Participatory Budgeting: Why Not Fix Everyone’s Sink?
Just like a focus group or any mechanism intended to give us a voice, participatory budgeting can offer a glimpse of how a more civically engaged society might work. But it’s also a distraction from the actual mechanisms of power, and can reinforce or even worsen existing inequalities.
Measuring the Right Things: “Mobility from Poverty” Is More than Finances
How would you measure someone making progress toward escaping poverty? If you've been tuned in to the asset-building movement you might look at their accumulation of assets and preparation for a financial emergency. You might also want to look at cash flow. But can poverty-fighting be solely measured by money?
Panacea or Problem? The Possibilities in Opportunity Zones
With Opportunity Zones, the potential is there for great benefit, but it is not yet clear where, how, and to whom any benefits will accrue. People who care about connecting residents and businesses in distressed communities with opportunities need to act now so they fulfill their promise.
New York City Needs to Stop Negotiating Rezonings From an Uneven Playing Field
What is the underlying dynamic that leads so many council members in low-income communities of color to approve neighborhood rezonings, despite community opposition and the likelihood of increased displacement pressure on existing residents?
Remember Slavic Village? It’s Back
A Cleveland neighborhood made famous as an epicenter of the foreclosure crisis works its way back to stability. Here’s how.
The Amazon Opportunity to Revitalize Urban Communities
It's not too late for cities competing to be the next home to Amazon to raise the issue of employer-assisted workforce housing.
CRA “Reform” Under Trump Threatens Communities of Color and the 99 Percent
Banks enjoy consumer and taxpayer-funded privileges, such as deposit insurance, and not too long ago, subsidized trillion-dollar bailouts. It’s not too much to insist that they invest a fair share of those dollars back into all of our communities.
The Important Deadline Coming Up for All Governors
States have a deadline to submit their Opportunity Zones nominations. What factors will be weighed in the decision process, and what will federal designation mean to distressed neighborhoods?
The Displacement Crisis of Immigrant-Owned Small Businesses
Growth of new business is a sign of a robust economy, but New York City’s true success hinges on ensuring that all residents have access to opportunity and community resources.
Duty to Serve: A Boon for Shared Equity Homeownership
Shared equity homeownership programs just had a big win.
Nun Funds: The Original Impact Investors
Rising out of a practice of shareholder activism that began in the 1970s, Women Religious made the leap from monitoring their investments on Wall Street to becoming pioneers in investing directly in the communities and social justice causes for which they cared.
The Power of Proximity: Making the Case for Living Where You Work
Twenty years later, it’s hard to overstate how wise I think that group of board members was in imposing its residency requirement on me. While initially skeptical, over the years I’ve learned some powerful lessons about the benefits of proximity.
The Cavalry Is Us: Civil Rights and Cooperative Action
In our nation’s most vulnerable places, every vulnerable person and those more fortunate who care about their well being, are best served when we come together to help ourselves.
Would Trump’s CRA Reform Really “Do No Harm?”
NCRC examined every single Community Reinvestment Act evaluation for mid-size banks conducted during 2016.
Persistently Poor Regions Would Welcome a Little Gentrification
It is often said that you get what you pay for. Clearly, too little is being paid to create positive change in America’s most vulnerable places.
In Detroit, the Fight for Community Benefits Begins Anew
For equitable development activists, Detroit’s Community Benefits Ordinance may seem like major progress. And it is—just not how they may imagine it to be.
Defending DACA Is a Moral and Economic Imperative
President Donald Trump has decided to end the Obama-era program that grants work permits to undocumented immigrants. Over the course of its five-year history,...
Reflecting and Planning Using a Community Wealth Building Lens
Over an organization’s 25 years in existence, how do staff and volunteers measure impact and build off of lessons learned to guide their next steps forward?
More Than Marching: Creating Good Jobs That Protect Our Water And Air
Trump and his cronies are backtracking on ensuring a clean energy economy that provides green jobs to make our communities sustainable.
The Hidden Threat of Tax Cuts to Equitable Economic Development
Although the Trump administration’s recent budget proposal offers only a look at expenses, with no numbers on revenue, it...
Tax Credits Play A Critical Role in Economic Development
In his recent speech to Congress, President Trump included this pledge: “Every American child should be able to grow...
Worker Co-ops: Hope in the Desert
“Political democracy requires economic democracy.” I spent Election Day in—of all places—Las Vegas, Nevada....
CDFIs “Rethink” Systems, But (Hopefully) Not Identity
Last week I attended the Opportunity Finance Network conference, the annual gathering of Community Development Financial Institutions and those...
New Lenses on Economic Development
Billions of taxpayer dollars are spent every year to stimulate economic development. Is it going where we think it’s going?
