DrillDown finds that most in the Mission are un-banked and locked-out

Earlier this year, a study by Social Compact, a research organization based in Washington DC, revealed some very startling facts about the market realities of twelve San Francisco neighborhoods, which included the Mission District. The report is a must read in its entirely.

For this blog post, I want to highlight a couple of findings that clearly explain the enormous challenges we face as we work to help low-income families build their assets and capacity to invest in their own community.

The number of pawnshops, check-cashers and payday lenders (22) are almost twice the number of banks (12) in the neighborhood - a fact that is ever apparent with a short stroll down Mission Street. These high-cost fringe establishments serve only to strip low-income families from their hard-earned gains.

The fact that over 50% of Latino adults in the Mission are un-banked, meaning that they do not have checking or savings accounts, is compounded by the fact that, as the report notes, 44% of households in the Mission do not have credit histories. This figure doesn't even account for the Mission households with bad-credit! The bottom line is that without credit, Mission families are forced to turn to high-cost fringe establishments to meet their financial needs.

Indeed, these are stark findings because without bank accounts - and without credit histories - the vast majority of Mission residents are simply locked out of the financial mainstream. Our challenge, clearly, is to change this reality.