Come to the national online event for community, policy, government, business and foundation leaders who work for fairness in lending, housing and business, and to make all Americans equal parts of the formula for national success.
Join us online for two jam-packed days of keynotes and networking, with more programming before and after:
Preconference: Advocacy Week, April 26-30
Postconference: Just Economy Sessions, May 5-14
Pulitzer-winning investigative civil rights reporter at the New York Times
Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
(D-OH), Chair the Senate’s Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee.
(D-MA), Member of the Senate’s Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee.
This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, our Hill Day is not only all virtual, but it is an entire Advocacy Week April 26-30.
This is a special event that is available only to NCRC members, but we want you there! Join NCRC today and then register for the conference. Please remember to indicate that you want to attend Advocacy Week on your registration. If there is no representation from a state or congressional district, we may be unable to schedule a meeting.
| Date | States |
| Monday, April 26 | AL, AR, CO, MD, MN, NE, NH, NM,SC, TX |
| Tuesday, April 27 | DC, HI, IN, MA, ME, MS, NC, NV, OR, VA, WA, WI |
| Wednesday, April 28 | AK, AZ, DE, FL, GA, LA, NJ, RI, TN |
| Thursday, April 29 | CA, CT, IA, IL, KY, MI, MO, NY, OH, PA |
| Friday, April 30 | PR |
1:30 PM EDT
Senator Elizabeth Warren
(D-MA), Member of the Senate’s Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee
2:15 PM EDT
Break
2:20 PM EDT
Jerome Powell
Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
3:00 PM EDT
Networking
3:30 PM EDT
Break
3:35 PM EDT
Lightning Sessions
4:05 PM EDT
Marcia Fudge
Secretary of Housing and Urban Development
1:00 PM EDT
Welcome
1:15 PM EDT
Senator Sherrod Brown
(D-OH), Chair the Senate’s Banking, Housing & Urban Affairs Committee
2:15 PM EDT
Break
2:20 PM EDT
Nikole Hannah-Jones
Pulitzer-winning investigative civil rights reporter at the New York Times
3:00 PM EDT
Networking
3:40 PM EDT
Break
3:50 PM EDT
Lightning Sessions
4:20 PM EDT
John Taylor
President and Founder, NCRC
U.S. birth rates continue to decline, and are at their lowest rate in 35 years. In contrast, immigrant related gains accounted for 55% of U.S. population growth between 1965 and 2015, and are expected to account for 88% through 2065. It is clear that native birth rates alone will not support U.S. growth and economic demands. This session explores solutions and a path forward for solving the immigration crisis that has long been a divisive issue.
Come hear a short presentation by a NCRC staffer, who has protected and advanced CRA from when they were a young adult to now at middle age (more than 20 years!). The 20 minute talk will capture the major technical but vital CRA reform elements ranging from assessment areas, data collection, the structure of CRA exams, asset thresholds and more. They will also make a case for an interagency rule. As many questions as time allows will then be answered by the presenter. You don’t want to miss this TED talk!
Focused on the NCRC Redlining and COVID report, this panel discussion will incorporate speakers from NCRC as well as public health and community investment speakers to help the audience understand the relationship between health and investment.
Are the alarms being sounded by community advocates about the profound impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on work, and is the potential for social unrest exaggerated or on point? Four million drivers may lose work when driverless vehicles are perfected and approved. Blockchain and AI innovations are threatening real estate and other industries with massive job loss potential. Yet, today, over seven million jobs remain unfilled because America’s workforce training systems fail to link interested workers with the appropriate training and education needed to fill those jobs. This workshop presents both a view of the anticipated job dislocation and promising answers to the technical challenge of linking workers to new skills in ways that meet industries’ real time needs. Hear how the Godzilla of “stackable credentials” can help defeat the Kong of job dislocation in a post-pandemic world.
With newly appointed Secretary Marcia Fudge at the helm, the United States Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) has key goals to restore enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, COVID-19 response and recovery, and closing the homeownership gap. Attendees will meet newly appointed officials at HUD. Presenters will discuss HUD’s latest policy changes and priorities to support the housing community. Stakeholders will learn how their organizations can support the Biden Administration’s aim to Build Back Better.
Nationally, healthcare access and cost are growing concerns for many Americans. In 2019, 28.9 million people were uninsured, an increase of more than one million from 2018. Moreover, an October 2020 report estimated that at least 7.7 million workers lost jobs with employer-based insurance, meaning that approximately 14.6 million individuals lost health insurance amidst the global pandemic. Nearly 1 in 6 Americans was contacted by a debt collector in the past year over a health care bill.