Making a Success of Local Hire
Local hire policies are among the strongest strategies for bringing good job opportunities to disadvantaged communities, but adding more provisions to specifically target those with the most barriers to employment can make local hiring practices even more effective.
Why Your Community Should Kick the Subsidy Habit
Corporate incentives won't help communities thrive, even distressed ones. But nurturing local businesses will save municipalities money and promote the growth of income, wealth, and jobs.
In the World of Community Wealth-Building, Ownership Has Its Privileges
What local government can do to support new, more inclusive economic models.
Who Will Benefit from Port Covington?
Advocates, city leaders, and Under Armour's real estate arm negotiate a $660 million tax deal and a vision for economic development in Baltimore.
Making Community Benefits Agreements Count
CBAs can be extremely difficult to implement and enforce, which is why a detailed agreement in the early stages of the community-developer relationship is so important.
Connecting Companies to Business
A Chicago organization is bringing together local businesses and large institutions to promote economic growth.
Using Business as a Force For Good
B Corps are for-profit businesses that focus strongly on their social and environmental impact. The movement has grown to 1,800-plus worldwide and now cities, economic authorities, and activists are trying to attract more of these mission-driven and worker-friendly companies to help spur economic growth.
Continuing the Dream
New Communities Inc. was the largest African-American owned parcel of land in the United States the late 1960s. For more than 15 years, it survived attempts at sabotage and other challenges thanks to the collective efforts of as many as 500 families.
Keeping Everyone Afloat: Is Universal Basic Income the Answer?
Advocates and organizers who deal with the needs of the poor often say it's not really a housing/food/training issue, it's an income issue. So what would happen if we just addressed income?
A New Way to Finance Equitable Economic Development?
Big companies discovered the long-stagnant Immigrant Investor Program EB-5 after the 2008 financial crisis. Can community developers bend the program toward their goals too?
Q: Do economic development incentives support small businesses?
A. Not very much. Despite the claims of many states, when you look at the numbers, the vast majority of taxpayer dollars directed to economic development go to big corporations.
How Not To Do Economic Development
Camden is one of the most distressed cities in the United States, and if any city needs state help...
Embedding Equity Into Economic Development
It is another summer in which America’s deep racial fault lines are being painfully exposed. Following the horrific violence...
Putting the Impact in Impact Investing
Impact investing is a popular idea that promises to channel the power of market capitalism into serving the common...
Q: What’s the difference between community economic development and traditional economic development ?
A: A lot! In fact, they are so different that the Democracy Collaborative, which made the chart below, has coined the term “community wealth building” to set apart the truly community-oriented practitioners of economic development.
The Next Boom for Worker Co-ops?
Baby boomers are the largest percentage of business owners, and they’re headed toward retirement. The worker cooperative movement wants to keep the jobs they’ve created from disappearing.
Developing Economic, Along with Physical, Health
Sue Joss and Jason Barbosa might seem to be unlikely economic development partners. She is the veteran CEO of a major nonprofit health care...
A Gem for New Jersey Neighborhood Revitalization
'A dollar and a dream,' was the phrase I read in a brochure about the starting point for revitalizing neighborhoods through the Neighborhood Revitalization...
How One City Is Keeping Jobs Local Using Co-ops
In 1971, the owners of The Cheese Board turned their Berkeley, California, mom-and-pop shop into a co-op, where they...
New Jersey Divests from Payday Lending
Advocates in New Jersey mobilize to make a state pension fund put its money where its state regulations are.
For Cities, Industrial Land Matters
In a recent blog post, Tarry Hum, a professor of urban studies at Queens College, profiled the failure of the De Blasio administration to...
More Bang for the Buck?
Austin, with prodding from advocates, pushes its economic development policy to go beyond big deal chasing.
When Work Creates Insecurity
Many of us think that any employment, even part time, provides a measure of security. This is not the case for the millions of...
A Response to ‘A New Gospel of Wealth,’ Part Two
In my last blog post, I responded to Ford Foundation president Darren Walker’s essay in which he outlines a new direction for the foundation ...
Equitable Development in Shaw
A recent New York Times article on the revitalization of Washington, DC’s Shaw neighborhood highlighted how real estate developers have rebranded the area to...
Anchoring “The Community” to the Community Building Movement
Community building has many definitions all of which capture an integrated approach to addressing poverty. For me, community...
Can Community Wealth Building Redefine City Economic Development?
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Uber-noxious
At the PolicyLink Equity Summit the last week of October, Orson Aguilar of the Greenlining Institute was taking a...
Response to Darren Walker’s New Gospel of Wealth
Ford Foundation President Darren Walker recently circulated a thought-provoking piece declaring the foundation’s commitment to tackling the worldwide problem of inequality.
