ppa786: urban policy class 20: financial capital programs to promote community development

PPA786: Urban PolicyClass 20:Financial Capital Programs to Promote Community Development

PPA786, Class 20: Financial Capital Programs

•Class Outline

▫Background (CDCs and Small Business)

▫Types of Community Development Institutions

Description

Analysis of Impacts


•Background

▫Institutional arrangements for community development—and financing—are very complex.

Many financing programs are affiliated with a Community Development Corporation.

▫The focus on financing activity is almost always on small business.


• Community Development Corporations (CDCs)

▫CDCs are non-profit, community-based organizations that build housing, finance local businesses, and occasionally run businesses themselves.

▫They first appeared in the 1960s and have expanded rapidly in size and numbers since.

▫The got a big boost with the National Community Development Initiative of the 1990s, which raised hundreds of millions of dollars for CDCs from the federal government, foundations, and businesses.


•Current Status of CDCs

▫There are about 4,600 CDCs, created with state, local, federal, and foundation grants.

They create 86,000 units of housing per year.

Advocates claim that they create 75,000 jobs per year, but there is no evidence on displacement.

Only about 20% of CDCs try business development, but this number is growing.


•The Misleading Emphasis on Small Firms

▫In our dynamic economy (outside a recession), many new small firms appear every year.

▫Many fail, but some succeed and grow.

▫Early research, now discredited, said small firms produced most new jobs.

▫Even if small firms did produce most new jobs, there is no reason to believe that jobs could be created by subsidizing small firms in areas with few resources and little business experience.


• The Inevitable Focus on Small Firms

▫Nevertheless, community development efforts will undoubtedly continue to focus on small firms.

Community organizations do not have the resources to attract large firms.

Community development is a place-based strategy and rarely looks into placing residents in existing large firms outside the neighborhood.

▫This implies that training and technical assistance are almost inevitably part of any financing program for community development.


•Place-Based vs. Person-Based Policies

▫We do not attempt a comprehensive comparison of place-based versus person-based strategies.

But as discussed earlier, most human-capital strategies are person-based.

We do not have enough evidence to understand which strategy deserves more money or which strategy works best under various circumstances.


•Types of Community-Level Financial Institutions

▫Primarily for business development

Community Development Financial Institutions Microfinance

▫Primarily for consumer credit

Community Development Banks and Credit Unions

Savings Subsidies (Individual Development Accounts)


•Community Development Financial institutions, CDFIs

▫CDFIs provide funding for low-income communities.

▫They can take the form of community development loan funds, CDLFs; community development venture capital funds, CDVCs; community development banks; and community development credit unions.


•CDFI Growth (Alperovitz et al. 2010)


• Federal Support for CDFIs

▫ In 1994, the federal government established the CDFI Fund in the U.S. Department of Treasury. Funding levels have been limited:

FY 2000: $118 million FY 2005: $51 million FY 2008: $94 million FY 2009 $107 million FY 2010, $247 million FY 2011, $142 million FY2012, $152 million FY2013, $147 million

▫ Financial Assistance (FA) Awards: The CDFI Fund makes FA awards of up to $2 million. A CDFI may use the award for financing capital, loan loss reserves, capital reserves, or operations. FA awards are made in the form of equity investments, loans, deposits, or grants, and the CDFI is required to match its FA award dollar-for-dollar with non-federal funds of the same type as the award itself.

▫ Technical Assistance (TA) Awards: TA grants up to $125,000 allow certified CDFIs and established entities seeking to become certified to build their capacity to provide affordable financial products and services to low-income communities and families. Grants may be used s to purchase equipment; for consulting or contracting services; to pay the salaries and benefits of certain personnel; and/or to train staff or board members.


•Evaluation of CDFIs

▫Not much evaluation; no random assignment.

▫These institutions are not self-supporting; they require subsidies from the federal government (through the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund), foundations, businesses.

▫Benefits they may provide: training, technical assistance, investment opportunities in low-income communities, new products, new jobs.


• Job Creation by CDVCs

▫According to Rubin (2007), a trade organization surveyed 38 companies financed in part by CDVC funds.

▫They found that these companies had added 4,335 jobs.

▫They also found that most new jobs went to low-income employees.

▫But there is no analysis of displacement.

▫For more, see www.cdvca.org

http://www.cdvca.org/


•Community Development Banks and Credit Unions

▫Many low-income areas lack bank branches.

▫Community development banks (for-profit) and credit unions (non-profit) have developed to help fill this gap.

▫They provide consumer loans, mortgages, and business loans, as well as checking and savings accounts and, sometimes, financial education.


•Impacts of Community Lenders

▫These types of lenders have appeared in many communities where lenders did not previously exist; at the very least, this makes lending services more accessible.

