Location Category: detroit_mi

Detroit, MI

Boosting Sustainable Homeownership in Detroit: Adding Financial Counseling to Property Tax Relief Programs to Help Stabilize Low-Income Homeowners

Posted on by Katie Plat

Since it launched in 2020, the City of Detroit’s Financial Empowerment Center (FEC), as part of the CFE Fund’s national FEC Public initiative, has helped homeowners with low incomes avoid property tax foreclosure and stay in their homes. Working with the Wayne County Treasurer’s Office (WCTO) and the Wayne Metropolitan Community Action Agency (Wayne Metro), the City’s FEC joined a property tax relief ecosystem that is complex and constantly evolving, especially in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Its ability to adapt to changing systems while remaining focused on client services enabled the FEC to help 485 homeowners reduce their overall debt by over $3 million to date.

To study the benefits of the relationship between Detroit’s property tax relief programs and the financial counseling services provided by the FEC, the CFE Fund partnered with the City of Detroit and MEF Associates, with generous support from the Wells Fargo Foundation. This study combines original qualitative research with a unique analysis of administrative data to explore sustainable homeownership outcomes experienced by clients participating in FEC financial counseling, the factors that influence those outcomes, and other questions to inform future programming and the broader field.

This report outlines the challenge of property tax foreclosure in Detroit, the opportunity to connect residents in danger of foreclosure with FEC financial counseling, and findings on how Detroit’s publicly-led financial counseling program supports low-income homeowners with property tax challenges.

Intergenerational Wealth Transfer through FEC Counseling: A Multi-City Legacy Planning Pilot

Posted on by Katie Plat

The lack of intergenerational wealth transfer is a driving force preventing residents with low incomes from building wealth. With funding and partnership support from Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative, the CFE Fund and four local governments partnered on a novel effort to help individuals and families build and transfer wealth across future generations by integrating estate planning, or “legacy planning,” into existing FEC counseling services.

In this brief, the CFE Fund provides an overview of the findings from the pilot study showing the positive impact of integrating legacy planning into FEC financial counseling. The CFE Fund’s Legacy Planning pilot demonstrated that FECs can play a unique role in helping clients engage in legacy planning – ensuring that clients can achieve their longer-term financial goals and have an opportunity to transfer wealth across generations. By adding legacy planning services to FEC financial counseling, FECs can play an important role in supporting wealth building opportunities.

CityStart

The CFE Fund’s CityStart initiative offers local governments a structured approach to identify financial empowerment goals, convene relevant stakeholders for sustainable success, develop actionable strategies, and ultimately craft a blueprint that is rooted in local insights and opportunities to consider and expand access to wealth.

This two-phase action engagement connects critical insights about the impact of financial instability on municipal governments with tangible, sustainable strategies to improve families’ financial lives. The first phase of the initiative is a learning phase, where the CFE Fund and municipal partners look to analyze the local landscape, including wealth extraction and accumulation impacting access to wealth; collect relevant data; and engage in intensive stakeholder roundtables to identify key challenges and opportunities. This also includes a resident engagement effort. Based on issues identified in the learning phase, as well as administration priorities, the CFE Fund works with local government partners on a design phase to craft a comprehensive, government-led financial empowerment blueprint; check out past CityStart blueprints from the City of Cincinnati and the City of Newark.

The CityStart initiative stems from the CFE Fund’s extensive work with local government leaders, and connects critical on-the-ground insights about the impact of financial instability on families, communities, and municipal budgets with tangible, measurable, and sustainable municipal strategies to improve residents’ financial lives. CityStart cities have historically leveraged their engagement with the CFE Fund to further their commitment to this work.

The CFE Fund is currently accepting applications for the next CityStart cohort. If you have any questions about the CityStart initiative, contact Sol Vilera Ramos, Principal.

