Federal Reserve Bank
of San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank
of San Francisco

Community Development Research Briefs

Research Briefs feature data and commentary on community development trends and issues.

  • Impacts of COVID-19 on Nonprofits in the Western United States

    Laura Choi, Elizabeth Mattiuzzi, and Bina Shrimali, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

    Nonprofit organizations play an important role in the response to COVID-19, but the crisis is straining their ability to serve communities. This report summarizes data from a Federal Reserve survey to assess the impact of the pandemic on nonprofit respondents and the communities they serve in the Western United States. Article Citation Choi, Laura, Elizabeth […]

  • What are Banks Doing to Address the Impacts of COVID-19 on LMI Communities? Early Approaches to Addressing the Crisis

    Bina Shrimali

    Banks play a key role in helping to alleviate the economic impacts of COVID-19 and have been encouraged to leverage Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) activities in their response. This research brief presents findings from interviews with community development officers across CRA-motivated financial institutions in the Twelfth Federal Reserve District and summarizes their early response actions. Interviewers asked about changes to lending, services, and investments; whether the recent CRA guidance had spurred any changes to the ways banks were operating; how banks were prioritizing growing need; and ways banks were being responsive to evolving community conditions.

  • Community Development Leadership: Early Visionaries Inspire Tomorrow’s Success

    Robert Zdenek and Dee Walsh

    This paper draws on interviews with 12 diverse long-time leaders in community development and identifies a number of common themes for what inspired and drove them. It provides a framework to describe four phases of leadership and makes recommendations for current and future community development leaders.

  • Why Credit Scores and Payday Lending Matter for Health

    Kirsten Wysen, MHSA, Public Health – Seattle & King County

    Greater inclusion in affordable credit markets and other policies that protect consumers from high cost debt could improve both the financial well-being and physical health of millions of adults. New epidemiologic evidence has shown strong connections between exposure to high cost short-term debt and poor health. This paper summarizes what is known on this topic and potential solutions.

  • On the Sidelines of the Hot Economy

    Bina Shrimali, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

    While the current economy is often characterized as “hot,” marked by low unemployment, stable prices, and sustained economic growth, many residents are not enjoying the prosperity reflected in the aggregate measures of economic well-being. This report focuses on those who have not reaped the benefits of recent sustained growth in the economy. The report highlights groups who have faced barriers to economic participation and documents interrelated rising costs—particularly for housing, transportation, and childcare—that contribute to keeping people on the sidelines of the economy.

  • At What Cost? Student Loan Debt in the Bay Area

    Bina Shrimali, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; Jacob DuMez, San Francisco Treasurer’s Office of Financial Empowerment; Sarika Abbi, San Francisco Treasurer’s Office of Financial Empowerment

    For most Americans, an investment in higher education is a key driver of economic security and mobility. However, rapidly rising costs of attendance, combined with stagnant wages and inadequate support systems for vulnerable borrowers have resulted in outcomes that are at odds with our collective vision of higher education as a crucial foundation for achieving the American Dream. This report highlights the local contours of this issue in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area region, particularly for low-income communities and communities of color, using Federal Reserve Bank of New York Consumer Credit Panel/Equifax Data.

  • Funds for Kickstarting Affordable Housing Preservation and Production: Lessons for New Investors

    Elizabeth Mattiuzzi, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

    A shortage of affordable homes for workers and families at all income levels across the country calls for innovative solutions. Over the past decade, a variety of public-private loan funds have developed to kick-start construction and preservation of affordable housing. This report breaks down how these funds fit into the process of developing and preserving affordable housing and shares lessons for those who are considering starting or investing in a fund.

  • The Community Reinvestment Act and the Creative Economy: Investing in Creative Places and Businesses as Part of Comprehensive Community Development

    Laura Callanan and Ward Wolff, Upstart Co-Lab

    This Open Source Solutions paper proposes greater alignment between CRA-motivated capital and the creative economy by highlighting the range of creative places and business activities which have benefited from CRA funding over time. Hopefully this will: 1) bring more attention to these types of projects among community stakeholders; 2) increase awareness of their potential CRA eligibility; and 3) lead to more CRA-motivated investment in the creative economy in the future.

  • Housing Stability and Family Health: An Issue Brief

    Soaring housing costs are the topic of many recent discussions in the San Francisco Bay Area, but receiving less attention are the implications of high cost housing on the health and well-being of families who are expecting or who have young children. This research brief presents a snapshot of housing instability for families with children in the Bay Area. It synthesizes a growing body of literature to reveal how housing instability during pregnancy and early childhood has particularly negative long-term consequences, while also highlighting promising ways to support housing stability. Efforts to ensure safe, stable housing for Bay Area families can enable children to live longer, healthier lives.

  • What Matters: Investing in Results to Build Strong, Vibrant Communities

    Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and Nonprofit Finance Fund

    The book features a collection of essays by 80 authors with wide expertise on the social, cultural, and financial implications of orienting programs and funding around outcomes. Together, the authors imagine the creation of a trillion-dollar marketplace for results, where governments, social service providers and partners better understand the full, true costs of achieving social change and where compensation is based on measurable results.