HOPE's work uses financial services, advocacy, and financial partnerships to strengthen communities, build assets, and improve lives in economically distressed parts of the Deep South.
Deyanira Del Rio, the second speaker in the series, is co-director of the New Economy Project, a non-profit that works with community groups to build a new economy that works for all, rooted in racial and social justice, cooperation, neighborhood equity, and ecological sustainability.
Renter households have been disproportionately harmed by the financial fallout of the pandemic and this distress was concentrated at the neighborhood level.
The first in a series this Spring of public lectures given by practitioners and scholars in conjunction with a class on housing finance and equity offered by MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.
Since last year, there are signs that rental demand has slowed and rents have stopped rising (and may even be falling in some areas). At the same time, many lower-income renters still struggle to pay the rent, especially because pandemic-related assistance programs have ended.
Efforts to close the historically large Black-white homeownership gap should consider the fact that many Black households are headed by immigrants, particularly in the Northeast, Texas, and Florida.
The work done by community-based organizations in both historically Black neighborhoods and in “middle neighborhoods” in several Mountain West communities will be the focus of presentations by the two students who were Gramlich Fellows in Community and Economic Development in 2022.
