduring Challenge of Concentrated Poverty in America: Case Studies from Communities Across the U.S.,? a joint project of the Community Affairs Offices of the Federal Reserve System and the Metropolitan Policy Program at the Brookings Institution. The intent of this publication is not to explain poverty causation; poor people, and the communities they live in, have been the subject of serious study and debate for decades. Rather, our goal is to add texture to our understanding of ...
Working Paper
The untold costs of subprime lending: examining the links among higher-priced lending, foreclosures and race in California
This paper explores the relationship between race, subprime lending, and foreclosure in California in an effort to understand what happened during the subprime lending boom. The paper finds that communities of color have been disproportionately affected by the foreclosure crisis, and that these disparities stem from a series of complicated and interrelated factors, including borrower credit profiles, the ?boom and bust? housing market, and rising unemployment. However, the paper also shows that Blacks and Hispanics in California had access to very different mortgage markets, and that mortgage ...
Working Paper
Weathering the Great Recession: a CDFI case study in patient capital
This working paper looks at the lending performance of one CDFI, the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF), through the Great Recession. Its authors argue that LIIF?s success weathering the downturn?relative to similarly-sized banks?is the direct result of a ?patient capital? approach to portfolio management unique to the CDFI industry.
Working Paper
Sought or sold? Social embeddedness and consumer decisions in the mortgage market
This research paper explores how mortgage market channels interacted with localized social networks to shape loan outcomes for historically disadvantaged borrowers. How did borrowers decide on their choice of lender? What loan products were they offered, and how knowledgeable were they about their loan terms? Were loans in lower-income and minority communities ?sold or sought?? To answer these questions, the paper relies on in-depth interviews, local data on mortgage lending and foreclosures, and analysis of the institutions and marketing practices in two communities that represent the two ...
Working Paper
Impact investing for small, place-based fiduciaries: the research study initiated by the United Way of the Bay Area
Most fiduciaries of institutional funds (public-defined benefit plans, endowment funds, and quasi-private/public foundations) for many reasons have been reluctant to adopt Impact Investing, Social Responsible Investing (SRI), or Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) factors in their investment policies and philosophies. Primarily, such social impact factors are deemed to be limiting to the opportunity set of investments and therefore imply a financial return that is potentially substandard. This paper is the result of a challenge to identify if and how a model portfolio could be built ...
Working Paper
Understanding community development needs through the CRA performance context
Community development efforts to revitalize low- and moderate-income neighborhoods should begin with an appropriate understanding of the needs and opportunities present within these communities. This sentiment is especially true of banks looking to fulfill their Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) obligations. A truly responsive and innovative CRA program should begin with the ?performance context,? or knowledge about the bank?s local markets, including the needs of the community as well as the opportunities that exist within the local network of resources and organizations. This paper attempts ...
Working Paper
Charter school tax credit: Investing in human capital
This working paper considers how two existing policy tools--investment tax credits and charter schools--could be combined to raise operating funds for charter schools that successfully close the poverty-related academic achievement gap. Some charter schools have succeeded in dramatically improving low-income student performance (those run by KIPP, Achievement First, and the Harlem Children's Zone, for example). However, these successful schools differ significantly in type and approach. As a result, it is difficult to identify a single, or combination of variables in any one charter that, if ...