Medical debt disproportionately affects patients from low-income households and communities of color. However, 36.2% of African Americans had medical debts compared with 22.9% of Whites and a higher total number of debts overall (2.17 vs 1.92). They were also more likely than Whites to be adjudicated for the same debt.
This session will examine medical debt and the disparate impact of this debt on White and Black communities, as well as policies, programs and campaigns at the national and state level to improve the health and wealth of low-income and working families.
The Trump-appointed leadership of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) took a number of steps to weaken the Community Reinvestment Act, propagated high-cost lending through risky “rent-a-bank” arrangements, proposed a dangerous and ill-conceived “Fair Access” rule, and even attempted to redefine what is considered a bank. New leadership at the agency has the opportunity to reverse many of these concerning actions and take other much-needed steps to ensure that the OCC fulfills its statutory mandate to ensure fair access to financial services, credit and capital. This panel will lay out how the incoming leadership can reset the agenda at the OCC and put the agency back on track.
Six years ago, NCRC established its GROWTH fund to focus on helping create homeownership opportunities for LMI persons or to help improve properties in LMI neighborhoods. As GROWTH has evolved, there are significant and important lessons to be learned from its work with municipalities, nonprofits and land banks. This session will share strategies and homegrown solutions to address the inventory crisis through collaboration and partnerships.
In 2020, NCRC released the Racial and Ethnic Representation Investment (RERI) Framework, a report detailing key steps to improve a bank’s racial and ethnic demographics within their internal workforce, and methods to improve a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. This session will consist of stakeholders from Beneficial State Foundation and City First Bank who will share their first-hand experience with challenges and opportunities in achieving racial and ethnic representation in the workforce as well as promising practices in implementation. Attendees will leave the session with a toolkit of information on evaluating racial and ethnic representation in the workforce. what focus areas to advocate for in the realm of DEI initiatives, and equitable models for bank or foundation investments in communities of color.
COVID-19 exacerbated the health and economic wealth gaps that we already knew persisted from decades of redlining and other discriminatory policies that have created hyper-segregated communities with concentrated poverty. Local governments were challenged with identifying revitalization strategies to address barriers to economic mobility with increased attention placed on the intersection of gender, race, health and poverty. This session will focus on how local government professionals are leading through the pandemic while shifting priorities to place equity front and center in their recovery efforts.
Few mainstream financial institutions have adequately or equitably met the needs of low-income, low-wealth and historically marginalized communities and many institutions have pricing models, structures or delivery methods that result in negative outcomes for underserved communities. But what is a fair price, interest rate, or fee? In this moment, when there is a heightened sense of urgency for financial and economic inclusion, this question and more will be considered during a facilitated conversation between financial justice advocates and mission-aligned bank practitioners. This panel discussion – with representatives from RSF Social Finance, Beneficial State Bank and the Center for Responsible Lending – will explore potential solutions that may be helpful in informing how mainstream financial institutions address these pressing questions.
Older adults are entering into retirement with higher rates of financial security compared to previous generations. However, future generations of retirees are currently experiencing higher rates of economic insecurity due to growing economic inequities and the frequency of national crises that cause a volatile market. Also, as future generations of older adults become more technology savvy, the need for a combination of advanced digital tools and community programs increases. And finally, we must provide programs to protect the wealth of older adults.
Using a lifespan approach, this session will examine the relationship of the effects of economic inequities experienced earlier in life and later life financial outcomes with a special focus on racial/ethnic wealth disparities. We will discuss the National Council on Aging’s approach to address the growing need of technology through the creation of Age Well Planner, a digital tool that provides older adults with the tools and resources to improve economic security. We will also examine some programs provided by the American Bankers Association Foundation to help prevent elder financial abuse and exploitation.
This session is part of NCRC’s Age-Friendly Banking Convening and is brought to you in partnership with JP Morgan Chase.
Black, Latinx and Indigenous founders receive less than 10% of venture capital funding combined. One bright spot: entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) like incubators and accelerators are playing an ever-growing role in supporting, funding and sustaining innovators of color. But these ESOs are chronically under-appreciated, under-supported, underestimated and underfunded.
rESOurce, co-led by Village Capital and The Black Innovation Alliance, is a nationwide project to support ESOs led by and focused on founders of color. This panel will share what we’re seeing on the ground from the ecosystem leaders who are working to build a new and more inclusive economy that empowers founders of color.