Local Consumer Financial Protection Initiative

People work hard to provide for their families and improve their financial circumstances. And while community organizations and social services across the country invest heavily in helping them, at the same time vulnerable communities have long been targets of fraudulent, predatory financial products and services. Just as local governments play an increasingly meaningful role in financially empowering their residents, they also can play a unique role in protecting residents’ hard-earned assets.

Building off of work begun by former New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray, and NYC Department of Consumer Affairs (DCA) then-Commissioner Jonathan Mintz, the CFE Fund was tapped to help local governments across the country develop and enhance their capacity to offer their residents consumer financial protection and empowerment. Local consumer protection agencies can augment financial empowerment gains by protecting consumer assets through licensing, regulation, enforcement, mediation, and outreach and education. Learn more about opportunities for local governments to protect their residents in the consumer financial marketplace on our new mini-site, www.protectinglocalconsumers.org.

Since 2017, with generous funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the CFE Fund has been working to build a new movement of local government-led consumer protection efforts by supporting the launch of local offices of consumer protection, strategic planning efforts, targeted consumer financial awareness campaigns, and an ongoing national learning community.

Please contact Kant Desai, Senior Principal, with any questions or to learn more.

Financial Empowerment Center Replication Initiative

Financial Empowerment Center (FEC) clients receive free, one-on-one professional counseling assistance with money management, budgeting, reducing debt, establishing and improving credit, connecting to safe and affordable banking services, building savings, preparing for legacy planning and protecting their assets, and referrals to other services and organizations. In partnership with Bloomberg Philanthropies, and additional generous support from Principal Foundation and the Wells Fargo Foundation, the CFE Fund is promoting FEC replication through cohorts of local leaders who are developing, launching, and implementing financial counseling as a free public service, along with strategic research projects to enhance the success of financial counseling. Get in touch to join as a supportive funding partner. 

The CFE Fund supports selected cities and counties interested in launching a Financial Empowerment Center through FEC Academy, a structured planning process designed to help local governments bring the FEC model to their communities. Through technical assistance, planning resources, training, and peer learning opportunities, FEC Academy helps local governments build the partnerships, funding strategies, and operational plans needed to launch and sustain a Financial Empowerment Center, providing professional, one-on-on financial counseling as a local public service.  

The Financial Empowerment Center Model

Professionally trained counselors support their clients in navigating complex financial challenges and choices, helping them identify and meet present challenges and future ambitions. Local governments offer FEC financial counseling as a free stand-alone public service, but also via integration into other social services including housing and foreclosure prevention services, workforce development, prisoner reentry, benefits access, domestic violence prevention, and more. Learn more at www.fecpublic.org.

Financial Empowerment Center Evaluation Findings

In 2013, the CFE Fund awarded its first grants to replicate the model in five cities through a $16.2 million, 3-year investment by Bloomberg Philanthropies. An Evaluation of Financial Empowerment Centers: Building People’s Financial Stability As a Public Service, demonstrates the success of the 5-city implementation, drawing on data from 22,000 clients who participated in 57,000 counseling sessions across the first 5 city replication partners. 

The CFE Fund continues to enhance the FEC model; for example, we recently announced the addition of legacy planning (read the press release here) as a core FEC service area. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bank On

Bank On coalitions are locally-led partnerships between local public officials; city, state, and federal government agencies; financial institutions; and community organizations that work together to help improve the financial stability of unbanked and underbanked individuals and families in their communities. In addition to connecting people to safe and affordable accounts, Bank On coalitions also work to raise public awareness, target outreach to the unbanked, and expand access to financial education.

The CFE Fund’s Bank On national initiative builds on this grassroots movement, supporting local coalitions with strategic and financial support, as well as by liaising nationally with banking, regulatory, and nonprofit organization partners to expand banking access, including through the first-ever Bank On National Account Standards, updated for 2025 – 2026. The CFE Fund announced an online Bank On account validation and certification process; banks and credit unions across the country, at no cost, can submit for validation products they believe meet the national Standards. The list of financial institutions offering such products continues to expand across the country.