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Race, Gender, and Equity in Community Development

Resource Question(s): FOR COMMUNITY PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT

RACE, GENDER, AND EQUITY IN COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
This paper summarizes how 15 leaders of community development finance organizations are intensifying their focus on race, gender, and equity, and it provides a prescription for change. That prescription calls for a fieldwide reformulation of the community development vision that embraces equity and justice explicitly; it calls for an expanded policy agenda to update the tools used (the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, the New Markets Tax Credit, and others) to include segregation-busting features; and it calls upon leaders to broaden their work toward “both-and” and inclusive strategies—that is, not only investing in the most distressed places, but enabling low-income families access to high-opportunity places.