With the legalization of cannabis in more and more states nationwide, banks and other financial institutions are gearing up for potential massive involvement with the cannabis industry through the SAFE Banking Act. This, however, does not reverse the negative racial disparities of cannabis arrests and convictions, which historically occurred in areas where people of color lived. In order to improve social equity, we need to create a just economy by repairing this damage through equitable licensing practices, ensuring the industry reflects the local community, addressing financial barriers to market entry, and reinvesting tax revenue into communities directly harmed by this injustice.
The number of Americans aged 62 and older using payday lending has tripled in the past five years with annual percentage rates as high as 372%.
In response to this staggering figure and the desperation resulting from COVID-19 in 2020, HUD-approved housing and financial counseling agency, Empowering and Strengthening Ohio’s People (ESOP) launched a 0% interest, no-fee Senior Small Dollar Loan for people aged 55+.
Backed by funds from bank partners, the loan ranges up to $1,000 and is designed to help older adults weather COVID-19 financial hardships without getting trapped in the vicious cycle of payday loans. ESOP’s zero-interest loan can be used for rent, mortgage payments, property taxes, insurance, home repairs, utilities, transportation, medication, and other basic needs.
To break the payday lending cycle, borrowers also receive financial capability (knowledge, skills and access to resources) including one-on-one financial counseling for help in decreasing expenses, increasing income, budgeting, benefits enrollment, matched savings, free income tax preparation, behavioral health services, and more.
But a troubling red flag is that today 67% of the applicants get declined because they can’t afford to pay back the loan principal at a maximum $20.83 a month over four years. The fact that prospective older adult clients don’t have enough income to pay on a $1000 zero-interest loan over 48 months is an indicator in and of itself of the challenges our low-to-moderate income seniors face.
This session will tell you how ESOP approached bank partners for help launching this loan, what is working with the program, and what changes we are making to serve more older adults in 2021 based on the lessons learned so far.
ESOP will share our findings as we endeavor to answer the question: How can we provide older adults with immediate financial relief and also improve their long-term financial capability?
This session is part of NCRC’s Age-Friendly Banking Convening and is brought to you in partnership with JP Morgan Chase.
The biggest key to nonprofit growth and expansion is access to low interest capital. Black-led nonprofits have additional hurdles in accessing the necessary capital to expand their mission. To help eliminate some of the barriers, Urban Land Conservancy (ULC), a Denver-based nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving, developing, stewarding and managing permanently affordable housing and shared office space for nonprofits and mission-minded organizations, partnered with The Denver Foundation to provide low-interest loans to local Black-led/-serving nonprofits in conjunction with the Foundation’s Black Resilience in Colorado Fund (BRIC), which offers grants to Black-led/-serving organization in Metro Denver. Representatives from both organizations will share more about the collective impact they anticipate from this collaboration.
This session will also highlight some of the historic and modern-day (some one-and-the-same) barriers to capital expansion for Black-led/serving organizations and detail solutions to change this reality.
COVID-19 has underscored the lessons learned by many affected by natural disasters: communities and organizations remain unprepared and their response and recovery systems are in need of reform. As climate change continues to create more frequent and more devastating disasters, rural communities face unique challenges that require innovative solutions. Most often communities of color are hit the hardest and are taking the longest to rebuild. Federal disaster funding, which has traditionally been the main source of financial support following a disaster, is slow to obtain and insufficient.
This session will cover effective disaster responses and best practices for community development organizations. Attendees will walk away with concrete examples of climate change and learn how best to plan a response to natural disasters in low-income and communities of color, learn how to access financing in a timely and comprehensive way, and receive resources for planning and responding to disasters.
A just economy requires informed communities and trusted sources of news and information. But in communities across the nation, local journalism has collapsed. Commercial newspapers have been decimated by the migration of local advertising to national and global platforms, especially Google and Facebook. Between 2008 and 2019, U.S. newspapers shed half their newsroom employees. Like food and banking deserts, news deserts are spreading. At the same time, disinformation, conspiracies and deepened political divisions, amplified through weaponized social media platforms, have eroded trust in news and in journalists themselves. This session will explore the role of local journalism in community wealth and prosperity, and how to spark more public and private sector investment in trusted, fact-based journalism. We will also explore scenarios for the Community Reinvestment Act to spark greater investment in local journalism.
Women entrepreneurs own more than 12 million businesses or 40% of all United States businesses, yet lack critical access to capital and the infrastructure needed to grow and build their businesses. The pandemic has highlighted these challenges, pointing out the funding discrepancies for women-owned small businesses. In this panel, speakers will provide a summary on the current state of women’s entrepreneurship and recommendations for a new path forward.
