Search Results
Journal Article
Community Land Trust Model: Opportunities and Challenges of Preserving Affordable Housing
At least a dozen low-income apartment buildings exclusively for seniors in Detroit?s midtown and downtown areas could convert to market rate apartments in the next ten years, forcing hundreds of seniors to find new homes. Many of the senior apartment buildings were filled in the 1980s when few people wanted to live downtown. Senior subsidies paid by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) comprise one way to keep a level of density in the central districts. Today, stories of young professionals unable to find affordable housing in these high-profile neighborhoods (known as ...
Journal Article
Health Care is Community Reinvestment: Examples from the Mental Health Field
This article examines several case studies of mental health clinics and their relationships with financial institutions for CRA purposes.
Working Paper
The Role of Selective High Schools in Equalizing Educational Outcomes: Heterogeneous Effects by Neighborhood Socioeconomic Status
We investigate whether elite Chicago public high schools can help close the achievement gap between high-achieving students from more and less affluent neighborhoods. Seats are allocated based on prior achievement with 70 percent reserved for high-achieving applicants from four neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) categories. Using regression discontinuity design, we find no effect on test scores or college attendance for students from high- or low-SES neighborhoods and positive effects on student reports of their experiences. For students from low-SES neighborhoods, we estimate ...
Journal Article
Spotlight on Research: Youth Debt and College Graduation
The rise in debt among youth to finance their higher education has engendered a great deal of discussion. Much of the attention has been focused on the angst that arises when the debt has to be repaid. This has been especially burdensome on students from lower-income households. While this is worthy of concern, another aspect of the educational-related debt that is being examined is whether the debt was worth it. More specifically, what is the association of the debt with the borrower?s graduation from college? Some investigations not only consider the relationship between educational loans ...
Journal Article
Pay for Success: Financing Research-Informed Practice
Undercapitalization of nonprofit organizations and years of seemingly stagnant results in addressing certain social problems have led many to hope that ?pay for success (PFS) financing? will bring solutions in the form of new capital to support program delivery, improved accountability, and increased rigor in performance measurement. PFS financing, sometimes termed ?social impact bonds (SIBs),? shifts the risk of a preventive social service?s success from taxpayers to investors who finance programs and receive government repayments if, and only if, an agreed-upon performance metric is ...
Journal Article
CDFIs: Intermediaries for Financing to Low-Income Communities
In communities across America, community development financial institutions (CDFIs) successfully connect the ?last mile? of the financial credit chain. Just as local cell phone towers across the country connect cellular networks to local users, CDFIs connect larger and remote sources of capital to local communities. CDFIs act as intermediaries of capital to advance their missions, proving that responsible investing can build incomes, assets, and wealth in low-income communities. Increasingly, CDFIs also intermediate market data and other information necessary for successful investments in the ...
Journal Article
Reinventing Older Communities: Bridging Growth & Opportunity
How can economic growth create better job, education, and housing opportunities for low-income people and communities? The sixth biennial Reinventing Older Communities conference probed strategies to create opportunities in education, employment, revitalization, and other areas. Recurring themes were the importance of collaboration and partnership with different sectors and of ongoing data collection and analysis to identify issues and measure progress in addressing them
Journal Article
What Makes Cities Resilient?
How older industrial cities can become resilient cities was the focus of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia?s fifth biennial Reinventing Older Communities conference, which was attended by over 430 community development leaders from nonprofits, banks, foundations, government agencies, and businesses from 24 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and Canada.
Journal Article
Revitalizing Commercial Corridors: Lessons from LISC MetroEdge
In many low- and moderate-income communities, existing retail strips are underutilized or a shadow of their former selves, with vacant storefronts and a limited range of goods. Coordinated efforts by community-based organizations, local business owners, and municipal partners can create conditions to revitalize these strips and to spur economic growth by upgrading the physical surroundings, supporting existing businesses, attracting new stores, and improving the reputation of the community as a place to shop. As businesses grow, they provide a wider array of retail options to residents, add ...
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.