Search Results
Working Paper
What can we do to help? Adopting age-friendly banking to improve financial well-being for older adults
This paper explores age-friendly banking products and services that better protect and preserve the assets of an aging population. In order to examine the unique financial needs and increase the financial well-being of low-income older adults, the California Coalition for Rural Housing (CCRH) partnered with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) to conduct an intensive study of over 400 low-income tenants living in subsidized senior housing. CCRH and NCRC recommend that banks develop more affordable banking products for seniors on fixed-incomes, assist customers in applying for ...
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
Financial education in San Francisco: a study of local practioners, service gaps and promising practices
The landscape of financial education services in San Francisco is broad, with multiple organizations offering services for diverse populations. However, until recently, there has been little effort to coordinate the many resources and organizations committed to promoting financial education. The recently formed San Francisco Financial Education Network is a collaborative group of nonprofit service providers, philanthropic funders, and local public sector representatives dedicated to improving the provision of financial education services in the city. Network participants agreed there is ...
Working Paper
Long-term cost effectiveness of placing homeless seniors in permanent supportive housing
This paper demonstrates that the greatest reduction in health care costs after placement in supportive housing is seen among chronically homeless adults and seniors who are frequent users of the health care system. Employing data from Mission Creek Apartments, a senior affordable housing project in San Francisco with 51 units reserved for homeless seniors, the researchers estimated savings to Medicaid and Medicare from avoiding placing these seniors in a skilled nursing facility of $9.2 million over 7 years. Their findings support the conclusion that permanent supportive housing can be a ...
Working Paper
Leveraging the power of place: using pay for success to support housing mobility
Families who use housing vouchers to move from areas of concentrated poverty to better-resourced neighborhoods have been shown to experience higher earnings and improved health. Housing mobility programs increase the effectiveness of housing vouchers by providing education and support to voucher holders facing barriers to such ?opportunity? moves. This working paper proposes using a Pay for Success financing mechanism to increase investment in housing mobility programs based on the hypothesis that health care savings stemming from a positive mobility outcome?specifically related to diabetes ...
Working Paper
CultureBank: A New Paradigm for Community Investment
Building on the concept of creative placemaking, this paper presents an idea for a Community Development Financial Institution organized around art: CultureBank. Housed at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, this nonprofit bank will specialize in unleashing asset value in art collections and focus on artists as borrowers, or Artist-Entrepreneurs.
Working Paper
Building a cross-sector coalition: sustainable communities for all and CA’s cap-and-trade program
Why should community developers care about cap-and-trade and what do carbon emissions have to do with low-income households? As it turns out, the fields of environmental sustainability and community development have significant overlap, particularly in the area of transit-oriented development, where issues of affordability, equity, and displacement converge with concerns such as vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.
Working Paper
Collaborators or competitors? Exploring the relationships between community development financial institutions and conventional lenders in small business finance
This study examines the nature of the interaction of banks and community development financial institutions (CDFIs) in small business lending. We examine the experience of six different CDFIs that vary by size, corporate structure, and market. We explore how they both collaborate and compete with regulated lenders, and how changes in local and national market dynamics affect their activities. Our case studies are not necessarily representative of the CDFI industry, but they offer insights on the factors that shape CDFIs? interactions with and responses to more mainstream institutions. Our ...
Working Paper
The emerging economic geography of single-family rental securitization
This working paper utilizes data culled from presale reports from the first wave of rental-backed securities to analyze and describe the emerging trend of single-family home rental (SFR) securitization. Authors provide a basic overview of the market, showing the number and market value of single-family homes involved in these new financial products. Analyzing the geography of the first 15 offerings made between November 2013 and January 2015, authors then produce one of the first maps of the phenomenon, showing a geography heavily weighted towards five states (California, Florida, Texas, ...
Working Paper
Neighborhood Change and Residential Instability in Oakland
Affordable housing is critical to ensuring healthy and resilient communities and broad access to economic opportunity. In this report, we examine neighborhood change and residential instability in the City of Oakland over the past two decades. We employ multiple data sources, including individual-level data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Consumer Credit Panel/Equifax data. We analyze historical and contemporary data to understand patterns of residential instability, and we identify which residents and areas are most likely to experience heightened challenges in the context of the ...