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small business

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A broadly smiling woman with dark skin and braids, wearing a black shirt with a green-leaf logo on it, stands in front of a medium-blue wall. A business name, The Olive Street Agency, with the green-leaf logo, is printed (or affixed) to the wall in white capital letters.

CDFIs Shouldn’t Act Like Banks, But Too Often Do

When receiving bank funding, CDFIs often limit their investments in accordance with bank restrictions. How can reforms to the Community Reinvestment Act help center the needs of underserved communities?

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Arts & Culture

Gentrification: Is Pop Culture Getting It Right?

Gentefied. In the Heights. Vida. How do storylines and portrayals of gentrification in cinema stack up to how it plays out in real life?

CDFIs

How CDFIs are Helping Small Businesses Create Good Jobs

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?

Interrupting history
COVID

Let’s Interrupt History: Racial Equity in a Time of Crisis

Data on the pandemic shows once again the dramatic consequences of racial inequalities. CDFIs must focus on ensuring equity for Black-owned businesses.

small business close
Policy

Help for Small Businesses

What kinds of emergency measures are advocacy organizations proposing to make sure that when small businesses can open again, they’ll be financially able to do so?

B. Ruppe drugstore in the Barelas neighborhood of Albuquerque, NM
Arts & Culture

Regenerating a Place of Cultural Pride and Healing in Albuquerque’s Barelas Neighborhood

Restoring a community’s culturally significant site in Albuquerque to be a true economic resource as well as a source of healing.

A painting that reads "Walsh Community Grocery: Pulling Together We All Win."
Health

Entrepreneurship as a Path to Health?

New partnerships between health funders and small-business lenders highlight another possible way to influence health.

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.

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.

Arts & Culture

An Island Where There Is a Standard

Like so many of its counterparts across the country, Brick’s is more than just a barbershop in Albany, N.Y. It’s a haven in a troubled neighborhood.