What Would it Take to Make Neighborhoods More Equitable and Integrated?

by Katie Gourley, Graduate Research Assistant

How do household decisions about where to live perpetuate residential segregation, and what would it take for such choices to result in more inclusive neighborhoods? Three papers released today by the Joint Center for Housing Studies explore these questions from somewhat different perspectives. The newly released papers, which were presented at A Shared Future: Fostering Communities of Inclusion in an Era of Inequality, a symposium hosted by the Joint Center, include an overview paper by the panel’s moderator and two papers by panelists examining key issues in more detail. The papers are:

Justin Steil &

Reed Jordan,

MIT

Household Neighborhood Decisionmaking and Segregation, an overview paper co-authored by Justin Steil, the panel’s moderator, and Reed Jordan, investigates what we know about households’ decisionmaking processes and explores the ways that technology and other interventions might help create more integrated places. They note that notwithstanding the significance of schools and other local amenities, the racial composition of a neighborhood is a significant determinant in the residential decisionmaking process. Moreover, they add, while homeseekers increasingly rely on the internet, it is not yet clear how that reliance impacts the makeup of neighborhoods. However, they note, it seems clear that different sources of information have implications for segregation and may serve as points of leverage for pro-integration interventions.

Ralph McLaughlin &

Cheryl Young,

Trulia

Data Democratization and Spatial Heterogeneity in the Housing Market, by Ralph McLaughlin and Cheryl Young, argues that improved access to residential real estate data has the potential to affect residential settlement patterns in two countervailing ways. On the one hand, it could expand individuals’ housing search choice to include properties in more diverse neighborhoods. Alternatively, it could increase the demand to live in amenity-rich locations, which might price out existing and future residents (unless the supply of housing in those locations grew at a similar rate). However, they argue, the extent to which households might be priced out of a neighborhood is not primarily influenced by data availability but rather by the ease with which housing supply can be increased to meet demand in those areas. They therefore recommend three policy approaches: reducing exclusionary and restrictive zoning policies in expensive, amenity-laden markets; giving housing choice voucher (HCV) recipients the option to conceal their voucher status from landlords during the application process; and requiring that some available Low Income Housing Tax Credit funds be used in “high-value” Census tracts.

Tarry Hum,
Queens College

Minority Banks, Homeownership, and Prospects for New York City's Multi-Racial Immigrant Neighborhoods, by Tarry Hum, focuses on the role of Asian minority banks in in lending to Asian borrowers for residential property purchases in Queens and Brooklyn. Established to counter financial exclusion resulting from discrimination and linguistic and cultural barriers, these banks historically have been a key source of credit, especially for Asian immigrants who may not qualify for conventional loans. However, using data sets from 2010 and 2015, Hum shows that there was a significant rise in lending by these banks to investors rather than owner-occupants. She concludes by exploring how these changes may be driving up prices, displacing low- and moderate income renters, and spurring illegal conversions – changes that together may be destabilizing many of the neighborhoods where the loans are being made.

The three papers build on previously released papers from the symposium that discuss the nature of residential segregation in the US, its consequences, rationales for public policies to address those consequences, and priorities for action. Over the next several months, the Joint Center will be releasing additional papers from the symposium that will focus on promising strategies in a variety of areas that would help foster more inclusive residential communities. The papers also will be collected into an edited volume that will be published in 2018.

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Additional papers from the A Shared Future symposium are available on the JCHS website. 

Successful Collaboration in Community Development: Easier Said Than Done

by Alexander Von Hoffman
Senior Research Fellow

What are the keys to successful collaborations of nonprofit housing organizations? A remarkable attempt to form a novel alliance by five such groups in western New York State reveals several keys to an effective collaboration. Each of the five organizations -- NeighborWorks® Rochester, West Side (Buffalo) Neighborhood Housing Services, Niagara Falls Neighborhood Housing Services, Arbor Housing and Development, and NeighborWorks® Home Resources -- were long-established in their geographic areas. Moreover, each belonged to the network of NeighborWorks® America, a congressionally chartered nonprofit corporation that provides grants, technical assistance, training, and organizational assessment to housing and community development organizations. Their experiences, which are documented in a recent Joint Center case study, shows both the problems and the possibilities of putting the idea of collaboration into action.

