Part of training materials prepared for the CDFI Fund and the Opportunity Finance Network (OFN) for the Financing Healthy Food Options initiative. The initiative was designed to build the CDFI industry’s capacity to finance projects that increase healthy food options in underserved communities. Based on Reinvestment Fund’s healthy food financing experience, we developed a curriculum for training workshops and created an implementation handbook advising CDFIs how to underwrite supermarkets and capitalize such initiatives.
With grants from the Open Society Institute and the William Penn Foundation, Reinvestment Fund assessed the outcomes and impacts of the Philadelphia Residential Mortgage Foreclosure Diversion Program. As part of the study, we reviewed Court Orders on nearly 16,000 cases handled by the Diversion Program from inception through March of 2011 and conducted interviews with homeowners as well as experts.
Reinvestment Fund’s 2011 Limited Supermarket Access (LSA) analysis estimates that 24.6 million Americans live in areas with inadequate access to supermarkets. This analysis was conducted with support from the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund), as part of its Financing Healthy Food Options Track, in partnership with Opportunity Finance Network. Read the summary report to understand the analysis and read highlights or download the full report.
The Redevelopment and Housing Authorities of the County of Cumberland (RHACC) contracted with Reinvestment Fund to gather and analyze housing and economic data descriptive of Cumberland and Perry counties. The data is tabulated and mapped / charted in this presentation. A summary of the report is also available.
Findings of a study conducted for the School District of Philadelphia designed to estimate the percent of Philadelphia public school students who are income-qualified for free or reduced price lunches. Eligibility was based on the United States Department of Agriculture’s “Income Eligibility Guidelines.” Both the report and a summary version can be found here.
Commissioned by the Federal Home Loan Bank of Pittsburgh (FHLB) and the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency, Reinvestment Fund studied the impact of changes in the housing and mortgage markets on Hispanics in Pennsylvania and Delaware. The analysis focuses in Berks, Lancaster, Lehigh, Northampton and Philadelphia counties in Pennsylvania and New Castle County in Delaware. Together these counties are home to more than 60% of the Hispanics in the region. Also included in this study was a review of the available housing counseling resources, and counseling specifically available to those persons for whom Spanish is their primarily language. Reinvestment Fund’s research partner on this project is the National Council of La Raza.
Analysis of Baltimore’s commercial real estate markets conducted with the City of Baltimore as part of its efforts to develop a citywide Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy (CEDS). Reinvestment Fund helped create a method for indexing all of Baltimore’s commercial corridors to provide the public and private sectors an analytic tool to understand the nature and strengths of each.
Presentation shared at the Wachovia Regional Foundation Grantee Conference. The presentation, given by Ira Goldstein, compares today’s economic environment to past years, highlighting unemployment rates, personal income, and median home purchase mortgage amounts.
Presentation by Ira Goldstein given at the “Reclaiming Vacant Properties: Building Leadership to Restore Communities” conference in Louisville, Kentucky. The session “Property Interventions and Restoring Neighborhood Confidence” looked at real life examples of neighborhood confidence-building strategies. Dr. Goldstein’s presentation focused on the West Oak Lane Neighborhood in Philadelphia.
Presentation by Ira Goldstein given at the “Philadelphia’s Vital Neighborhoods: Taking a Closer Look at Why Middle-Income Markets are Critical to Our City’s Future” convening hosted by Neighborhoods Now. The presentation offers an approach to understanding how to identify and deploy resources to the city of Philadelphia’s vital, middle-market neighborhoods in an effort to preserve the stability and enhance attractiveness to existing and new Philadelphia residents.
Ira Goldstein’s presentation shared at the Federal Reserve System’s Community Affairs Officers Conference held at the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. The presentation was part of a panel discussion outlining the current challenges in stabilizing neighborhoods impacted by high foreclosure rates.
Ira Goldstein’s presentation at the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency’s Housing Forum. The session “The Road Ahead: Rental Housing Needs and Markets” looked at rental housing needs, population trends and examines new strategies that communities are implementing to leverage properties as assets. This presentation highlights PA population trends and the housing needs for different income levels.
Study of mortgage foreclosure filings in Maryland on behalf of the Baltimore Homeownership Preservation Coalition (BHPC). Led by Ira Goldstein, the study provides an in-depth look at the City of Baltimore, Montgomery County and Prince George’s County. A detailed executive summary is also available for download.
Brief authored by Susan Seifert and Mark Stern, University of Pennsylvania’s Social Impact of the Arts Project, uses a social policy lens to look at the impact and potential of the creative economy for urban neighborhoods. While the growth of the creative sector is helping to regenerate regional economies, it is also exacerbating economic inequality and social exclusion among urban residents. This brief reviews current trends and proposes a new model–a neighborhood-based creative economy–as a way to move the 21st century city toward shared prosperity and social integration.