Caregivers have long been the silent and undervalued backbone of the economy, providing nearly $500 billion in unpaid labor. COVID-19 has laid bare how essential caregiving is, and how inequitable supports for care are – caregivers are majority women, and care workers are majority women of color and immigrants. Family caregivers face tremendous economic hardship, often paying out-of-pocket for home care that isn’t covered by Medicare or spending down their assets so their loved ones can receive Medicaid, while care workers do some of our nation’s most important work for poverty wages.
This session will show why home and community-based care is at the center of any just and equitable economic recovery from the pandemic, and key to equitable development in the future. America is aging, and we are facing down a generation-defining economic shift that has already hit women and communities of color hard. We must act now to seed a recovery that is immediate, sustainable and just. Investing in caregiving and care infrastructure will have swift and immediate economic impacts because it creates jobs quickly, spurs job growth in other sectors, and ensures financial stability for Black and immigrant women who disproportionately provide direct care for others as well as their own families.
This session will offer a holistic view of what it will look like to build the just, equitable care infrastructure that everyone, including historically marginalized BIPOC communities, need, while providing a visionary look at what our nation could look like when we support, value and visibilize all of our care needs. We will examine how care fits into recovery in the next year, while also looking forward to how this issue will shape community investment, equitable job creation and retirement security for the future, including practical steps around research and development, policy and systems change.
The word “GameStop” no longer means a place to trade used video games – it now describes a take-from-the-rich give-to-the-poor moment where Redditors used fintech investment apps to upend Wall Street. We will move past the simple reports of winners and losers to explore how fintech is changing investing, how some apps use behavioral economics to encourage trading, and where policymakers should intervene. We will hear from consumer advocates, Congressional staff, and industry on the lesson of GameStop and what it says about the future of fintech.
Minorities are regularly impacted by environmental disasters because toxic sites have been purposefully and repeatedly placed in or near their communities for decades. It is often a clear case of systemic racism in America. The panel will discuss examples of how these communities are impacted, historical inequalities in state and federal oversight and efforts to clean up toxic sites and provide redress to those impacted.
Each year brings new research and attention to the connection between economic security and physical health, and 2020 certainly brought that and more. Local leaders are clear on their community’s needs and are actively combating disparities, yet the greatest impact comes from community investments made by anchor institutions such as banks and health care systems. Aligning resources can be a game-changer in the fight to reduce health and economic disparities as they typically reinforce each other. This session will highlight recent research from the Federal Reserve’s report Exploring Hospital Investments in Community Development, outlining opportunities that exist for collaboration between community development and hospitals and health systems. Subsequently, we’ll provide a presentation from Build Healthy Places Network on a framework and scan of policies that create a more conducive environment for collaboration across sectors and ways in which we can incentivize healthcare to consider community development organizations as important partners in shaping policy and investments in social determinants of health. This interactive session will culminate in an open discussion and breakout between community development leaders, hospitals and health system innovators, and other community stakeholders.
The pandemic’s impact on employment fell most significantly on business sectors with a disproportionately larger share of low-wage employees. These workers came into the pandemic with fewer resources, and when millions lost work, the scope of hunger skyrocketed across the country. Feeding America estimates that the number of people visiting food banks increased 55% since March 2020. Forty-two million Americans face the prospect of not having enough food. Participation in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the federal government’s primary means to address hunger in the U.S., increased by 5 million households last year.
The good news is that the American Rescue Plan Act will increase the maximum SNAP benefit by 15% through September 30, 2021, but the bad news is that the average monthly per-person benefit is still only $161.
In this session, you will hear perspectives from the leaders of regional food bank programs and other policy leaders who pursue anti-hunger agendas in state and federal legislatures. The new administration has already demonstrated that it wants to take dramatic steps to reduce hunger in America. Attend this panel to hear first-hand reports on how reforms to SNAP could lead to long-term successes in efforts to reduce hunger in our communities.
Experience a screening of this new documentary from the Bertelsmann Foundation and filmmaker Sam George. Featuring several NCRC staff, this documentary tracks the ongoing gentrification and displacement of Washingtonians in the midst of the George Floyd protests.
Each year, the Department of Labor spends billions of dollars on workforce programs that on the whole fail racial minorities, and specifically do not work for state-run one-stop employment centers. Colleges largely ignore cultural experience and background. In response, Black and women-led organizations and organized labor are creating new models of job training centers and finding unique funding sources for them.