Buffalo, New York

Before going into details, it bears mention that it has become almost an axiom in the community development field that nonprofit organizations must "collaborate" if they are going to survive, much less transform low-income communities. And the idea of collaboration is appealing: two or more organizations agree to coordinate activities in a systematic way -- as opposed to carrying out a one-time joint venture. Such collaborations can range from a temporary partnership to outright mergers (or anything in between). But many practitioners and scholars believe such initiatives can address a host of serious problems. For most community development organizations, money is always short, and especially so in recent years as the federal government has reduced funding for the Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program. In addition, many nonprofit groups appear to be financially weak, undersized, relatively unproductive, organizationally stagnant, or some combination of the above. By sharing business lines, programs, and administrative functions, smaller and financially weaker groups could become more efficient and possibly tap the resources and knowledge of stronger organizations. If so, they could stabilize their finances and begin to grow, which would allow them to devote more time and attention to serving their low- and moderate-income constituents effectively.

But as the new case study documents, putting these ideas into practice can be difficult. After extensive discussions, in 2012 the leaders of five western New York State groups devised the concept of a "collaborative merger." In this structure, each organization would become a subsidiary division of a new central organization. As subsidiaries, the five groups would maintain their separate identities, offices, and geographic service areas while increasing their capabilities and expanding the types and volume of business. The central organizations, which would be overseen by board members from each of the participating groups, would provide core administrative functions, and, in doing so, bring the efficiency and resources of a large organization to the work of what had been separate smaller groups.

Just as the groups were about to create the new entity, however, the alliance came to an abrupt halt. Many factors contributed to the breakdown of the process. The biggest obstacle was the difficulty of bringing five disparate groups together under a common structure. The organizations covered starkly different kinds of geographic territories. Three of the organizations (NeighborWorks® Rochester, West Side Neighborhood Housing Services (Buffalo), and Niagara Falls Neighborhood Housing Services) were rooted in cities. The other two (Arbor Housing and Development, and NeighborWorks® Home Resources) were rural entities with geographically extensive service areas.

Moreover, there were significant differences in the organizations' programmatic offerings. Arbor, the largest of the five groups not only provided residential services for people with special needs and victims of domestic violence, it also developed and managed low-income housing. The other four groups were traditional "neighborhood housing service" groups that emphasized homeownership counseling, lending, and community engagement. Over time, key staff and board members of the housing service organizations became increasingly concerned that if the alliance went forward, their organizations would lose their identities and be less able to perform their core functions. Ultimately, the concerns became so great that the groups' leaders decided not to proceed with the planned alliance.

That was not the end of the story, however. Following the original idea, albeit on a smaller scale, the three urban-oriented neighborhood housing service groups (NeighborWorks® Rochester, West Side Neighborhood Services, and Niagara Falls Neighborhood Housing Services) merged to form a new organization called NeighborWorks® Community Partners. Meanwhile, Arbor, which continued to be a NeighborWorks® member, has not only thrived, but has also expanded its service area as far as Pennsylvania and Albany, NY. The fifth organization, NeighborWorks® Home Resources, remained in business under the name Rural Revitalization Corporation, but has left the NeighborWorks® network.

The experiences of these five organizations not only underscores the importance of building trust among partners in any collaboration, it also offers several lessons for those interested in collaborating with other entities. First, prospective collaborators might do well to begin by collaborating on actual programs before they start building a grand organizational structure. Second, collaborators should take time to develop a common vision, which means wrestling honestly with with the differences that separate the participating groups. Third, and related to the above, communication - open and constant - is essential, as is the full and committed participation of all of the involved parties. The leaders of such efforts must go to great lengths to ensure that everyone - including staff and board members from all the organizations - understand and support the collaborative effort.

Finally, everyone must understand that bringing existing groups into a new organizational arrangement is not business as usual. It is an act of creation that will change the status quo. Such a collaboration requires extraordinary care to ensure that the participants recognize the process and the outcome as legitimate. And this in turn means it is essential to tackle difficult questions about management, sharing leadership, and the roles and responsibilities of staff and board members sooner rather than later.

