User:Kapark/Center for Community Capital

The Center for Community Capital (formerly Center for Community Capitalism) is a public policy research center associated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Its website states that the organization specializes in “research and policy analysis on the transformative power of capital on households and communities in the United States.” In particular, the center focuses on financial issues related to low-income and traditionally underserved communities.

History
The center was founded in 1997 by Michael A. Stegman, who served as the Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development and as a professor and chairman in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Stegman was succeeded in 2006 by the current director, Roberto G. Quercia, who also serves as a professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Community Capitalism
Stegman said the concept for the center sprang from his work on the National Urban Policy Report of 1995 under President Clinton. He believed community capitalism had four guiding principles :


 * Business supported by the government and community sectors, drives investment, job creation, and economic opportunities in distressed communities;
 * Urban neighborhoods are profiled by measures of economic strength rather than social pathologies;
 * Promising inner-city entrepreneurs have access to capital;
 * Corporations make inner-city investment decisions for business reasons instead of charity.

Research
Key topics of past research by the Center for Community Capital include payday lending, anti-predatory lending laws, federal preemption of state laws, relative performance of subprime mortgages and mortgages under the Community Reinvestment Act, and performance of modified mortgages.