▫There is anecdotal and survey evidence of benefits (see Williams 2007), but no studies based on random assignment.

▫For more, see www.cdbanks.org

http://www.cdbanks.org/


•Microfinance

▫Microfinance (or microcredit) programs provide funds to small business enterprises.

▫Microenterprise programs may also add training and counseling.

▫There are now over 500 microenterprise, mainly microfinance, programs in the U.S.


•History of Microfinance Programs

▫Microfinance started in developing countries.

▫A loan would be given to one member of an organized group; the other group members would apply social pressure to make sure the loan was paid (and perhaps help with the payments) and offer advise and assistance—until it was their turn!

▫This approach proved to be very successful in many settings, particularly for women.


Schreiner and Woller, World Development 2003


• Microenterprise/Microfinance in the U.S.

▫ Many microenterprise development organizations (MDOs) in the U.S. combine training and microfinance, often without the same group focus, but some just do training.

▫ Grameen America was founded in 2008—an offshoot of the bank that has been successful in developing countries.

▫ According to The New York Times, “It has 18,000 borrowers and [has]… lent more than $100 million. There are six Grameen branches in New York and five in other cities, including Los Angeles, Omaha and Charlotte, N.C.

▫ Most borrowers, Grameen reports, repay their debt and become repeat customers. Borrowers are also given savings accounts and encouraged to save at least $2 a week.”


• Evaluation of Microenterprise (Schreiner & Woller)

▫Two random-assignment studies of US microenterprise programs find small impacts.

▫One study found that access to microenterprise programs doubled the rate of movement from unemployment to self-employment, but the absolute increase in the number people who moved was only about one per 100.

▫Another study aimed at recipients of public assistance found that access to microenterprise programs would move, at most, about one person per 1,000 from public assistance to microenterprise.


•Limits to Group Lending in the United States

▫1. The poor don’t have much social capital.

▫2. The poor are diverse in skills and interests.

▫3. It is hard to enforce joint liability.

▫4. Groups break down because even poor people can get loans through their credit cards.


•Conclusions about Microenterprise

▫As Schreiner and Woller (2003) put it:

Microenterprise is a good choice for a few extraordinary poor people, but wage jobs, additional education, and job training are still the most common paths out of poverty.


•Individual Development Accounts (IDAs)

▫An IDA is a savings account that matches payments by low-income households when the money is taken out for certain purposes, such as buying a home, starting a business, or paying for college.

▫IDAs are surprisingly popular, with 400 programs in the U.S. (2006) with 44,000 accounts supported by governments, foundations, and corporations.


•The Tulsa IDA Experiment

▫An IDA program in Tulsa matched household withdrawals for home purchase at the rate of 2:1 and withdrawals for business or education at the rate of 1:1.

▫Up to $750 could be matched per year for 3 years, so a person could have $6,750 to buy a house.

▫This was evaluated with a random-assignment design.


•Tulsa Results (Mills et al., Journal of Public Economics 2008)

▫This team, which included a professor (Englehardt) and a graduate student from Syracuse found

No significant impacts on the holdings of subsidized assets.

A significant positive impact on homeownership among renters, accompanied by a significant reduction in other assets (= time-shifting of home purchase decision?)


• Tulsa Results, Continued

▫“Despite strong incentives, regular interaction between program staff and treatment group participants, and the presence of a strongly motivated group of savers, we find generally weak sample-wide effects of the Tulsa IDA program on household behavior. There are no sample-wide impacts on holdings of subsidized assets.

▫The strongest subgroup effect occurs for homeownership among renters. At 7–11 percentage points, this effect is economically and statistically significant, but it is offset to some extent by a reduction in non-retirement financial assets and could be upwardly biased due to short-term time-shifting of home purchases.”


•SEED OK

▫Another random-assignment experiment focused on college savings for children.

▫529 plans are used by many states; they allow parents to accumulate returns tax fee on money invested in a college fund for their children.

▫SEED OK added further incentives to these plans for randomly selected families in Oklahoma.


•SEED OK, 2

▫The recipients got $1,000 in a state 529, $100 if they opened their own 529, and a match for money they put into their 529.

▫The match is 1 to 1 for households with AGI < $29,000

▫And 0.5 to 1 for households with AGE between $29,000 and $34,499.


• SEED OK, 3

▫An evaluation in JPAM (Nam et al. 2013) found that

▫“nearly 100 percent of the treatment group had a 529 account, compared to 2.3 percent of the control group.”

▫significant differences between the treatment and control groups in … 529 account-holding rates, 529 individual savings, and total 529 assets.

ppa786: urban policy class 20: financial capital programs to promote community development

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