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

Community Development Working Papers

Working papers provide in-depth analysis of emerging community development issues from practitioners and scholars.

  • Housing Market Interventions and Residential Mobility in the San Francisco Bay Area

    Karen Chapple, PhD, University of California, Berkeley and University of Toronto; Jackelyn Hwang, PhD, Stanford University; Jae Sik Jeon, PhD, Konkuk University; Iris Zhang, MA, Stanford University; Julia Greenberg, MPP, University of California, Berkeley; Bina Patel Shrimali, DrPH, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

    Limited evaluation research exists on which housing solutions are most effective in stabilizing communities so that those who wish to stay are able to do so in the midst of an influx of newcomers. This study seeks to fill this gap by assessing patterns of individual and household mobility related to specific housing interventions in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. Specifically, this study examines impacts of market-rate and subsidized development, and tenant protections, including rent stabilization and just cause for evictions protections.

  • Neighborhood Change and Residential Instability in Oakland

    Jackelyn Hwang, PhD, Stanford University; Vineet Gupta, Stanford University; Bina Patel Shrimali, DrPH, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

    In this report, we examine neighborhood change and residential instability in the City of Oakland over the past two decades, employing historical and contemporary data. Our results show that lower-SES residents experience residential instability in different ways in different parts of Oakland, suggesting the need for more targeted strategies.

  • Increasing Access to Affordable Housing Opportunities in Silicon Valley

    Jackelyn Hwang, Stanford University, and Bina P. Shrimali, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

    The ever-growing concern about gentrification and displacement has resulted in a wide range of policy and programmatic solutions. Yet, little research has assessed the effectiveness of anti-displacement strategies, making it difficult to prioritize solutions. This study explores how renter protections affect mobility trends by focusing on the four Silicon Valley cities that currently have just cause for evictions and rent control ordinances: East Palo Alto, Mountain View, San Jose, and Los Gatos.

  • When Home is the Most Dangerous Place: How a Community Development Organization Learned to Get the Lead Out

    Marty Johnson, with Peter Rose and Elyse Pivnick, Isles, Inc.

    The debacle of lead-poisoned children in Flint, Michigan reminded us of the insidious and permanent impact of this toxic poison on a child’s brain. However, millions of children (and seniors) living in older homes, especially ones with flaking paint, are still being lead poisoned. Today, the vast majority of children who become poisoned by lead come from lower-income families of color—those least able to shoulder this added burden. This is where community-based nonprofit organizations—especially the 1,000+ groups that weatherize and retrofit older homes across the country—can step in and play a key role.

  • Money in a Mobile Age: Emerging Trends in Consumers’ Financial Practices

    Erin B. Taylor

    This paper discusses a range of issues that increased mobility finance presents for consumers in the areas of product mobility, human mobility, and information mobility.

  • The Rise of Underemployment: Supporting the Needs of Low-Income Workers

    Leilani Barnett

    In 2016, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco held a series of roundtable discussions across the Western states to examine drivers of the recent rise in involuntary part-time employment and the impact it has on lower-income households. This paper summarizes existing research on the topic of underemployment, discusses themes that surfaced during the locally focused meetings, and proposes ways to address the underlying causes through solutions that build on the interrelated nature of housing, jobs, transportation, and child care.

  • CultureBank: A New Paradigm for Community Investment

    Penelope Douglas and David Erickson

    Building on the concept of creative placemaking, this paper presents an idea for a Community Development Financial Institution organized around art: CultureBank. Housed at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, this nonprofit bank will specialize in unleashing asset value in art collections and focus on artists as borrowers, or Artist-Entrepreneurs.

  • Staying at Home: The Role of Financial Services in Promoting Aging in Community

    Karen Kali and Robert Zdenek, National Community Reinvestment Coalition

    Older adults are indicating a desire to live and grow old in their own homes and communities. Yet there are often numerous barriers and threats to aging in community, as many communities lack a comprehensive community model. With a focus on financial institutions and utilizing the concept of Age-Friendly Banking, this paper explores the economic security of older adults and ways to improve older adults’ ability to live safely in their own homes and communities as long as possible.

  • Taking Stock of New Supermarkets in Food Deserts: Patterns in Development, Financing, and Health Promotion

    Benjamin W. Chrisinger, Stanford Prevention Research Center, Stanford University School of Medicine

    Across the U.S., neighborhoods face disparate healthy food access, which has motivated federal, state, and local initiatives to develop supermarkets in “food deserts.” Differences in the implementation of these initiatives are evident, including the presence of health programming, yet no comprehensive inventory of projects exists to assess their impact. Using a variety of data sources, this paper provides details on all supermarket developments under “fresh food financing” regimes in the U.S. from 2004-2015.

  • Boosting the Power of Youth Paychecks: Integrating Financial Capability into Youth Employment Programs

    Vernon Loke, Eastern Washington University; Laura Choi, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco; Lauren Larin, MyPath; and Margaret Libby, MyPath

    This paper summarizes the results of the first-ever quasi-experimental design study of a youth financial capability initiative seamlessly integrated into a youth workforce development program.