Reports and Studies

The NeighborWorks Campaign for Home Ownership 2002, in creating a framework for expanding NeighborWorks organizations' work with first-time homeowners, has also had the positive outcome of pooling the collective talent and creativity within the network of those organizations. The Campaign has given dedicated people who are the wellspring of local organizations' talent a chance to come together, share their wisdom and be inspired by their colleagues' ideas.

These Winning Strategies are a natural response to the enthusiasm and collective thought expressed through the Campaign. Documenting these strategies as case studies has been an important piece of the Campaign's work, in part because these written reports can disperse accounts of successful models to distant locales and a range of audiences. The objectives in publishing the Winning Strategies have been:

1. To describe and record in a straightforward way NeighborWorks organizations' innovative approaches to helping families overcome barriers to home ownership;

2. To illustrate how NeighborWorks organizations are implementing the comprehensive approach to home ownership called Full Cycle Lending, itself formalized under the aegis of the Campaign; and

3. To offer NeighborWorks organizations and others interested in home-ownership promotion a way to learn from and perhaps replicate existing work in the field. Complete info »

Sprawling development patterns have had a direct impact on the neighborhoods that community development corporations (CDCs) seek to serve. While CDCs continue to work arduously to improve conditions for members of their communities, they are often swimming against a formidable tide that is pulling economic, social and political resources toward the fringes of their metropolitan areas. CDCs are not the only organizations concerned with the effects of job and population deconcentration on older parts of a region. Smart Growth advocates, also, seek to combat such patterns. They promote regional land-use planning, development around existing infrastructure, mixed-use and mixed-income development throughout the region, and investment in older-city and inner-suburban neighborhoods. The Smart Growth agenda has gained significant attention and political momentum in recent years. The rising importance of the Smart Growth agenda in shaping state and regional policy provides significant opportunities for CDCs to increase their impact, both from the more-focused perspective of production and organizational programming, as well as from the broader perspective of advocacy. In addition, CDCs have much to offer advocates of the Smart Growth agenda, particularly from the ways in which CDC development provides examples of Smart Growth production, from which Smart Growth advocates might learn.

This paper will identify the opportunities for CDCs to participate in the Smart Growth movement, and strategies they might employ to do so. This report seeks to explore one facet of how CDCs might facilitate the rebirth of cities, by examining the potential relationship between community development and Smart Growth. Complete info »

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 »

The Syracuse Neighborhood Initiative is a collaborative effort between the City of Syracuse, local and national non-profit organizations, and private sector leaders. This partnership was created in response to an urgent challenge issued by Congressman James Walsh (R-Syracuse) in the summer of 1999 -- a challenge to revitalize distressed neighborhoods in Syracuse and reclaim those of the city's 1,031 vacant buildings that are having the greatest blighting impact on these neighborhoods. The Initiative is a city-wide effort, but is focused on revitalizing seven central-city neighborhoods that have suffered a wave of disinvestment and bear much of the burden of the city's abandoned housing stock.

Viable strategies to address the problem of neighborhood decline in Syracuse must reflect an understanding of local housing market dynamics. The Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation undertook this market study to help identify the challenges and opportunities that distressed neighborhoods face in today's housing market, and to suggest a course of action that makes sense given current housing market conditions. To accomplish these goals, the study utilized an extensive mix of secondary data sources, as well as primary data generated through a series of interviews with local informants and a survey of over 6,000 households in seven central city neighborhoods that the City of Syracuse has designated as "revitalization areas" for the Neighborhood Initiative. Complete info »

The NeighborWorks Campaign for Home Ownership 2002, in creating a framework for expanding NeighborWorks organizations' work with first-time homeowners, has also had the positive outcome of pooling the collective talent and creativity within the network. The campaign has given dedicated people who are the well-spring of local organizations' talent a chance to come together, share their wisdom and be inspired by their colleagues' ideas.

Winning Strategies is a natural response to the enthusiasm and collective thought expressed through the campaign. Documenting these strategies as case studies has been an important piece of the campaign's work, in part because these written reports can disperse accounts of successful models to distant locales and a range of audiences. The objectives in publishing Winning Strategies are:

• To describe and record in a straightforward way NeighborWorks organizations' innovative approaches to helping families overcome barriers to home ownership;
• To illustrate how NeighborWorks organizations are implementing the comprehensive approach to home ownership called Full-Cycle LendingSM, itself formalized under the aegis of the campaign; and
• To offer NeighborWorks organizations and others interested in home-ownership promotion a way to learn from and perhaps replicate existing work in the field.

Complete info »

To date, various parties have used the term "predatory lending" to describe a wide range of abuses. Regulators, industry and advocates have not agreed on a single definition, but have used the term individually to refer to different practices and loan terms. This paper describes predatory lending as a set of loan terms and practices that falls between appropriate risk-based pricing by subprime lenders and blatant fraud. Thus, all subprime lending is not predatory, but typically relies on risk-based pricing to serve borrowers who cannot obtain credit in the prime market. The higher degree of risk associated with subprime borrowers requires a higher cost for a subprime loan. At the other end of the spectrum, cases of blatant fraud are predatory, but less common and can generally be combated with current criminal statutes. The most difficult cases are those in which loan terms seem out of line with standard prices. In particular, high-cost loans coupled with unscrupulous practices that pressure a borrower into a loan are predatory. The paper sets forth three potential regulatory and legislative solutions that may address the issue of predatory lending. 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 »

Lists general resources and start-up guides for financial literacy, key organizations and their Web sites, programs of the Cooperative Extension Services, and books and periodicals. Separate listings for home-ownership education, micro-enterprise development and job training and education. 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 »

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 »