jobs

“In community development, there are a number of different goals. The first goal, obviously, is to produce housing that is affordable and accessible, but we also have other goals around providing jobs for people.”

Community development financial institutions lend to micro- and small-business owners, but the jobs those businesses create are often minimum wage, part time, or otherwise low quality. What makes a job a good job, and what are CDFIs doing to help small-business borrowers create good jobs?

Trump and his cronies are backtracking on ensuring a clean energy economy that provides green jobs to make our communities sustainable.

[Editor's note: This article was originally published by YES! magazine.] In 1971, the owners of The Cheese Board turned their Berkeley, California, mom-and-pop shop into a co-op, where they became […]

Many of us think that any employment, even part time, provides a measure of security. This is not the case for the millions of low-wage workers who are subject to […]

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:

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.

Arrest records aren’t the only barrier to employment out there that’s not about skills and job readiness. During the post-Katrina redevelopment of the New Orleans C.J. Peete public housing development […]

Humboldt Construction Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chicago CDC Bickerdike Redevelopment Corporation, has been providing local employment and high-quality work for over 30 years. But it hasn’t been […]

“Investor apartheid” securities rules are keeping investment artificially blocked from the businesses with the most positive impact on communities— small, local ones.

Across the water from Manhattan, this once working class city has experienced dramatic economic growth—but the rising tide did not lift all boats.

With the hottest, often most violent, month of summer still to come, Chicago has logged record numbers of killings of public school students this year, with at least 30 teens […]