With a new administration in place, fair housing advocates must decide on their new priorities. What policies will they advocate for? What cases will they pursue? And in the midst of a pandemic, how will they achieve their goals?
The landscape of fair housing has changed drastically just in the past year. COVID-19 has hit communities of color especially hard. The economic cost of COVID-19 has exacerbated the segregation that was already rampant in America’s cities and suburbs, and its impact will remain even after the pandemic.
Nonprofits have been forced to find new ways to serve their communities. Outreach and education have become more difficult. Just staying afloat financially has become a struggle for many organizations. Our panelists will speak about how they are continuing their work and maintaining their focus.
Amidst the upheaval of COVID-19, there is a new landscape in the federal government, as well. With a new president and new Congressional leaders, many advocates are hoping for major action on issues like the foreclosure crisis, desegregation efforts and discriminatory algorithms used in mortgage lending. This session is an opportunity for advocates to share their ideas, and decide what will be on the top of their agendas.
In this session, we will trace the historical roots of racism and its impact on people of color, from the weathering effect of discrimination to racially biased health, government and educational systems that have a physical trickle down effect from generation to generation. We will also circle back to today’s current chasm in health and health care based on race and how we can impact its effect by addressing drivers of health.
This session focuses on the implementation of strategies that increase the integration of formerly incarcerated consumers into the financial mainstream, with the ultimate goal of building assets among Deep South low-wealth residents. According to the Sentencing Project, three Deep South states in our footprint are among the top five states with the highest rates of incarceration. Like elsewhere in the country, due to the racial inequities embedded into our criminal justice system, the incarcerated population is disproportionately Black and Latino. Additionally, the Deep South carries over $4 billion in federal criminal justice related debt alone. This session pulls on the knowledge of panelists including those impacted to assist attendees in advocating for the removal of policies and regulations that act as barriers to opportunity for formerly incarcerated people.
There are many key issues that connect fair housing and tenant advocates to environmental and health justice such as lead exposure, Superfund sites, asthma risks, substandard conditions, and natural disaster preparedness. Panelists will set the context by describing the relationship of racial segregation and discriminatory land use practices to environmental exposures, in particular focusing on the risks faced by people in subsidized housing. We will address these specific issues of concern, with an eye toward both building capacity for community-based advocacy and identifying needed federal reforms.
We will also highlight key findings from a recent Shriver Center and Earthjustice report on the proximity of Superfund sites and other toxic sites to federally assisted housing, which will include recommendations on how to maximize tenant involvement in the future of their housing, and surrounding community.
We will also draw upon our advocacy work to improve housing conditions within subsidized housing programs and point to the need for improved agency oversight and enforcement. Agencies, in particular federal agencies, have an obligation to ensure subsidized properties meet physical condition standards. However, agency oversight and enforcement practices are often uneven and slow to bring troubled properties back into compliance.
The panel will focus on lifting up local case studies and model solutions to these problems, including community engagement, litigation strategies and public policy change. Because we are on the cusp of a new administration, we will also pay particular attention to needed reforms at the federal level that are of interest to both housing and environmental justice advocates.
When the country went on lockdown, schools and districts across the U.S. scrambled to pivot to virtual-only learning. The lack of resources to make that massive shift happen only amplified what many in education and community development already know — that even 65 years since Brown v. the Board of Education, America’s schools and neighborhoods are still segregated. The racial achievement gap has yet to be closed, zip codes are determinants of educational success and opportunity is isolated, at best. As many parents grappling with schooling during COVID may attest, the struggle between being a “good parent” and being a good citizen, is all too real.
Communities face difficult decisions and confront old patterns as they return to school planning. Rich, White schools and neighborhoods forge ahead in resources and opportunity, while Black and Brown schools and neighborhoods flounder.
Join this engaging, potentially uncomfortable panel discussion with community development professionals, education practitioners and civil rights experts on the fractured nature of neighborhoods and public education, promising efforts around integration and the role of community development in expanding opportunity as we navigate schooling in the pandemic and beyond.
The renewed attention during COVID-19 to small businesses’ essential role in job creation and economic mobility, as well as to the deeply ingrained racial inequities of the financial system, must be sustained and grown. We must use this moment to show more decision-makers and capital holders that financing small businesses is a great opportunity to advance their promise for social and economic equality. This session will address the social imperative and financial opportunity that responsible small business lending represents for capital holders, such as banks and investors, who are looking to advance their environmental, social and governance objectives.
This session will bring together experts from academia, industry and nonprofit to discuss how NCRC members and other organizations can advocate for investment in responsible, small business lending.