Brief authored by Susan Seifert and Mark Stern, University of Pennsylvania’s Social Impact of the Arts Project, uses the Philadelphia experience to explore whether culture can help engage new immigrants with other social institutions. The brief looks at the role of migrant cultural expression in urban neighborhoods, existing institutional barriers, and how migrants’ adaptation to their social marginality is changing “mainstream” culture. A century ago, the settlement house movement used culture to link immigrants to opportunities in education, employment, and health care. Can the arts play a similar role in Philadelphia today?
Brief authored by Susan Seifert and Mark Stern, University of Pennsylvania’s Social Impact of the Arts Project, uses existing research on urban culture and community arts to make a case for culture-based revitalization from the bottom up. This brief highlights a particular kind of social network—the geographically-defined networks created by the presence of a density of cultural assets in particular neighborhoods. Because “natural” cultural districts evolve through the self-organized efforts of local players, the challenge for policy-makers is how to do sensitive social investment that maximizes community benefits.
Resulting from Reinvestment Fund’s collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania’s Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP) and the Rockefeller Foundation, this report demonstrates that the intrinsic value of arts and culture can be a key ingredient in neighborhood revitalization by nurturing a wide range of local assets, building social capital and promoting entrepreneurial and civic growth. The publication calls for investing in community-based creative activity to enhance its place-making role and potential, and offers investment ideas for three specific areas: creativity, development and knowledge.
Resulting from Reinvestment Fund’s collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania’s Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP) and the Rockefeller Foundation, this publication provides a summary of the report on Creativity and Neighborhood Development: Strategies for Community Investment.
Study examines whether (or the extent to which) there are economic reasons for the lack of supermarkets in distressed urban areas, such as location-dependent expense differences between urban and suburban locations. We also explore how various financing strategies help to mitigate those expense differences. Finally, we assess some of the impacts of supermarket development in urban and other underserved places.
Study of mortgage foreclosure filings in Newark, NJ for the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs. This report distills recent trends in mortgage origination, delinquency and foreclosures in Newark from a variety of data sources. It provides a context of changes in the local real estate market to assist policymakers design an appropriate set of responses to counter the adverse impacts of foreclosures in Newark.
Presentation by Ira Goldstein about the Market Value Analysis (MVA). The presentation was part of a session at the Federal Reserve Board of Philadelphia’s 2008 Conference, “Reinventing Older Communities: How Does Place Matter?”
An increase in the delinquency rate for all mortgages in the District of Columbia over 2007 have resulted in more home foreclosures. Foreclosures can have a negative imact on neighborhoods and the entire city. This study offers an overview of subprime lending; a look at subprime lending in DC; and recommendations for how DC can help current and future borrowers. The study was conducted for the Department of Insurance, Securities and Banking.
Study of mortgage foreclosures in New Jersey for the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs and the Ford Foundation. Our singular purpose was to add a measure of systematic and objective data analysis to the mortgage foreclosure problem facing New Jersey. As is often the case, by the time the study is complete, the problem is not what it was when the study began. That is uniquely true in this instance. The overall magnitude of the mortgage foreclosure problem, nationally and in New Jersey, has increased substantially over the last 18 months.
Detailed local case study of predatory lending that includes the analysis of complete mortgage and sale histories for 15,500 properties in the city of Philadelphia from 2000 to 2003 as well as interviews with a broad range of subject experts.
Study for Housing Opportunities, Inc., with funding from The Heinz Endowments. This report seeks to answer critical questions regarding the low rates of African American homeownership in Southwestern Pennsylvania.
This report argues that Pennsylvania needs a comprehensive performance management approach to its workforce programs so that they can be effectively evaluated and improved. The report proposes an evaluation framework and a model for an Annual Report on Pennsylvania’s Workforce Investment System.
Metropolitan Philadelphia is a place with extraordinary assets. It should be a region of choice, but it’s not. Our region has seen minimal population growth and alarmingly low job growth. What’s growing most rapidly is sprawl, and it’s hurting our region. It’s time to think differently and make some big, positive changes.
This report provides quantitative and qualitative data to forecast employer hiring needs in information technology and customer service occupations. It concludes that both these occupations cut across all industries and that the demand for these workers would continue based on favorable economic growth.
A discussion of the social and economic trends that influence poverty alleviation policies and strategies, the result of these trends, the argument that community development financial institutions (CDFIs) can be one source from which regional civic intermediaries can be created, and examples of CDFI regional intermediary roles.