Stay Informed!

By Mitchell Kent, Guest Contributor on 12/13/2011 @ 10:00 AM

Tags: Financial Empowerment, Local Policy

EDITOR’S NOTE: Mitchell Kent is Director of Legislative Policy and Special Counsel for the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA). DCA’s Office of Financial Empowerment was profiled in CFED’s 2011 report, Building Economic Security in America’s Cities: New Municipal Strategies for Asset Building and Financial Empowerment, and was a key collaborator on the report, along with other members of the Cities for Financial Empowerment coalition.

New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs just released a report about its work embedding financial empowerment initiatives within core City social service programs. The new Report, Municipal Financial Empowerment: A Supervitamin for Public Programs, is exciting because it offers cities and states a way of enhancing existing programming during difficult economic times. The Report, the first in a series on the role of financial empowerment in public programs, focuses on professional, one-on-one financial counseling. It shows how New York built its network of privately-funded Financial Empowerment Centers and how financial counseling may make traditional social service programs achieve better and longer-lasting outcomes.

The City’s Department of Consumer Affairs has been working closely with nonprofit organizations across New York City to run this initiative. A Wall Street Journal article about the approach, City Now Offering Financial Counsel, ran on December 7th. The article featured a Financial Empowerment Center client, Margarita Mora, who was “too embarrassed by the foreclosure proceedings against her to seek help.” Because of the integration of financial counseling in the City’s foreclosure prevention efforts, a judge led Ms. Mora to a financial counselor at a Financial Empowerment Center run by Credit Where Credit is Due.

The Bloomberg administration is set to expand this initiative next month, putting $2.4 million behind the Centers, which previously were paid for by private funds donated to the nonprofit Mayor's Fund. The four-year trial included 16 financial counselors, reached more than 13,000 New Yorkers and helped pay down $6.3 million in personal debt.

Click here to see the Department of Consumer Affairs report.

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