For filmmaker James Rutenbeck, a project to document marginalized students attending a rigorous night course in the humanities turns into a journey to partner with two of the students, Kafi Dixon and Carl Chandler, in an attempt to explore the divide between White and Black, rich and poor. What does it look like for Boston residents impacted by structural racism to take back their stories, their lives and their city?
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was intended to staunch the bleeding of America’s small businesses. But in disbursing PPP loans, the SBA relied on the biggest banks to get money into the hands of their existing customers. The result was that big businesses received more than half of the funds, while many small businesses were left out. This problem was compounded for low-income communities and communities of color.
By overlooking non-traditional financiers—like CDFIs, minority depository institutions and others—government relief efforts missed a huge opportunity to reach the small businesses most in need. Fortunately, the flawed rollout of the PPP put non-traditional lenders in the spotlight and made people get creative.
This session will cover why PPP was flawed, attempts to make it more accessible and what kinds of partnerships and innovative programs were created to help fill the capital void for the small businesses struggling the most. A number of new models have arisen that may continue to be used long-term to provide small business owners, particularly those that are unbanked or underserved by traditional financial institutions, with capital to survive and grow. This panel brings together thought leaders in these various sectors to talk about these new partnerships and models and how they may create opportunities for a more equitable lending landscape in the future.
The CARES Act included numerous funding streams to support federal, state and local COVID-19 responses. A lesser known, but important source of CARES Act funding is the Coronavirus Relief Fund. Through this fund, the U.S. Treasury provided $150 billion to tribal, state and local governments to address unexpected expenses related to COVID-19. The fund is unique given the fairly high level of flexibility and discretion governments have in spending it. The Hope Policy Institute and other state advocates have been examining gaps and opportunities with these monies, both inequities and promising policy pilots. Three areas, in particular, include disparities in access to local government relief funding in the Deep South, disparities and promising models in small business relief funding, and direct cash assistance like local-level stimulus checks. Many states and local governments are also developing public dashboards to track their spending under this fund, making accountability and lessons learned possible for future reform efforts.
Without adequate attention, these state-level COVID-relief dollars are at risk of repeating the same inequities that existed pre-COVID. What are strategies for telling these stories for advancing an economic justice agenda in our own states? How can we use these findings to support the push for broader economic justice policies in other areas, particularly those aimed at closing the racial wealth gap?
The common stereotype that LGBTQ+ people live in fabulous homes and enjoy luxurious lifestyles is a myth. LGBTQ+ people are more likely to live in poverty, and less likely to own their homes.
A recent NCRC study showed that same-sex couples are less likely to be approved for mortgage loans, and more likely to pay high fees if they get approved. Other studies have confirmed that being LGBTQ+ carries a price for loan-seekers.
This session explores the hurdles that LGBTQ+ people face when seeking loans, and what lenders can do to help prevent discrimination. What role can banks play in reaching out to the LGBTQ+ community, and helping LGBTQ+ borrowers achieve the goal of home ownership? And what can advocates do to help LGBTQ+ people achieve financial equality?
Student loan debt continues to enlarge the racial wealth gap, disproportionately impacting Black women at every stage of the process. 40 Acres and a Degree is a consortium of HBCUs partnering with Change Machine to prevent, mitigate and manage student loan debt within their respective communities. Through a suite of strategies that includes virtual financial coaching, the repurposing of existing datasets, and convening HBCU partners on policy recommendations, this consortium is working to close the racial wealth gap in their own backyards. In this session, we’ll hear from HBCU partners who are leading this work, examine various datasets and engage attendees in a robust conversation around policy solutions rooted in the lived experience of students, families, administrators and faculty.
Politicians say that they want more affordable housing and jobs. But the property tax applied to buildings has the economic impact of a 10% to 20% sales tax on construction labor and materials. This reduces the amount of buildings produced and employment, while raising building prices and rents for both residents and businesses.
Infrastructure should facilitate development. But, if it is well-designed and well-executed, nearby land prices and rents rise. Existing residents and businesses are displaced. Affluent landowners are enriched, exacerbating inequality.
High land prices near existing infrastructure encourage developers to seek cheaper (but more remote and less productive) sites, creating urban sprawl. Sprawl harms the environment. It also wrecks budgets by duplicating expensive infrastructure. Sprawl development undermines the vitality of city centers, creating neighborhood decline and blight.
Private appropriation of publicly-created land values fuels land speculation, a parasitic activity that creates nothing of value. But speculation inflates land prices, particularly near urban infrastructure amenities.
