This report examines the extent to which neighborhoods within the Chicago area have obtained significant levels of income and racial diversity in home buying and maintained such diversity over the 1990s.  To do so, we compared compositions of buyers in neighborhoods across the metro area in 1993 and 1994 (combined) to those in 1999 and 2000 (combined).

The focus of this report is an analysis of changes in home buying in the Chicago area among different income groups.  We compared buyers in 1993 and 1994 (combined) to those in 1999 and 2000 (combined).

Analyzes patterns of small business lending in Milwaukee, WI and discovers significant discrepancies in such lending by race and income of neighborhood.

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 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.