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?
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...
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?
How Much Outside Help Do Worker Co-ops Need to Get to Scale?
Though they end up as owners and decision-makers, workers in low-income communities often don't start off doing all the work...
Small Numbers, Great Expectations: A Case for Rural Investment
“Drop dead” wasn’t an acceptable answer to urban decay in the 1970s. And it isn’t the right answer for struggling rural areas today.
In the South, Politics and Tourism Don’t Mix
The Civil War is big business in Virginia, which saw more than its share of big battles during the...
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.
Impact Investing Resources
If you want to explore impact investing further, here are some places to start.
Fighting Wage Theft
Monday brought the announcement of a record 70,000-plus jobs lost worldwide, from drug companies to automakers and everything in between.
Meanwhile each year millions of...
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.
Is 2012 the Year of the Business Co-op?
Last October in New York City, United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki Moon officially designated 2012 as the “International Year...
Impact Investing for Community Development
New sources of mission-driven private capital could step up to support community development where traditional sources of financing are withdrawing.
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 […]
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.
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.
CRA Survives Its Toughest Challenge
There is nothing more exhilarating than to be shot at without result. –Winston Churchill
The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) has survived the most serious attack in...
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.
In the World of Community Wealth-Building, Ownership Has Its Privileges
What local government can do to support new, more inclusive economic models.
How the New Market Tax Credit Program Could Actually Benefit Communities
The New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) program was created in 2000, with a goal of creating “jobs and material improvement...
Letting the Dollars Land
To realize the promise of community investment, the capacity of specific places to absorb available capital needs to grow.