E-Newsletter | March 2006
Dear Colleague,
Welcome to our latest edition of our Community-Wealth.org
e-newsletter. Once again, we have added more links, documents, and
other materials to our site. Look for this symbol *NEW*
to find our most recent additions.
Our updated home page features the third in a continuing series
of profiles of Community
Wealth-Building Cities. The citizens of Cleveland,
Ohio have implemented a wide variety of methods to build community
wealth, including community development corporations, city land
banking, foundation investments, and community-university partnerships.
Thanks to all of you who continue to send us material to post.
Your contributions enable us to keep expanding the site and to better
link community wealth-builders around the nation.
 Ted
Howard
Executive Director, The Democracy Collaborative
More
than $2 Trillion in Socially Responsible Investments (PDF 356KB)
 In
January 2006, the Social Investment Forum released its latest biennial
survey on social and community investing. Among its findings, the
asset value of the community development finance industry (CDFIs)
climbed 40 percent in the past two years from $14 billion to $19.6
billion, while assets in socially screened mutual funds increased
from $151 billion to $173 billion. All told 9.4 percent of the $24.4
trillion of assets under professional management — a total of
nearly $2.3 trillion — is involved in socially responsible investing
in some way.
Policy
Innovations in “Red States”? Absolutely! (PDF 536KB)
"The building blocks of a new domestic policy framework are
being constructed today in the states of the nation … with
'asset-building' at its core," according to this December 2005
study from the Institute of Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis
University. Emphasizing the bipartisan reach of community wealth
building, the report details policy innovations in over a dozen
"red" states. The authors suggest these efforts "can
serve as a roadmap for officials, policymakers, and the public in
other states."
Rust
Belt Cities on the Move (PDF 6.9MB)
Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Pittsburgh are
often referred to as rust belt, weak market, slow growth, or undercapitalized
cities. Yet each is home to public, private, philanthropic, and
community institutions that are advancing innovative community wealth
building approaches and strategies. This report from PolicyLink
and the Community Development Practitioners' Network highlights
a wide range of over 50 community development policies in these
five cities and elsewhere, including university-community partnerships,
inner city retail, transit-oriented development, reclamation of
vacant land, neighborhood revitalization, community broadband, and
affordable housing.
Progressive
State Policy Agenda (PDF 2.7MB)
In December 2005, the Washington D.C.-based Center for Policy Alternatives
held its annual Summit of the States, a national meeting of progressive
state legislators. The 2006 Progressive Agenda for the
States provides a “policy toolkit” that can be enacted
at the state level on a range of issues, a number of which concern
housing and workforce measures related to community wealth building.
Bi-Partisan
Support for Community Wealth Initiatives (PDF 128KB)
 The
Democracy Collaborative and the Aspen Institute Nonprofit Sector
and Philanthropy Program held a policy roundtable on January 18.
The session focused on how community wealth-building institutions
provide jobs, build assets, and alleviate poverty. Before an audience
of policy experts, journalists, foundation representatives, and
community economic development specialists, political-economist
Gar Alperovitz reflected on the emerging trajectory of policy options
aimed at stabilizing communities, anchoring capital locally, and
developing individual and collectively held economic assets. A panel
of respondent commented on the political potential of this new direction
in social change – one of the rare policy areas that many
believe can win bi-partisan support. Panelists included William
Galston, senior fellow at Brookings' Governance Studies Program
(pictured above), Robert Borosage, president of the Institute for
America's Future; and Stephen Goldsmith, director of the Innovations
in American Government Program at Harvard's Kennedy School
of Government and former mayor of Indianapolis.
To
see a 6-minute video clip from the event, click here.
Community
Broadband Dispute Heats Up (PDF 100KB)
The United States used to be the world leader in broadband access.
Today it ranks sixteenth. Frustrated by sluggish private sector
provision, states such as Kentucky and Maine and cities including
San Francisco, Tucson, and Philadelphia are themselves providing,
subsidizing or overseeing contracts for community broadband. These
programs are designed to ensure consistent and affordable broadband
for rural and economically disadvantaged urban residents.
DC
Renters Form Housing Co-op to Stave Off Gentrification (PDF 240KB)
In Washington D.C.'s Shaw neighborhood, as in many US inner
city communities, rising property values have displaced many low-income,
long-term neighborhood residents. At the 102-unit Capitol Manor
complex on W Street, however, tenants with an average income of
under $20,000 a year banded together to fight back. After a marathon
four-and-a-half year effort and with support from the local Manna
community development corporation, D.C. housing officials, and the
National Cooperative Bank, tenants purchased the building through
their newly created Capital Manor Cooperative.
