Stabilization Strategies and Studies

Road to Recovery: Banks Can Use Recovery Act to Pave the Way (Spring 2010)
This issue of Community Developments Investments serves as a guide to banks interested in supporting critical community efforts. This guide will help banks understand how Recovery Act funds are being disbursed and how they are being used in community development. It highlights some of the programs created, expanded, and funded by the Recovery Act to promote small business financing and to stimulate housing and economic development. Individual articles highlight programs and opportunities in the areas of economic development, housing finance, and bond investments.

Living Cities
Founded in 1991, Living Cities is an innovative philanthropic collaborative of 22 of the world's largest foundations and financial institutions.

• Foreclosure Report, "Communities At Risk: How the Foreclosure Crisis Is Damaging Urban Areas and What is Being Done About It" (December 2009)
  This report provides an in-depth study of how community groups and their partners are developing innovative tactics to fight the wave of foreclosures in 10 cities.
• Purchasing Properties at Scale (September 2009)
  This case study discusses strategies for acquiring REO properties and examines the factors and conditions that influence cities' and nonprofits' success in REO acquisitions.

Neighborhood Stabilization: Local partnerships Are Rebuilding Communities (Fall 2009) features an overview of strategies that banks, nonprofit businesses and local government agencies have developed in response to the growing number of residential foreclosures. It includes the specific activities of selected national banks and their partners, and offers opportunities for others interested in supporting community stabilization. It also highlights a federal funding program and related national nonprofit infrastructure developed to facilitate the transition of real estate owned (REO) from financial institutions to the aspiring homeowners and nonprofits who can return them to the productive housing stock.

Making it Work Webinar Series
This four-part webinar series was presented by Foreclosure-Response.org in September and October 2009, to provide practical information on key areas that have proven to be challenging for those attempting to implement neighborhood stabilization plans. Resources from these sessions, below, will be useful to NSP grantees and partners as well as others who are working on this issue.

Property Disposition: Exploring Different Approaches for Preserving Affordable Housing Opportunities (March 2009) (PDF)
This edition of Community Developments Insights highlights partnerships for banks working to dispose of foreclosed properties in creative ways that preserve affordable housing opportunities and stabilize communities. This report reviews initiatives and strategies for building partnerships among banks or mortgage servicers and nonprofit organizations, for-profit affordable housing developers, government entities, and others that are implementing plans to create affordable rental or homeownership opportunities and revitalize areas affected by foreclosed properties.

Community Stabilization Conference
The Stabilizing Communities, Addressing the Negative Impacts of Foreclosure conference co-sponsored by the OCC and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, and the FDIC was held in Los Angeles on July 15 and 16, 2008. The symposium highlighted efforts across the country to minimize the negative impacts of foreclosure on borrowers and neighborhoods.  The goal was to provide presenters and participants an opportunity to engage in a discussion of innovations and challenges, and to examine models for redeveloping REO properties into affordable housing opportunities.