This morning we were able to sleep in until 6:30 – thank goodness. We drove the short distance into Charlotte to meet with Pathways to Prosperity, a group project made up of UNC’s Center for Community Capital, the Charlotte Housing Authority, Third Fifth Bank, and others who work to help improve banking and financial literacy among the clients of the CHA.
Many people fall into a trap, using credit to pay credit, suffering massive health bills when uninsured, or failing to understand how to manage the money that they have. These people are often unable to organize their debts to pay them, or to get a bank account. North Carolina makes payday loans – usually viciously predatory – illegal, which helps, but many people with a low income are unable to use banking services. This group from UNC partnered with CHA and these others to teach the clients of CHA’s FSS (family Self Sufficiency) program to manage their funds and how to least painfully pay off their debts, while also offering a variety of banking services designed to support people with past unfortunate banking histories to relearn how to use a bank account or credit responsibly.
The CHA is also heavily involved in renovating and changing their subsidized housing projects to make them into much more attractive mixed income developments. This has brought up property values and sparked new growth and development near each project, but has also driven property values up massively. Nothing without cost.
This is incredibly valuable – how could anyone get out of debt if they didn’t have a way to manage it? Or have never learned how to think about money?