Alaska
Governor Urges State Ownership of Oil Pipeline (PDF 56KB)
Alaska's Republican Governor Frank Murkowski told a joint
session of the state legislature that Alaska should buy a share
of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, the 800-mile energy artery that
ships North Slope crude. With this proposal, Murkowski joins a growing
number of governors (both Republican and Democrat) in advocating
the use of state investments to spawn local economic development
and raise revenues. Buying into the oil pipeline complements Alaskan
state plans to negotiate a 20 percent share of a yet-to-be-built,
$20 billion pipeline.
Can
Asset-Based Policies Reduce the Growing Wealth Gap? (104KB)
The drive for assets is as old as the nation, but, as the personal
savings rate plunges below zero, the issue has a new urgency, according
to a February 2006 article in USA Today The article notes that while
the top one percent of the population has about one-third of the
nation's wealth, the bottom half owns less than three percent. Concerned
about this growing wealth divide, the 12 regional Federal Reserve
banks have launched a joint effort with Washington non-profit CFED
(originally the Corporation for Enterprise Development) to develop
strategies for building wealth.
A
Homestead Act for the 21st Century (PDF 68KB)
As many as one-quarter of all adult Americans enjoy a legacy
of asset ownership traceable to the Homestead Act of 1862. In this
Harvard Business Review article, New America Foundation President
Ted Halstead proposes a new “Homestead Act” that would
guarantee each newborn American $6,000 at birth to provide everyone
with an asset base to help finance education or housing needs. Halstead
estimates that the annual cost of such a program would be about
$24 billion—only one percent of the federal government's
$2.4 trillion budget.
New
Strategies for Inclusive Growth (PDF 108KB)
The Opportunity Finance Network, the newly formed successor organization
to the National Community Capital Association, unveiled its “opportunity
finance agenda” in January. The group aims to build partnerships
between community development financial institutions and mainstream
capital providers to develop new loan products that can reduce predatory
lending, preserve the affordability of manufactured housing, and
provide a financial relief and recovery fund that will invest in
regions affected by natural disasters or terrorist attacks.
University-Community
Partnerships Lead to Urban University Revival (112KB)
Not so long ago, colleges faced with urban decline might respond
by building walls around the campus. In the past decade, at many
campuses including Penn, Yale, Howard, Clark (Worcester, MA), Trinity
(Hartford, CT), and Columbia, universities have instead invested
faculty and student hours and university dollars in partnerships
with community groups. The results include revitalized urban neighborhoods
and increased student recruitment for urban campuses.
Free
Press
Free Press is a national organization working to generate policies
that produce a public interest-oriented media system with a strong
nonprofit and noncommercial sector. Its Community Broadband campaign
website has a map showing municipally-owned networks across the
country and links to information about related federal, state, and
local legislative campaigns.
www.freepress.net
Take Back Your
Time
Take Back Your Time is an initiative that challenges the trend of
longer working days in America. The group aims to bring parental
and personal leaves laws in the United States up to the standards
already in place in all other industrial countries. The website
includes information about the group's shorter work hours
campaign, downloadable posters, and information about the group's
Take Back Your Time book, a collection of essays by over two dozen
authors on the impact of increased hours of work on American communities,
as well as public policy suggestions for remedies. In January the
group sponsored a strategy roundtable in Washington, D.C. at the
headquarters of the AFL-CIO. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader wrote
a report about the discussion. Why is it, he asks, that the United
States is the only advanced industrial country to fail to set legislative
minimums for paid sick leave or vacation time?
www.timeday.org
(Also
see article-nader.pdf (60KB))
Community
Forklift
 Community
Forklift is wholly-owned subsidiary of a Maryland nonprofit organization.
This surplus and salvaged building materials outlet disassembles
buildings that are targeted for demolition and recovers and recycles
the materials for other uses. Nationally, between 1998 and 2002,
200 stores opened in this industry. According to the Washington-based
Institute for Self-Reliance, sales in this sector as of 2002 had
reached an estimated $70 million per year.
www.communityforklift.com
Pension Funds
and Urban Revitalization
 This
joint website project, sponsored by the Harvard Law School and the
University of Oxford, investigates and promotes best practices in
urban economic development by U.S. public sector pension funds.
The website contains a spreadsheet outlining state pension fund
policies and a number of case studies and related news articles.
http://urban.ouce.ox.ac.uk
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