In the piece, Walker...
Building the Cars of the Future . . . in Detroit
How the nonprofit Focus: HOPE is helping to bring manufacturing jobs back to Detroit, and the Detroiters who need them.
Why CDFIs Should Go To College
During three decades of working to close the financial gaps that confront a disproportionate number of low-income, minority...
It’s Not Actually About Ownership
Private Property and Public Power: Eminent Domain in Philadelphia,
by Debbie Becher. Oxford University Press, 2014. 334pp. $30.50 (paper)
Purchase here.
Q: Do Immigrants “Take Our Jobs”?
A: No! This is a common fear, especially for people who are already struggling to get by. But it’s not true. Here are the facts:
Not Just Any Job
Community lenders and local governments wrestle with how to encourage—or simply require—that jobs created with their support provide real pathways to opportunity for those who need them most.
Community Groups’ Role Vanishes Under New Federal Workforce Legislation
On July 22, 2014, after it passed by wide bipartisan margins earlier in the year, the Workforce Innovation and...
Capital Catch-up
Community lenders try to address the capital crunch faced by small businesses of color.
Local Hire: Popular and Controversial
In March, USDOT Secretary Anthony Foxx began moving toward fully implementing “Local Hire,” a new, year long model program...
Not Just Any Job
Community lenders and local governments wrestle with how to encourage—or simply require—that jobs created with their support provide...
Making Sense of the New Economy: Rethinking Community Economic Development
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An Industrial Revolution Comes to Indianapolis
Abandoned factories have been an economic albatross for Midwestern cities since the 1990s, when American manufacturers moved overseas or...
The Swiss Army Knife of Community Development
Across America—in inner city neighborhoods and rural towns alike—the level of economic and social distress is rising. Although these...
A Bigger, Better Vision for the Left
What would full employment look like? Minority contractors, pastors, and faith leaders flew to the Capitol last week to...
Cut the Red Tape – Local Hire Needed
Last month, USDOT Secretary Anthony Foxx announced a new, year long model program to test innovative local hire policies....
Local Leaders Just Gained a New Tool to Address Inequality
A new Brookings Institution analysis confirms what we are feeling: inequality continues to climb in cities, and large income...
Carrots, Sticks, and Economic Justice
Once upon a time, I saw the problem of providing responsible financial services as purely a policy problem. We...
“Women- and Minority-Owned Businesses” Is a Meaningless Category
How many times have you seen the phrase “women- and minority-owned businesses” or seen an organization list a single...
Can We Bend the Sharing Economy Toward Equity?
We’ve all heard the stories. Homeless Homejoy cleaners. Uber drivers on food stamps. Grad students Airbnb-ing their extra rooms...
Interview with Jay Williams, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development
Jay Williams was the mayor of Youngstown, Ohio, from 2006 to 2011, at a time when Youngstown was attracting notoriety for making the unusual assertion that, rather than longing for its bygone glory days before the steel mills closed, it was going to embrace a vision of becoming a smaller, yet more vibrant city. (See Shelterforce’s “Small Is Beautiful, Again”, for more on this approach and how it affects low-income residents.) Williams is now assistant secretary of commerce for economic development, and administrator of the Economic Development Administration. Prior to joining the U.S. Department of Commerce, Williams served as the executive director of the Office of Recovery for Auto Communities and Workers, and he also served in the White House as deputy director for the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. In this position, he led efforts to engage mayors, city council members, and county officials around the country.
Shelterforce spoke with Williams at the conference of the National Alliance of Economic Development Associations last fall in San Antonio.
Control of Farmland, City Style
I have thought a lot lately about the issue of land ownership for farmers, and the barriers they face to buying land so they can plan for growing their business and serving more food consumers. This issue really matters on the edges of metropolitan areas, where farmers can find lucrative markets for their products and […]
Clearing a Path to Employment for Veterans
Veterans tend to have many job skills—but translating that into civilian employment is often harder than it should be.
Sprawl vs. Unions
The three very different stories of the building trades in Atlanta, Denver, and Portland, Ore., show just how much urban development patterns affect workers.
Forget Red and Blue States: Go Green for Better Jobs, Health, and Environment
The following op-ed is an expanded version of “Green States Better for Jobs,” that appeared in the Louisville Courier Journal on October 20, 2014. How do you win an election in any red Southern state? If you are running as a senator the conventional wisdom is you condemn government as an enemy of working families […]
Jobs and More Jobs:Â Organizing’s Economic Impact
In the report, “Jobs and More Jobs: The Economic Impact of Community Organizing,” Gamaliel community organizers add up $13 billion worth of public and private programs that faith, community, and labor leaders worked to create or save through their advocacy efforts in 2012-13, employing nearly 460,000 people. Using commonly accepted economic formulas to measure the […]
Say It Loud: Inequality is Bad for Everyone
There is an invisible culprit in the great scandal of inequality in America: your Econ. 101 textbook. Go ahead, dig it out from that storage chest, and undoubtedly you’ll read that inequality, while we might not like it, is good for economic growth and progress. This idea has undergirded decades of policymaking, and […]
How Much Money Is Your City or State Losing to “Economic Development?”
