NEW ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT INITIATIVES

Gulfton-Sharpstown Community Development Credit Union. NCI is examining the formation of an NCI sponsored community development credit union to serve the financial needs of the Gulfton and Sharpstown neighborhoods. The credit union will be a critical anchor for our newest southwest Houston community center. Historically, credit unions have served an important role in bringing access to savings and checking accounts and loan products to communities that may not have had a conventional access to financial services. In fact, the country’s first credit union, St. Mary's Bank was founded in 1908 by French-Canadian immigrants in Manchester, New Hampshire; one year after our agency was founded. And now, we are exploring these same opportunities to deliver access to mainstream financial services to a community, where for many reasons, at least 77% of households are underbanked. Anticipated services will include: checking & savings accounts, remittances services to other countries, financial education programs, and consumer loan or microloans to budding entrepreneurs that comprise a vital part of our community.

Promoting Entrepreneurship and Support to Small Businesses. Despite the vast structural changes that our economy has endured over time, entrepreneurship has provided an avenue through which persons, from many walks of life, including our newest residents, can prosper. NCI plans to create opportunities to nurture and promote entrepreneurship and small business development in our neighborhoods through strategic partnerships with the city of Houston’s Houston Business Development Inc. (HBD), and its various technical assistance providers network (SBA, SCORE, Urban Business Initiatives). Our Neighborhood Financial Center Model will create a three-tier approach of 1) Providing technical assistance to neighborhood businesses and new entrepreneurs; 2) Creating access to multiple sources of financing (e.g., HBD, Accion Texas) targeting businesses that may not have the prerequisite record to qualify for conventional bank financing; and 3) Facilitating access to conventional bank financing through NCI’s existing banking partnership network.

Supporting Growth in Local Economies (Social Compact 2007 Economic Opportunities Study). Recently, Social Compact, a Washington D.C. non-profit that specializes in evaluating the market strength of neighborhood economies, through support from Citibank Foundation, completed an analysis for the City of Houston of 25 neighborhoods. These neighborhoods include the city’s original wards, the Gulfgate Mall area, Mayor White’s Houston Hope Initiative neighborhoods, and several southwest Houston neighborhoods where NCI has had a long-standing presence. Working in partnership with Social Compact, and the city, NCI will coalesce community partners and lead the implementation of the study’s findings to stimulate new investment in our communities. So far, the group finds these neighborhoods to have greater market size and higher average household incomes than conventional Census estimates indicate, with an aggregate market strength exceeding $11 billion, and $1 billion attributable to a vibrant cash economy. The group also found that these same neighborhoods also have $1.2 billion in unmet retail services demand.