CDFIs Collaborate to Send More Capital to Low-Income Communities

by Matthew Arck
Research Associate

This post is the second in a series about the results of the Partnerships for Raising Opportunity in Neighborhoods program (PRO Neighborhoods), a grant program of JPMorgan Chase & Co. that provides grants to support collaboration among groups of community development financial institutions (CDFIs). See previous post and our recently released progress report.

Early results of the PRO Neighborhoods program suggest that new ways of deploying capital can help improve the lives of Americans who live in low-income communities.

For more than two decades, community development financial institutions (CDFIs) have been lending money to improve social conditions in America’s disadvantaged neighborhoods. Despite their growing importance, however, CDFIs generally have been unable to raise enough capital to meet the potential demand in their underserved markets. The small size of most CDFIs (the average loan fund holds only $7 million in assets) and the risky appearance of their loans (due to the nature of their borrowers and locations) often scare off large institutional lenders and capital market buyers.

To encourage CDFIs to expand their lending capacity through collaborations, in 2014 JPMorgan Chase initiated the PRO Neighborhoods program. In the first year, JPMorgan Chase awarded $33 million to seven groups made up of 26 CDFIs with less than $75 million in net assets. In a new progress report, we found that awardees devised a variety of creative strategies to meet their need for additional capital.

Some of the awardees increased funding to community development projects through leverage or partnerships. In the Adelante Phoenix! collaboration, Raza Development Fund (RDF), committed its own funds to finance the riskiest portion of redevelopment projects (including site acquisition and predevelopment for multifamily housing and commercial space in industrial South Phoenix). By taking the riskiest position, RDF set the stage for other lenders (including traditional lenders) to fund the less risky phases of redevelopment. Several of RDF’s community redevelopment projects would not have been built if RDF had not provided the early financing.

The Expanding Resident Owned Communities collaboration helps residents of mobile-home parks to buy the land they live on. Through this collaboration, ROC USA expanded their community outreach to new areas, and combined their lending power with Mercy Loan Fund and Leviticus Fund. By collaborating on these large and unique loans, the group is able to make more loans while reducing the risk to each group member, thus increasing their ability to preserve this often overlooked source of affordable housing.

The Woodlands Community, where ROC USA helped residents to organize and provided financing for them to buy the land under their homes.

One way to raise capital is to sell loans on the secondary market – a method employed by many financial institutions. As a part of the NALCAB Network collaboration, Affordable Homes of South Texas shared its first-mortgage product and its secondary market buyer with its partner Colorado Housing Enterprises (CHE). Now that it can sell mortgages, CHE has increased the velocity and volume with which it acquires capital and makes loans.

Another collaboration executes a more direct means of raising capital. The Calvert Foundation, one of the emerging Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) partners, sells a bond-like debt security directly to investors and uses the proceeds to fund loans to other CDFIs. Calvert markets these “Community Investment Notes” as a way to get competitive returns while supporting community development and social enterprises. The current interest rate on Calvert’s 10-year note is comparable to current rates for investment-grade corporate bonds. So far, Calvert has raised $3.8 million for its SME partners through the sale of Community Investment Notes.

Kevin Edgmon, owner of Roadskulls V-Twin Performance in Denver, worked as a Harley-Davidson service manager for seven years before opening his own shop in 2014, aided by a loan from Community Reinvestment Fund, an SME partner.

The SME lending partners also obtain capital by selling portions of their loans on the secondary market. They are able to do so in part because they make Small Business Administration (SBA) loans, which are partially guaranteed by the federal government. By selling the guaranteed portions of the SBA loans, the SME partners obtain new capital that they can lend to low- and moderate-income income borrowers. In addition, the SME partners have shortened the time it takes to originate SBA loans by adopting a shared technology platform for SBA loan compliance and origination.