Some communities have overcome these problems by reducing tax rates applied to building values (reducing the cost of construction, improvement and maintenance) while simultaneously increasing tax rates applied to land values (reducing speculation and moderating land prices). Shifting taxes off of buildings and onto land makes both buildings and land more affordable without new spending or revenue losses. It also redirects more affordable development to infill sites, reducing blight and sprawl.
Every year, low-income working families count on the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and Child Tax Credit (CTC) in their refund to provide a vital cash infusion to their households. They use these to pay down debt, build up savings and make deferred purchases. It’s hard to overstate the importance of these refunds. For many, it’s the biggest lump sum they receive all year. However, widespread unemployment due to COVID-19 threatened EITC and CTC eligibility in 2020. Millions of Americans stand to lose their refunds, deepening systemic wealth inequalities that have disproportionately impacted people of color.
The issue highlights the limitations of our approach to low-wage work in the U.S.– one that has evolved over decades to rely on tax credits with earned income eligibility to supplement wages. What we need are new, innovative ways for low- and moderate-income workers to begin to save money, which is the foundation for building wealth. The opportunity to consistently save, over time, enables working families to begin to feel a sense of financial security, dignity and independence regarding their futures. The panel will discuss the prevailing tax system, and what may be needed to achieve long term, inclusive, systemic change.
The widening chasm between incomes and affordable homeownership has its roots in the single biggest problem affecting owned homes — a lack of affordable inventory. The problem has gotten so severe that only an effort on the scale of this country’s rebuilding after WW2 will meet the need. We can do this and we’ll explore how in this session. We will discuss President Biden’s infrastructure plan and cite other legislative issues that may be relevant, such as the NSP-2 revival in two pieces of recent legislation.
Culturally significant businesses are essential as anchors that define historical communities. These businesses exemplify the success of minority entrepreneurship, and their experience during the COVID-19 pandemic is vital for policymakers, business owners and community advocates to understand. Here Dr. Prince discusses her interviews with Black business owners, how they have responded to the pandemic’s challenges, and what they need to remain in operation post-COVID, drawing from her recent report co-authored with NCRC.
A new administration can bring changes in policy and enforcement. Already, President Biden signed an executive order expanding discrimination protections to LBGTQ+ people. HUD and the CFPB recently stated that the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) also protect against discrimination based upon sexual identity and sexual orientation. Join us as we talk with HUD and some of the prudential regulators about their fair lending and fair housing focus under the Biden Administration.
If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught the housing counseling field anything, it is that the show must go on. Essentially overnight, counseling agencies had to transition to virtual operating space to continue to serve clients as consumers faced financial uncertainty amidst an international health crisis. Housing counselors have joined the class of First Responders tasked with triaging clients through urgent circumstances to avoid loss of housing, access emergency assistance, and advocate for resources to meet the needs of their respective communities. Attendees of this session will hear from housing counseling professionals who worked on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Technology continues to transform our financial lives, at times perpetuating and deepening systemic inequities; at others, democratizing financial security in new and exciting ways. Change Machine continues to grapple with the opportunities and challenges that fintech holds for us as an organization and for the people we serve. As a result, we have learned many lessons and uncovered areas of further exploration.
One area of exploration is fintech accountability. As practitioners, how can we hold fintech accountable to not only protect, but promote the financial security of those who have been historically pushed to the margins of economic systems? Simultaneously, what assets do nonprofits bring to the table and what resources do we need in order to remove barriers to financial security, and shrink the gender and racial wealth gap?
In this session, we’ll apply a strong equity lens to the growing role of fintech in anti-poverty work. We will present Change Machine’s Data Equity Principles, covering themes of virtual service delivery, data ownership, advancing racial and gender equity in fintech and narrative change. Together, we’ll plot a future in which nonprofits play a leading role in tying the success of fintech to the success of the communities that we serve.
Over a year ago, women outnumbered men in the workforce, the first time it happened since 2010. What a difference a year (and global pandemic) makes. Just this past December, women accounted for 100% of the jobs lost that month, rounding out almost a full year of women bearing the brunt of the negative impacts in the ongoing national crisis. Some economists call this America’s first female recession, or “she-cession.” It is not hyperbole to say that the drastic slashes in jobs, income and career development for women as a result of the COVID-19 national crisis may cause a setback to the economic growth of an entire generation of women, namely women of color. Join us for a discussion on how the first female recession began, when it will be over, and what it will take for the predominantly Black and Brown women to regain economic traction.
