Reflections on Latinos & Business - New Approaches to Access to Capital
By Rudy Espinoza, Executive Director
Last week, I traveled to Washington D.C. to attend the Latinos & Business summit, an event hosted by the Aspen Institute’s Latino & Society Program.
The convening was a gathering of practitioners from across the country who were working to revitalize their neighborhoods and advance economic development in Latino communities. They had an impressive array of speakers including former HUD (Department of Housing and Urban Development) Secretary Henry Cisneros, Mileyka Burgos, the founder of Allapattah Collaborative CDC in Miami, Janie Barrera, the founder of LIFTFund, and Luis Cortes, the founder of Esperanza, a legendary economic development organization in Philadelphia. I had a great time hanging with friends and partners, including organizers from Just San Bernardino, a coalition of organizations seeking equity and justice in public and private investments.
The summit covered a variety of issues including digital inclusion, administering government contracts, place-based initiatives, and the consequences of gentrification in vulnerable communities.
I left feeling energized about the opportunities that communities all over the United States were seeing to support their neighborhoods. We deserve economic development in our communities, but as Assistant HUD Secretary Bhargava said in her remarks, we often “get economic development with consequences, instead, economic development should come with ‘gifts’.” I thought this framing was important, especially as we see communities here in Los Angeles worry about the impacts of new investments. No community should be afraid that desperately needed investments in infrastructure, housing, and commercial corridors will result in displacement for long-time residents. We need better neighborhoods with the same neighbors.
I left the summit with three key ideas to inform our economic development here in Los Angeles:
Think beyond the “pilot” - Many of us have endeared ourselves to the virtues of the “pilot” - small, experimental initiatives - in hopes that a pilot’s lessons could persuade those with power and resources to invest more. Sure, pilots are important proving grounds for ideas and with limited resources, we have to start somewhere, right? But sometimes, we don’t need a pilot to tell us what will work. In communities across our country, residents are engaged and consistently asking for the basics - housing, better wages, investments in their businesses, but they’re also experimenting. In the pandemic, we saw communities come together to stock community fridges for those who were hungry, entrepreneurs began to share restaurant space to lower costs and keep their businesses afloat, and for years, people have been converting garages into accessory dwelling units to house family members. What’s missing is major investments that move these already proven concepts into the mainstream. The state of our cities requires a fearless urgency that moves us beyond the safety of pilots and into major investments.
We should seek philanthropic solidarity - Philanthropy is an important partner in community work. Often, philanthropy is the first “investment” (or maybe the only one) in critical services that community members rely on. But to truly empower the Latino community, and to make a big dent in income inequality, we’ll need gigantic shifts in how philanthropy makes decisions and how much they’re willing to invest themselves. We need philanthropists to show up differently in the community, being mindful of the inherent power they wield, and seeking to build authentic relationships with partners over the long haul. Community leaders shouldn’t be afraid that funding will stop if they speak truth to power and those who wield power should be willing to surrender it for the betterment of our communities (otherwise, what are we in this work for?). The sustainability of systems-changing work requires long-term funding and long-term relationships. I’d love to see more funders investing big and early in advocacy campaigns and walking alongside practitioners to take advantage of opportunities.
We need to expect more from our government - I’m a big believer in the public sector. Despite its sluggishness, its ingrained institutional bias, and sometimes its expense, I believe in investing to ensure that our government is working for the people. During the pandemic, I was disappointed that our public sector relied so much on community groups to do the heavy lifting of service provision in a global pandemic. It’s not uncommon to hear, “it’s faster and cheaper if a nonprofit administers that program.” There is an important role for community groups to play, perhaps we can move quicker, innovate more effectively, and even launch initiatives that rival the effectiveness of a city-run program, but as we work in partnership with local government, our goal should be to institutionalize these practices in our government, not outsource critical community functions in perpetuity. I believe in “working ourselves out of a job.”
And most importantly, investments in the Latino community should be done within an ecosystem of multi-racial solidarity. Too often, we are operating in a “zero-sum” context; vying for resources in a way that may hinder investments and causes of other communities. This dynamic is the “old way” that sows division and makes us all poorer. We need to approach economic development in Latino communities with a multi-racial lens; seeking to leverage our success to support the success of other communities.
We have a lot of work to do!