Lessons for the U.S.: How the EU Controls Bidding Wars for Jobs and Investment
The European Union’s rules on subsidies limit bidding wars, and make the level of incentives we have seen for Amazon, Foxconn, and other companies completely impossible.
Strengthening the CRA
In 1995, the last time federal banking agencies revised the rules of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), they promised to conduct a follow-up review...
“Money Must Serve, Not Rule!”
In November 2013, Morgan Stanley launched its Institute for Sustainable Investing and announced that within five years it was aiming to manage $10 billion...
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.
A Green Job Renaissance?
Even decades after de-industrialization and outsourcing decimated the once-solid, well-paid, empowered blue collar union workforce of the Midwest, jobs are still being lost by...
The Slow Building Movement
Standing at the northern gateway of Milwaukee’s Fifth Ward and the confluence of the Menomonee and Milwaukee Rivers is...
Will Financial Crisis Lead to Hard Times for Nonprofits?
With congressional leaders reaching an agreement Thursday afternoon on the president’s proposal to pump $700 billion into the country’s financial system, it’s not yet...
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...
CDCs Step In Where Banks Fear to Tread
Early in 2010, the Congressional Oversight Panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program released a report indicating that half of the $1.4 trillion in...
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...
Can Cities Fix Their Polarization Problem? A Review of The Divided City
How different would cities look and how different would people’s lives be if those with the power to set policy and invest resources prioritized the most vulnerable residents and the neighborhoods they live in?
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 […]
Underneath the Surface, a Community Fish Story
Sometimes I learn about the details of a community's development in the most random ways. My family gets together...
Letting the Dollars Land
To realize the promise of community investment, the capacity of specific places to absorb available capital needs to grow.
Maybe Money Really Can Grow On Trees
Guess what? The local food movement is actually good for your local economy! At least that seems to be...
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 […]
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...
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.
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...
Infrastructure Woes or Opportunities?
Anyone who has wasted hours each day commuting to work, sat in traffic for an hour as a freight train inched by, waited endlessly...