Workshop Recap: Resident Financial Health & Empowerment
Kicking off SCANPH’s workshops for the month of April, six panelists convened on Thursday, April 1st for a session focused on Resident Financial Health and Empowerment: New Credit-Building Opportunities and Strategies to Support Residents.
Organized to spark discussion around the glaring inequity surrounding access to financial services and wealth-building, this workshop addressed the increased challenges of building credit among Black and Latino households. Panelists shared innovative approaches to empower the financial health of affordable housing residents and how to observe new requirements established by SB 1157.
Samir Goel and Abbey Wemimo, Co-Founders of Esusu Financial Inc., provided an overview of why access to a credit score is particularly important for newly arrived immigrant families and why the color of your skin and where you come from should never determine credit or financial health in life. Esusu believes that credit scores shouldn’t determine reliance on public assistance. Esusu’s platform allows residents to build credit and enables housing providers to see increases in net operating income, lower evictions, and fill vacancies powered by differentiated data and insights. To date, they have worked with 1.3 million rental units throughout the country. Goel and Wemimo believe that by tracking system measurements and monitoring data, Esusu’s tool helps residents predict risk, outline credit tiers, and monitor how finances improve and develop over time.
Doug Ryan, Senior Fellow & Interim Director of Policy at Prosperity Now introduced the ways in which his organization supported SB 1157. It is a first in the nation bill that will require large property managers of subsidized units to offer tenants the option of having their rental payments reported to a major credit bureau, at no cost to that tenant.
Prosperity Now’s work on SB 1157 aligns with the call for rent reporting for credit building. Ryan noted that states like Colorado are looking to SB 1157 as a model program to determine if rollout is feasible in states other than California. Although access to banking for underbanked and underserved households remains a challenge, equitable banking can be achieved through minimal fees with no minimum balances in a new system of real-time payments.
Bobby Kobara, Community Engagement Manager, and Stanley Toussaint, Head of Community Partnerships at Mobility Capital Finance, Inc. ("MoCaFi") introduced the rollout of the Angeleno Card program as a way to expand access to credit. MoCaFi is consumer-focused; the app has successfully removed landlords from the equation. Consumers load funds through their Angeleno Connect bank account and funds are sent as direct payments to landlords. Improving access to social, economic and cultural resources, Angeleno Connect will assist users with building credit through homeownership and wealth management. The card comes with perks such as loading cash for free, no withdrawal or mobile deposit fees, and smart, real-time bill payment. Allowing participants to monitor their credit score on a monthly basis empowers consumers to be in control of their credit score. Additionally, the app will include a media feed, digital literacy resources, as well as an abundance of educational resources to fine tune credit-building skills.
Gregory Bradbard, President of Hope Through Housing Foundation and Senior Vice President of National CORE, focused on the work of Hope Through Housing Foundation, looking specifically to families residing in National CORE properties. Bradbard provided an overview of the ways in which the program provides welcome services to new residents upon move-in. Notably, these services build immediate rapport with residents and provide opportunities to share available resources, provide group financial education, and institute one-on-one financial coaching to develop household budgets. The program has introduced a successful money-mach system, resulting in the financial success of residents with no history of savings. Residents have been able to save up to $200 per month. Homeownership and credit building are powerful and essential tools that build generational family wealth. Many residents exhibit heavy dependence on credit over personal savings in times of emergency, often over-extending credit balance and relying on high-interest payday loans. To combat these challenges, Hope Through Housing advocates for education as the primary tool to become “financially savvy & credit-wise,” in addition to building opportunities for positive credit reporting.