Stories

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1.03.2024 -

Empty Towers and Community Pillars: Addressing the Root Causes of Small Business Displacement

On Wall Street and downtowns around the country, declining in-person work is driving near-record office vacancies, with implications for nearby businesses, the urban tax base, and public services. But on main streets across the country, LISC is addressing some of the same technological and economic changes behind downtown vacancies, to support entrepreneurs of color facing displacement.

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10.12.2023 -

What Happens When Equity Is the Goal of Transportation Planning

In an article in GovTech magazine, Madeline Frasier Cook, LISC’s vice president for community building and resilient solutions, discusses how community members must be part of public transit planning, and all facets of community life taken into account. Policy makers and local leaders promoting transit-oriented development should be “very explicit about investment in affordable housing, and calling out that [there has to be] access for everyone. They can’t be displacing people.”

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11.30.2022 -

Supporting Small Businesses & Their Workers: A Quality Jobs Roundtable

People of color disproportionately bore the brunt of small business closures during the pandemic, even as large corporations reaped record profits. But the pandemic has also sparked creative and thoughtful responses to support an equitable recovery among small business owners, while helping them create quality jobs. The LISC Institute for Community Power hosted a conversation with three individuals that have been at the forefront of that experimentation.

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3.30.2022 -

How New York State’s “Zombie” Law and a LISC Initiative Have Been Bringing Vacant Homes Back to Life

In a Q+A with Brick Underground, LISC’s Helene Caloir, lead author of a new LISC-Urban Institute report on remediating vacant homes and preventing foreclosure, explains the nature of “zombies houses” in our midst, and what to do about them. There’s important news in the story: says Caloir, “In the current crisis, [we have] more tools for keeping people in their homes.” The excerpt below was originally published by Brick Underground Zombie houses: Inside NY's effort to release derelict properties from legal limbo By Jennifer White Karp, Managing Editor of Brick Underground

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3.24.2022 -

Evictions and Profit vs. Home and Community

LISC's newest research report offers powerful evidence that racism, financial exclusion and disinvestment have paved the way for speculators to reap huge profits in neighborhoods of color. But there’s good news, too: Buildings with affordability subsidies are better maintained and remain protected from speculation.

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2.10.2022 -

How to Blaze Paths to Equitable Small Business Recovery

A new playbook from LISC and Next City offers a framework for paving equitable pathways to small business success, and lays out concrete strategies for supporting capital access, small business capacity, and commercial real estate. Two of its authors explain why that’s so important.