Blockchain technology is one of the major disruptors in financial services. By decentralizing information in secure locations, using networks that can continuously validate data, blockchains can reduce operational costs and improve on many aspects of record keeping. Join this panel to learn from a regulator, a policymaker and a CEO on how these tools may create opportunities to advance financial inclusion. To facilitate a broad discussion, the panelists will explain some of the foundational facts about digital currency, blockchain, decentralized finance and distributed ledgers. Hear how blockchain can overcome problems that have kept some people on the sideline. The panel will also consider the challenges and opportunities of Central Bank Digital Currencies.
The country is undergoing a demographic shift that the financial services industry has yet to catch. Prospective clients for financial services products are increasingly young and people of color and yet, the institutions who serve them largely skew older, male and White. This session explores why siloed D&I initiatives fall short and how an organization can build the cultural competencies needed to serve burgeoning communities of color.
Households and communities with low incomes, and particularly communities of color, have long been targets of unfair, deceptive and predatory business practices. Largely unregulated products and services such as debt collection, paid tax preparation and alternative lending are pervasive – regularly resulting in cycles of increasing debt and greater financial instability around the country. Similarly, local services like towing and booting, employment agencies and home contractors operating with limited oversight frequently take advantage of vulnerable consumers, many of whom do not have access to any sort of recourse. While there are active consumer protection efforts at the federal- and state-levels, they tend to focus on pursuing high-impact prosecutions and rarely address individual or more local concerns. However, local governments have an original mandate to promote public welfare and have inherent police power to protect residents. With inspiration from the work of New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs, the Cities for Financial Empowerment (CFE) Fund has partnered with nine local governments and their community stakeholders over the past three years to identify and begin implementing infrastructure that addresses key local consumer protection concerns.
This session will demonstrate the significant role that municipal and county governments can play in directly addressing predatory business practices and provide a pathway to justice for consumers through complaint mediation, regulation and enforcement authority. It will also highlight the critical importance and process of engaging local community stakeholders in the process of defining and implementing an effective strategy.
Exploring the role of Black Speculative Arts to reimagine and call forward a just economy. Integrating the processes of truth telling, reconciliation, reparations and reimagining with an AstroBlackness and Afrofuturism Lens. How can we “call” into reality a Just Economy by centering Black Arts Culture?
Historical disinvestment in social determinants of health have prevented low-income communities from having fair opportunities for economic, physical and emotional health. The CDC has identified key factors that contribute to increased health risk, including toxic stress from discrimination; inequitable access to healthcare and utilization; occupational hazards of being an essential worker; educational, income and wealth gaps; and inequities in housing.
That is why health systems are addressing issues that have not traditionally been considered medically relevant, like housing, early childhood education and access to healthy foods. They are doing so in partnership with CDFIs, the financial ecosystem dedicated to serving low-income communities. While this is a significant improvement in recognizing the interconnectedness of community health and community finance, many systemic challenges remain.
In this session, we discuss how health systems and CDFIs are natural partners in addressing social determinants of health. We will interrogate the systemic bias that has characterized both mainstream finance and healthcare, and provide examples of efforts to build the broader ecosystem beyond discrete projects to improve community health.
Despite being the most diverse group in the nation’s history, today’s young adults are often viewed as a monolithic group. A detailed look at their financial health tells a different story, however. Join our panel of experts to explore key findings from recent research from the Financial Health Network and GenForw.
Social determinants of health (SDOH) have become an increasing area of focus to improve population health equity and reduce total costs of care, made all the more relevant by the COVID-19 pandemic. Even before the pandemic, the majority of disparities in morbidity and mortality in the U.S. were driven by risk factors with social influences, with one study estimating that approximately 60% of ill health was driven by social, environmental and behavioral factors. These factors are especially salient in childhood, when experiences and exposures can alter long-term developmental trajectories. Community development is one of the most important areas of policy for addressing these upstream drivers of health inequities, but has received relatively little attention in health policy debates. Join us for an overview of the evidence for community development’s role in promoting long-term health equity for children and families and a discussion of potential policy options for advancing this role to achieve gains in long-term health equity at scale in the United States.
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Before the pandemic devastated minority communities, banks and government officials starved them of capital.
Lower-income and minority neighborhoods that were intentionally cut off from lending and investment decades ago today suffer not only from reduced wealth and greater poverty, but from lower life expectancy and higher prevalence of chronic diseases that are risk factors for poor outcomes from COVID-19, a new study shows.
The new study, from the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) with researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health and the University of Richmond’s Digital Scholarship Lab, compared 1930’s maps of government-sanctioned lending discrimination zones with current census and public health data.
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