Minority Middle Neighborhoods in a Time of Crisis

Transcript | Event Summary

The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago invites you to a virtual convening on Minority Middle Neighborhoods in a Time of Crisis. The event took place on Wednesday, July 29, 2020, from noon to 1 pm CT.

This forum is part of Project Hometown, a new initiative from the Chicago Fed that aims to foster discussion around the challenges and opportunities confronting hometowns in the Seventh District.

Chicago has a rich history of minority "middle" neighborhoods. These are neighborhoods that for decades had a large base of middle- and working-class residents, high rates of homeownership, and active commercial corridors. But as places in the city have become more unequal, these predominantly minority neighborhoods have become increasingly vulnerable to economic shocks. Covid-19, the economic slowdown, and civil unrest have magnified the challenges.

Our goal with this forum, consistent with Project Hometown, is to bring together civic leaders, expert researchers, and Chicago Fed staff to address these issues from diverse perspectives and examine how places can recover from the pandemic, overcome longstanding inequities, and grow stronger.

In this one-hour virtual convening, experts will discuss:

A recent survey of small businesses in Chicago that examines current circumstances facing minority business owners;
A new study of conditions facing renters and owners in minority neighborhoods;
The conditions that expose middle-class minority neighborhoods to particular hardship; and
Locally-driven activities and responses to help residents and businesses in minority neighborhoods.

Maude Toussaint-Comeau

Senior Policy Economist
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Moderator

Maude Toussaint-Comeau is a senior policy economist in the community development and policy studies division of the Economic Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. Her work has consisted of identifying public policy concerns, conducting applied policy-oriented research, and supporting the bank’s Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) process. She has also spearheaded a number of outreach and research initiatives to inform policy and promote revitalization on the South and West Sides of Chicago, in Detroit, and in other minority neighborhoods in the Seventh District. Her current research and publications are on banking infrastructure in low-to-moderate income neighborhoods; minority depository institutions; and capitalization of Community Development Financial Institutions.

Toussaint-Comeau is engaged in several professional services activities. She is currently the elected nonacademic director on the board of Western Economic Association International. She is serving as the guest editor and a contributing author for a special issue of the Contemporary Economic Policy Journal on the economics of the middle class. She is also serving as a research advisor committee member for the 2020 ALICE reports for the states of Indiana and Illinois. In the past, she served as an economic advisor for the Council of Economic Advisors to the New Economy Initiative for Southeast Michigan, and as a co-chair of a business development committee and a catalyst committee member for the Greater Chatham Initiative.

Toussaint-Comeau received a 2017 Presidential Award from the Chicago Fed for research and initiatives to uplift minority businesses and revitalization of low-income neighborhoods. She is also the recipient of the 2017 Visionary Award from Chicago United for research projects on diversity in senior leadership and corporate inclusion.

Toussaint-Comeau holds a PhD in economics from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Alex Bartik

Assistant Professor
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

Panelist

Alex Bartik is an assistant professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign and a research affiliate at the University of Chicago Poverty Lab at Urban Labs. His research interests include labor economics, public finance, and applied econometrics. His recent research centers on understanding the determinants of labor market outcomes for low- and middle-wage workers and on discrimination and racial disparities in labor market outcomes.

He received his PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2017. Before coming to MIT, he did policy research at the Hamilton Project at the Brookings Institution and managed randomized controlled trials at Innovations for Poverty Action. He grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and graduated from Kalamazoo Loy Norrix and the Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center in 2004 and Yale College in 2008.

Jahmal Cole

CEO and Founder
My Block, My Hood, My City

Panelist

Jahmal Cole is a champion of social justice, and his mission is to build a more interconnected Chicago on the pillars of service and education.

As the founder and CEO of the city’s fastest growing social impact organization—My Block, My Hood, My City—Cole is the creator of an exposure-based education program for teens and a network of volunteer initiatives that serve Chicago communities year-round.

Traveling, youth mentorship, and community organizing are the subjects of Cole's highly acclaimed books and speeches. He has spoken to audiences ranging from high school students to the mayor of Chicago.

In 2019, Cole was named to Crain’s 40 Under 40. He’s also the recipient of the 2019 Champion of Freedom Award and the 2018 Chicago City Council Resolution Award. He was a 2018 Chicago Defender Men of Excellence Honoree. In 2018, he was named one of the 20 Most Inspiring Chicagoans by StreetWise magazine and a Chicagoan of the Year by Chicago magazine.

Nedra-Sims Fears

Executive Director
Greater Chatham Initiative

Panelist

Nedra-Sims Fears is Executive Director of the Greater Chatham Initiative (GCI). Fears is an economic development expert who specializes in strategic planning, financial modeling, community development financing, and program management. At GCI, she created a new Chatham Center Chicago—a branded commercial retail area that has an accompanying online directory of 300 merchants and service providers. She also collaborated with partners to undertake multiprong activities that contributed to the recent uptick in Greater Chatham housing sales and prices—making Chatham a bright spot in Chicago’s housing market. In 2020 she and others are establishing FoodLab Chicago, which will improve 25 food businesses located on Restaurant Row corridor located on 75th Street; and she is helping to establish Arts District by starting a makers’ space in collaboration with The Silver Room.

Fears is a National Committee member for Middle Neighborhoods—an entity that promotes middle neighborhoods. She is a Harvard Loeb Fellow. Fears holds a BS from Cornell University in interior architecture and an MBA in finance from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She had an ideal childhood in the Chatham community and recently purchased and rehabbed Ernie Bank's former house a few blocks from her family home for her big multigenerational family. She’s married with two young adult daughters who came home due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Stacie Young

Director
The Preservation Compact

Panelist

Stacie Young is director of The Preservation Compact, a policy collaborative that preserves affordable rental housing. Located at Community Investment Corporation (CIC), the compact’s preservation strategies focus on both the government assisted stock, as well as the unsubsidized, or naturally occurring, affordable housing stock. Activities include creating a $34 million mezzanine debt fund for high-cost markets; convening an intergovernmental group to preserve 6,200 subsidized units; driving building code relief for rehab; expanding utility funding for energy efficiency; and creating a $48 million loan pool for 1-4 unit buildings, as well as a new $5 million CDFI partnership to preserve 1-4 unit buildings. Young also worked for DePaul University, the City of Chicago Office of the Mayor, and the Chicago Department of Housing.