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Journal Article
The National Fund for Workforce Solutions: The Impact and Challenges of Its Workforce Partnership Model
The recent economic recession and equally anemic recovery have dramatically changed the job outlook for low-wage workers and disadvantaged youth in America. In addition, the Great Recession has accelerated the long-term trend toward requiring workers to have a higher skill set to obtain jobs that pay family-supporting wages. The recession also highlighted the fact that workers need both sector- and firm-specific skills as well as connections to employers in order to obtain jobs that pay reasonable wages. However, as middle-skill jobs (e.g., welders, paralegals, radiology technicians, and ...
Journal Article
Resident Engagement: Effective Strategies for Community Building
Community-building initiatives bring together a number of stakeholders to set goals and implement activities to revitalize neighborhoods. As part of this process, organizations seek ways to incorporate resident input and increase resident engagement. Intermediaries and technical assistance organizations such as the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) provide strategies and best practices to solicit resident ideas and to encourage residents to participate in the process of building a community. According to the LISC Institute for Comprehensive Community Development, ?The work of ...
Journal Article
Building CDFI Capacity in Lending and Business Models
Over the past three decades, community development financial institutions (CDFIs) have been nimble innovators, offering products and services to people, projects, and organizations that mainstream financial institutions could not or would not serve. They opened new lending pathways to address some of the most stubborn challenges facing poor communities across the country. The focus of CDFIs was originally on financing affordable housing and then shifted in recent years to financing schools and child-care centers, healthful food markets, small and microbusinesses, and community health centers.
Journal Article
How Will Affordable Rental Housing Be Preserved?
Affordable rental housing for low- and moderate-income individuals and families is increasingly scarce. Housing finance agencies, nonprofits, and policymakers agree that existing affordable rental housing must be preserved despite formidable complex obstacles in achieving this goal. This article focuses on challenges in rental housing preservation and discusses the programs and perspectives of the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency (PHFA), the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency (HMFA), and the Delaware State Housing Authority (DSHA).
Journal Article
A Perspective on the Community Reinvestment Act
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the passage of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). The CRA placed an affirmative obligation on banks and thrifts to provide credit in the communities in which they serve, particularly in low- and moderate-income (LMI) neighborhoods. Indeed, there is evidence that the CRA has made important contributions in bringing capital into these communities
Journal Article
Research Symposium on Fair Housing Explores the Past, Present, and Future of the Fair Housing Act
Even though the Fair Housing Act has resulted in significant strides toward ending discriminatory real estate practices since it was enacted 50 years ago, significant challenges related to fair housing and fair lending still exist, requiring further action by researchers, policymakers, and advocates. This theme underpinned the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia and the Center for Urban Research and Education at Rutgers University?Camden?s recent Research Symposium on Fair Housing, which highlighted the past, present, and future of the Fair Housing Act
Journal Article
Bank Partnership Helps Ex-Offenders
In an effort to support community stabilization in Monroe County, PA, a local community bank last year entered into a unique partnership with a community college, a health-care system, and a district court to help ex-offenders reintegrate into their communities. ESSA Bank & Trust,1 located in Stroudsburg, PA, provides financial education and loans to ex-offenders who are leaving the federal corrections system and transitioning back into the community. Bank president and chief executive officer Gary S. Olson notes: ?We [ESSA Bank & Trust] were looking for ways to strengthen our ties and impact ...
Journal Article
Workforce Development: Engaging Employers
Leaders of a community college, the YouthBuild charter school, and a public career and technical institute speaking on a Reinventing Our Communities conference panel addressed the need to forge stronger connections between high school and postsecondary education or employment, especially for ?opportunity youth? who are neither employed nor in school
Journal Article
Tracking Philanthropic Support for Community and Economic Development: New Research from Two Federal Reserve Banks
How many grants do large foundations direct towards community and economic development (CED) activities? What kinds of activities are supported with these funds? Which metro areas receive the most philanthropic support and which receive the least?1 And why do some metro areas receive more than others? These are the questions that researchers at the community development departments of the Federal Reserve Banks of Philadelphia and Atlanta answer in newly completed research.
Journal Article
Investing in Transformative Systems Change: A Call for Racial Equity
Today?s community development field can trace its roots back to the War on Poverty of the 1960s, when we, as a nation, rallied around a bold vision that we could and would conquer poverty. The growing field was driven by a clear theory of change: If you could transform the built environment, neighborhood by neighborhood, you would dramatically improve the well-being of a significant portion of the nation?s low-income people