Reports and Studies

With a long history in the United States and elsewhere, employer-assisted housing can be a cost-effective, corporate business strategy. This heavily researched paper examines how partnerships between employers and community-based development organizations can implement such a strategy effectively. The paper was written as part of Neighborhood Reinvestment's Fellowship Program for Emerging Leaders in Community and Economic Development. Complete info »

This paper examines social entrepreneurship from a community-development perspective. The target audience is community-development nonprofit organizations. The paper begins by contextualizing social entrepreneurship in community development and creating an analytical framework in which to think about efforts of organizations to integrate entrepreneurial and businesslike thinking. The paper presents key findings regarding both earned-income activities and strategic alliances as options for these organizations, as well as 10 key issues that arose as factors that impact their successful implementation. Information was gathered through a literature review, 29 interviews of practitioners, policymakers and academics and a survey of 59 community-development nonprofit organizations. Complete info »

An increasing share of lower-income families, the same population targeted by community-development organizations, are opting to live in housing that was built off-site in a factory to meet the performance standards of the national HUD manufactured-housing code. However, most community-development practitioners are just beginning to come to terms with the implications of manufactured housing for their work.

This paper explores advantages and disadvantages of manufactured housing for those entities whose mission is community development and asset building. Several challenges are presented for practitioners: First, working to educate consumers while also creating financing processes that ensure manufactured home buyers obtain credit on the best terms for which they can qualify. Second, using the increased scrutiny under the Manufactured Housing Improvement Act of 2000 to advocate for states to enforce more rigorous installation standards and increased accountability. Third, working to overcome land-use controls which prevent manufactured homes from being placed in communities in need of affordable housing, as well as areas with more potential for appreciation. Fourth, working with designers and planners to develop innovative designs and housing developments, while maintaining manufactured housing's affordability advantages.

Finally, equal effort must be devoted to address the difficult conditions of many lower-income people -- owners and renters alike -- living in older, and often deteriorating, mobile homes. While a few of these families and individuals could be relocated to new and better quality homes with the help of subsidies, resource limitations suggest the need to create cost-effective methods to eliminate health and safety problems by upgrading or rehabilitating this extremely affordable element of the nation's housing inventory.

As a companion to this paper, an exhaustive literature review has been compiled. Complete info »

While the United States faces one of the most significant housing crises in the nation's history, many forget that Indian housing has been in crisis for generations. This report seeks to take some important steps toward a future where safe, affordable, and decent housing is available to Native people in numbers sufficient to meet the housing needs that exist in Indian country today. This study provides first-of-its-kind analysis of a critical barrier to homeownership on Indian lands. It analyzes the success of tribes that have taken responsibility (in whole or in part) for administering the land title process on tribal lands. It also addresses the challenges those tribes have faced. Section 1 outlines the significant obstacles to homeownership strategies for Native communities. In Section 2, the report delves into the experiences of five tribes that are managing aspects of the land title process in their communities. In Section 3, the report details findings from a site visit and in-depth interview at the Bureau of Indian Affairs regional offices in Portland, Oregon and Aberdeen, South Dakota. Finally, Section 4 of the report draws conclusions and makes specific recommendations about the future of land title processing on Indian lands. This report is the culmination of two years of research funded by NeighborWorks America and Stewart Title Company. Complete info »

Affordability periods will end for the first 23,000 Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) units in 2002. Their expiration will launch a new round of preservation activity. The LIHTC portfolio now stands at approximately 750,000 units, increasing by 62,500 a year. By 2002, the portfolio will include almost one million units -- comparable in size to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) affordable-housing portfolio now facing its own preservation challenges. Thanks to the preservation awareness prompted by concerns over HUD's portfolio, Congress has promoted tax-credit preservation through a 15-year affordability extension passed in 1989, as have some states through a variety of allocation and financing tools. Yet for these efforts actually to result in preservation of affordable housing, a wide range of players -- including state and federal legislators, state housing agencies, local housing administrators, investors and owners -- still face the tasks of assessing the economics of preservation and implementing appropriate strategies.

