Indepth analysis of persistant problems in the field of community development. Woodstock's research reports contribute to the body of knowledge used by policymakers and community development practitioners.
This report analyzes how sectoral networks, a fairly recent innovation in microenterprise development in the United States, facilitate the establishment of formal and informal alliances between firms producing similar products or services. The programs profiled are: Rural Ohio's Appalachian Center for Economic Networks (ACEnet) Food Ventures program; and the Chicago-based Women's Business Development Center's (WBDC) Apparel Roundtable. The report describes each program's technical assistance, mentorship, and networking services and how the programs affect job creation, increased sales, and improved entrepreneurial capacity.
This report provides a new analysis of the payday
lending industry and its customers. Using data obtained from the
Illinois Department of Financial Institutions (DFI) and various other
sources, it finds major faults in the key defenses that the industry
has used against stronger consumer regulation.
This alert describes how the Financial Services Task Force of the
Chicago CRA Coalition, in partnership with Chicago area banks, is
expanding opportunities for lower-income consumers to establish deposit
accounts, improve their financial literacy, and develop assets.
This analysis concludes that current programs reach a small fraction of the population of lower income people. While the variety of training programs currently offered could be improved in a number of ways, the greater challenge is to figure out how to reach significantly more people with more substantive training.
This report analyzes home refinance lending in the Chicago area and documents the extreme segmentation of mortgage markets by race and neighborhood. In the last few years, mortgage lending abuses - often called predatory lending - have become an increasingly critical issue for those working to promote community reinvestment and development.
