Housing Finance & Social Equity: Learning from HOPE's Work in the Deep South

Date: Tuesday, March 14, 2023
Time: 11:00 am
Location: Hybrid: Online & In-Person
Speaker: Bill Bynum

Persistent racial and ethnic disparities in access to homeownership have created the need to examine whether—and how—to change aspects of the complex and rapidly changing housing US finance system. This challenge, and the foundational questions it raises, will be the focus of a series of public lectures given by practitioners and scholars as part of a class on housing finance and equity offered by the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning in conjunction with the MIT GCFP and Harvard’s JCHS (see below).

Bill Bynum, the third speaker in the series, leads three interrelated entities: the Hope Enterprise Corporation, the Hope Credit Union, and the Hope Policy Institute. Working together, these entities use financial services, advocacy, and financial partnerships to strengthen communities, build assets, and improve lives in economically distressed parts of the Deep South and, in doing so, mitigate the extent to which factors such as race, gender, birthplace, and wealth limit people’s ability to prosper.

The public is also welcome to attend in person, no registration needed: 
MIT Building 9 (105 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge), Room 354.

Co-Sponsors: MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning and the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University