Local Policy Advocacy

In recent years CFED has experienced a large increase in demand for information about municipal-level policies and programs that promote asset building. We’ve also seen a huge interest in data to help municipal leaders gauge the relative financial stability of residents.

To address these information needs, CFED is currently undertaking a rigorous scan of municipal level data sources, and of the innovative program and policy solutions that are being implemented in cities across the country to promote financial empowerment. This work is generously supported by Living Cities and the Surdna Foundation.

CFED is partnering in the initial phase of work with the ten cities in the newly formed Cities for Financial Empowerment (CFE) coalition¹. The partnership leverages CFED’s research and policy expertise and the applied knowledge and insights of public administrators in CFE member cities, to increase the financial security and economic mobility of residents.

The major goals of this project are:

• The creation of useful and actionable information about local asset building and asset protection policies and strategies for any city interested in promoting financial empowerment and asset building.
• Development of a framework for municipal level intervention in support of financial empowerment, and documentation of evidence that frames and "makes the case" for municipalities to become engaged in asset building, and that suggests a policy agenda at the local level to support municipal asset building efforts.
• The creation of a data template that cities can use to track and measure performance against their asset building and financial empowerment goals, as well as to enhance their ability to communicate about and make the case for their work.

This project and its underlying research methodology build on CFED’s experience developing a suite of Assets and Opportunity data and policy tools at the state level.

Our first publications on municipal asset building will be released in the first part of 2010.

To be notified about the release of upcoming publications, register here.

¹ CFE member cities include: Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, New York, Newark, Providence, San Antonio, San Francisco, Savannah, and Seattle.  For more information, see www.cfecoalition.org