If continued affordability is a goal, it is now time to prepare. This paper outlines the issues -- including data availability, monitoring and enforcement needs, financial resources and response coordination -- surrounding preservation of tax-credit properties, with the aim of initiating discussion between the housing and policy communities prior to 2002. Complete info »

Building wealth through home ownership is a goal supported from the White House to local community development corporations. Great strides have been made in removing barriers and creating opportunities for home ownership. Unfortunately, this good work and the equity of thousands of homeowners are being stripped away through predatory lending practices. The wealth of low-income communities, in the form of home equity that homeowners have worked for years to build, is being siphoned off through unscrupulous lending practices that focus on moderate- to low-income and minority communities. Complete info »

Financial fitness education is a critical piece of community development, given today's socioeconomic climate consisting of the deregulation of government institutions and the increasing complexity of financial services. These changes are occurring when personal savings are low and bankruptcy rates are high, with 1.35 million filings in 1997.[1] Twelve million households, one-half of which receive public assistance, do not have bank accounts.[2] Subsequently, in an ever more difficult financial system through which to navigate, there remains a significant number of novice consumers, who would benefit greatly from financial fitness education.

The financial system is not only complex but also laden with institutional barriers and potential pitfalls. Over the years, access to legitimate financial institutions and credit in low-income neighborhoods has become increasingly limited, whereby local bank branches have been replaced by expensive fringe banking outlets, such as check-cashing stores, payday loan outlets and pawnshops.

Moreover, some residents face cultural or language barriers that prevent them from fully accessing appropriate financial services. Other dangers include consumer scams and schemes, as well as predatory lending practices -- high-cost loans targeted to people who cannot afford to repay them. Financial fitness education can help families become more aware of common pitfalls and thus avoid them while helping them to learn the financial management and planning skills needed to make the most of their income, savings and assets. Such education is vital for low- and moderate-income families who are fulfilling basic needs currently but are precariously positioned to overestimate the reach of their income, with little or no savings as a cushion.

Recent changes in the national economy and public policy have led to a rise in the number of organizations developing and delivering financial fitness education. Approximately 20 formal curricula are in circulation around the country, being used by Cooperative Extension and education organizations; government agencies; consumer, nonprofit and community organizations; as well as private financial institutions and credit agencies. These organizations often share the objective of helping people to choose and use financial services successfully.

Developing an effective financial fitness education program that will help local constituents move beyond fulfilling basic needs to accumulating savings -- and even assets -- while avoiding all of the perils along the way requires careful planning. Since each community has a unique target population, goals and resources, there cannot be a "one size fits all" program. Rather, an organization needs to develop a program that matches its goals along with the needs of the target population. This start-up guide is designed to help NeighborWorks organizations analyze the local need and their internal capacity for developing a financial fitness education program to increase consumers' money management skills, and in turn, to enable previously underserved markets to attain homeownership. Complete info »

In an effort to provide an overview of best practices around foreclosure intervention efforts, interviews were conducted with lenders and loan servicers that have been actively engaged in efforts to support foreclosure intervention services and partnerships with independent, third-party counseling agencies. Most agree that in order to better serve homeowners experiencing mortgage delinquency, increased effort should be made not only to reach those borrowers but also at the same time to provide them with access to quality information and counseling services as well as appropriate workout solutions delivered consistently and thoughtfully.

This is an industry that has rapidly grown and experienced substantial innovation in the last several years. Servicers and nonprofit service providers committed to reducing foreclosure rates understand the importance of building relationships with each other in order to serve their customer -- the homeowner -- and most strategies undertaken are the result of efforts that require partnership. Complete info »

This report is a case study of a scalable replacement program for substandard housing, particularly pre-1976 manufactured housing, developed by Frontier Housing, a member of the NeighborWorks(R) Network based in Morehead, Kentucky. Frontier Housing's Manufactured Housing Done Right(TM) model offers a real opportunity to improve living conditions, reduce energy consumption and protect the environment. Decades of debate have not found a more cost-effective alternative for providing single family homeownership for low-income people living in the vast rural areas of the country. Complete info »

NeighborWorks America created the Learning Center Consortium as a way to share best practices and develop standards so that learning centers become as effective as possible. Sustainable funding strategies are the cornerstone of advancing the impact of learning centers upon the communities they serve. This paper reviews the resident funding strategies of twelve learning center consortium members. Complete info »