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  • To Keep the Economy Afloat, the Fed Turns to North Dakota

    The Bank of North Dakota is the only state-owned bank in the country, and their lending program is so effective that the federal government followed suit in the face of the unprecedented coronavirus. North Dakota's program is named The Main Street Lending Program, and it works by allowing local banks to be able to offer more loans to small businesses in their time of need by supplying 95% of the loan. This article explains how it works and lays out, policy by policy, the similarities and differences between North Dakota's approach and the federal government's subsequent approach.

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  • Bankers say PPP loans saved 40,000 jobs in New Hampshire

    The Paycheck Protection Program, a program launched by the federal government to help small businesses survive the coronavirus pandemic, has helped the community in New Hampshire save about 40,000 jobs. Although not all small businesses are keen to take the loan because of the strict stipulations that must be met for it to be forgivable, overall, 7,400 loans have been approved so far.

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  • How a Group of Political Novices Ended Gerrymandering in Michigan

    Voters Not Politicians (VPN) is a grassroots initiative that, with the help over 4,000 volunteers who knocked on 125,000 doors and canvassed at public events, collected the 400,000 signatures needed to get an anti-gerrymandering initiative on the statewide ballot. The initiative passed with 61% of the vote in 2018 and requires district boundaries be drawn by average citizens. The group’s founder also started The People, another group to help residents in other states apply VPNs model to stop gerrymandering. So far, residents in Florida, Virginia, and New Hampshire are at various stages of applying the model.

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  • Long before coronavirus, Philly ran a quarantine center for another deadly contagion

    From 1802 until 1895, Philadelphia ran a quarantine center that required all in-bound ships to stop and all on-board to be quarantined until cleared of any possible infectious diseases. Although the center is no longer in use, it provides a unique history lesson for the current coronavirus pandemic of the success that can come by restricting movement to prevent further spread.

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  • Minneapolis Funding Its Parks With an Eye to Equity

    The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board has approved a new scoring system to prioritize parks that are most in need of an investment, from the limited funds available, based on equity measures such as race, income, population density, and crime. This data-driven system is used in conjunction with the park board's judgment of a park's infrastructure and has pinpointed parks which were not typically on the park board's radar for renovation.

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  • What a Solidarity Economy Looks Like

    The local government in Maricá, a small municipality in Brazil, is being said to have initiated "the most ambitious city-level response to COVID-19 in Brazil, and one of the most notable in the world." Even before the coronavirus spread, the city worked on the premise of mutual aid, which included a universal basic income and a solidarity economy. In the context of the coronavirus, these proactive policies are now emerging as examples of how a democratized economy can result in a region being better positioned to withstand a public health crisis.

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  • Lessons From the HIV Epidemic for the COVID-19 Pandemic

    Both the successes and failures of the nationwide Ending the HIV Epidemic plan offers lessons for addressing the COVID-19 pandemic, especially for rural parts of the United States. One significant lesson is that of addressing health disparities linked to social determinants that prevent community members from accessing affordable or reliable health care. When "structural access to healthcare," was addressed in cities where HIV rates were higher, many saw those rates decrease, especially when the Affordable Care Act led to the expansion of Medicaid.

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  • Building Trust

    The Houston Community Land Trust (CLT) is a nonprofit that sells affordable homes in Houston to help resist gentrification. They keep it affordable by only selling the houses on top of the land and not the land itself. Their goal to build or convert 1,100 homes into the trust over five years, which essentially allows prospective homeowners to turn their land over to the community so that everyone benefits from the purchase. They are already underway on this goal, and this article features many voices of residents who personally benefitted from the CLT.

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  • To combat COVID-19 information gaps, Latino leaders and Spanish media ‘work double'

    In North Carolina's Mecklenburg County, Spanish is more commonly spoken than English, yet information about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic wasn't being translated from English before being distributed. To address this "information gap," community leaders and media organizations stepped in and launched a hotline and public safety campaigns to help residents access information in a more timely fashion.

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  • Will Small Businesses Most in Need Get Help From the Coronavirus Relief Package?

    As small businesses, nonprofits, and independent contractors try to access funds made available through the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program, bankers across the country are doing what they can to step up, follow federal guidelines, and process loans as quickly as possible. New features, including the SBA fully guaranteeing PPP loans, are making them more accessible. From typical SBA lenders to community development financial institutions to credit unions, many financial institutions are trying to help as many businesses as possible.

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