Jennifer Brooks, Kasey Wiedrich, Lebaron Sims, Jr. and Solana Rice
Findings from the 2015 Assets & Opportunity Scorecard
One in five households regularly rely on fringe financial services to meet their needs. Nationally, 55.6 percent of consumers have subprime credit scores, meaning they cannot qualify for credit or financing at prime rates. In its 2015 Asset and Opportunity Scorecard, the Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) describes these and other difficulties faced by many Americans and breaks down disparities by race and state. The report also outlines how a combination of state policies such as protections against predatory lending and the establishment of housing trust funds can help families achieve economic security.
Brooks, Jennifer, Wiedrich, Kasey, Sims, Lebaron Jr. and Medina, Jennifer
The Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED) employs its annual Assets and Opportunity Scorecard to assess states’ commitment to reducing financial insecurity. This year’s scorecard measures the pervasiveness and effectiveness of polices that help people learn financial skills, build human capital, increase earnings, create affordable financial products, generate wealth, and protect consumers. CFED ranks states’ outcomes in five issue areas—Financial Assets & Income, Businesses & Jobs, Housing & Homeownership, Health Care, and Education.
The Asset Building Policy Network is a coalition of civil rights and advocacy organizations that seeks to advance federal asset building policy and bolster long-term financial security for low- and moderate-income communities of color. The Network is active in a wide range of activities, from petitioning Congress to remove financial barriers to citizenship and integrate immigrant households into the mainstream financial marketplace to offering technical assistance to small businesses. Read more about Asset Building Policy Network...
Five years after the financial crisis economic inequality in the United States is spiraling to levels not seen since the Gilded Age. While most Americans are experiencing a recovery-less recovery, the top one per cent of earners last year claimed 19.3 per cent of household income, their largest share since 1928. Moreover, income distribution looks positively egalitarian when compared to wealth ownership.
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We are pleased to announce a new intern position at The Democracy Collaborative that will focus on the Community-Wealth.org newsletter and adding web content. For further details, please see the position description below. Remember to submit your applications by August 30!
Building healthy, vibrant and sustainable communities requires more than “bottom up” solutions. The importance of community ownership to ensure that projects that start at the bottom result in lasting community wealth for the people involved is often missing from the discussion. The local foods movement provides examples that illustrate the importance of this ownership principle in practice.
As a privately funded public purpose corporation created by the General Assembly of 1973, Rhode Island Housing provide low-interest loans, grants, education, and assistance to ensure that all people can afford a quality home that meets their needs.To achieve their goal they offer lending programs, housing related education programs, and disperse grants and subsidies for those with the greatest needs.In the past 20 years, the coalition has awarded more than $75 million in federal HOME funds to both for- and non-profit developers, which led to the creation of 3,857 affordable homes in 509 developments across the state.
Heather McCulloch is an asset policy consultant based in San Francisco, California. She is the author of a number of reports on community wealth building, including Promoting Economic Security for Working Families: State Asset-Building Initiatives, which reviews state coalition policy efforts in California, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Read more about Heather McCulloch...