Have you ever wondered how much money your city or state is actually losing when it gives a 20-year tax break to a developer in exchange for a handful of jobs? You might soon be able to find out. As Shawn Escoffery of the Surdna Foundation and Greg LeRoy of Good Jobs First explain in […]
Hubs Help Move the Local Food Movement to the Next Level
It’s not unusual to read a press release from a governor’s or mayor’s office celebrating a deal to bring a new company to a neighborhood or city. Typically we’d be talking about a new manufacturing or tech firm, and the press release would speak glowingly of the prospects for economic development. Which makes a bit […]
City Halls Help Plant Seeds for Community Co-ops
What do Austin, New York City and Denver have in common? All three cities voted to support the development of cooperatives for the first time this year. The amounts are modest, but the trend is clear—mayors and economic development leaders are beginning to add cooperatives and community wealth building to the economic development toolbox. In […]
Want a Stronger Economy? Focus More on Racial Inclusion
As housing and community development practitioners, you need little convincing that dismantling racial barriers to economic opportunity—from policing practices to exclusionary zoning—is critical to building stronger, more cohesive communities. But what about the economic cost of these persistent racial inequities? Might segregated regions not just undermine the country’s moral fabric, but also hinder its […]
Advancing Economic Opportunity Through Diversity
Recently, I had the opportunity to participate in an important and powerful conversation about the importance of diversity and inclusion in achieving economic equity at the Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) conference in Denver, Colorado. This is a topic that hits close to home for me. Before I joined JPMorgan Chase, I spent 10 years at […]
The Benefits of Having Everyone at the Table
How might we better engage the families we work with and provide them access to larger opportunities? Last month, CFED held their bi-annual Assets Learning Conference. It featured a range of topics that touched on an array of asset-building issues and included networking opportunities, mobilized conversations with policymakers, and celebrations of the progress of the […]
Out from Under the Table
An enterpreneurial training program in Detroit has an unexpected side benefit—legitimizing existing but unofficial businesses, and poising them for growth.
Placemaking for, and by, Whom?
Place-Making in Legacy Cities: Opportunities and Good Practices, prepared by New Solution Group LLC in partnership with Center for Community Progress, December 2013.
Forging a Transformative Vision
Building economic power through community ownership is the antidote to the systemic failures of our current system.
Thinking Outside the Big Box
Urban centers need to come up with creative solutions
to keep their local economies safe from the crushing
force of big-box retailers.
The Cooperative Solution
Cooperatives align closely with the goals and values of community developers and deserve more attention as an economic development strategy.
To Build a Community Economy, Start With Solidarity
How residents who can't afford to buy in can still get the benefits of co-op work and housing.
Focus on Scale Up, Not Start-up
To truly transform local neighborhoods, we must shift our attention to invest in enterprise scale, not start-ups, as a long-lasting solution for creating good jobs.
Keeping the Jobs in House
Humboldt Construction Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of a Chicago CDC, has been providing local employment and high-quality work for over 30 years.
Lifting the Fog on Section 3
When it's more appealing to circumvent the law requiring that jobs in public housing construction go to qualified residents than to follow it, something needs to change.
Hitting Construction Hiring Goals
How do you ensure that the jobs a new development is supposed to bring to a community actually go to underrepresented populations?
Building Bridges, Building Muscle, Building Momentum
Two cities show how community-based organizations and labor can overcome their historical divide to work together.
We Should Be Working Less
Changing our assumptions about what constitutes "normal" full time work could help address all sorts of social problems, from unemployment to civic disengagement.
Put Your Spending Where Your Goals Are
Local procurement policies take money already being spent and direct it to local businesses to get more economic development benefit for the buck.
Are You Subsidizing Big Business?
Massive corporations, not start-ups or local job creators, get the lion's share of state and local development incentives.
Manufactured Locally
While there is much debate about the state of large-scale domestic manufacturing, a few places are quietly supporting local manufacturing for items that have been made overseas for some time, from jewelry to jeans.
Interview With Tom Szaky, Founder, Terracycle
We spoke with Tom Szaky, TerraCycle's founder and CEO, about social enterprise, locating in a distressed community, and what he as an employer would want out of workforce development programs.