Taken together, the PRO Neighborhoods collaborations demonstrate a wide range of strategies to increase the flow of capital to underserved communities. The early results of their efforts offer promising evidence that collaboration can help CDFIs access capital, expand their lending, and do more to support low-income communities and their residents.

Read PRO Neighborhoods Progress Report 2016

CDFI Cluster Demonstration Project

Alexander Von Hoffman
Senior Research Fellow

In December 2013 the JPMorgan Chase Global Philanthropy Foundation issued a call for proposals for groups of Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to coordinate financial programs to alleviate problems facing low- and moderate-income communities, small businesses, and individuals. In January 2014 the foundation announced awards, totaling $33 million over a three-year period, to seven CDFI collaboratives. At the request of JPMorgan Chase Global Philanthropy, Alexander von Hoffman profiled the characteristics, objectives, methods, and achievements of each of the CDFI collaboratives in the first phases of their work. 

Purpose and Problems of CDFIs

In working- and lower-class neighborhoods in the United States, stability, let alone opportunity, is hard to come by. It can be difficult to get a loan on fair terms to buy a house or expand a business, particularly where African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and immigrants live. In such areas, there is often no transportation to school, jobs, and shops. In some places a store with the necessity of life – food – is nowhere to be found.

Yet conventional banks are often reluctant to make loans for such specialized and sometimes risky purposes. Fortunately, in recent years, federally funded nonprofit lending organizations – known officially as community development financial institutions or CDFIs – have moved in to fill the gap in credit for these needs.

CDFIs are engaged in a demanding business. Their customers may be inexperienced in formal banking or have challenging circumstances – such as a recent home foreclosure, the launch of a new and untested business venture, or even the lack of legal citizenship status.

To provide credit in such situations requires that CDFI officers learn about their clients’ situation and craft appropriate solutions. They might have to customize a loan product or provide personal technical assistance. In more extreme cases, CDFI officers may have to seek out and educate people about the benefits of proper credit.

Given the nature of CDFIs’ business, many of them find it difficult to provide credit on a scale large enough to make a visible impact on low-income communities. Low balance-sheets, lack of operating capital, and insufficient revenue streams can prevent CDFIs from increasing lending activities or expanding their service areas geographically.

Successful CDFIs have found that one of the best ways to overcome these obstacles is to collaborate with other CDFIs.

The First Round of PRO Neighborhoods Awards

To jumpstart collaborations among CDFIs, in January 2014 JP Morgan Chase Global Philanthropy Foundation awarded seven CDFI collaborative clusters, including twenty-seven CDFIs doing widely different work in diverse locales. In the first phase of the foundation’s PRO Neighborhoods program (Partnerships for Raising Opportunity in Neighborhoods) these grants totaled $33 million over a three-year period.

Although the grant period has more than a year to run, our initial evaluation shows the awards have had a striking effect both on the ground and on the CDFIs themselves.

The award capital and its leveraged investment have helped CDFIs strengthen their balance sheets immensely. The seven collaborative clusters have so far raised more than $226 million, or almost seven times the original amount, to carry out their community development programs.

CDFI members of the clusters have ramped up scale of production and expanded their reach across new geographies and types of customers. They have also devised new methods of communication and lending practices suited to the oft-neglected needs of low-income clients.

The CDFI clusters have undertaken a remarkably wide variety of endeavors, including lending to small businesses that are minority-owned or in low-income neighborhoods, helping mobile-home owners purchase and manage their communities, increasing the provision of fresh healthy food, aiding and financing the minority and immigrant owners of low-rent apartment buildings in Chicago, and generating equitable transit-oriented development in the poor and working-class Latino neighborhoods of Phoenix.

The process of collaborating itself helped boost the participating CDFIs. By meeting, discussing, and coordinating with one another, leaders and staff members learned about obstacles in the field, ways to mesh business cultures, and best practices to achieve their desired results.

Having made a great impact on low-income communities and numerous CDFIs that serve such communities, the first round of the PRO Neighborhoods awards has demonstrated that funding CDFI collaborations can be an effective way to support a wide array of underserved populations. Furthermore, the awards is project has helped to lay the foundations for the growth of these CDFIs that will allow them to expand their programs into the future.