September 2019

Insights Fall 2019

We’ll be relaunching our website shortly and have an exciting line up of online webinars and local events this year. In the meantime, we want to share some of the ways we’re demonstrating promising and expanding proven innovations, and using our voice for economic justice to help families build and protect wealth. Thank you for your commitment to our shared work!

Demonstrating Promising Innovations

Two years ago, we launched our Economic Mobility Lab ( mLab ) to test promising financial innovations. In our first partnership, we’re collaborating with the San Francisco International Airport (SFO) to strengthen workers' economic security. Nearly two-thirds of American workers struggle to cover a $1,000 crisis. This is a struggle shared by the 40,000+ private sector workers at SFO, half of whom earn less than $50,000 annually.

“What if something happened to me? There is no room for error whatsoever."

This struggle matters to us, foremost because we want workers to live lives of dignity and abundance, but also because economic insecurity exacts a significant cost to cities. While workers at SFO live across and beyond the Bay Area, we know that economic insecurity costs San Francisco upwards of $50 million a year from lost utility fees and taxes alone. So, we’re co-designing a fund with SFO that helps workers manage unexpected financial shocks—a broken-down car or a trip to the emergency room—that can send families down a dangerous spiral. We’re thrilled to partner with SFO to develop this portable benefit, and grateful to The Workers Lab for supporting this critical work. We’ll have more to share soon as we move from the design phase to piloting in 2020. In the meantime you can read more about our launch of this effort here .

Expanding Proven Innovations

Launched over a decade ago and inspiration for a movement of more than 40 Bank On coalitions across the Country, Bank On San Francisco connects residents to safe, affordable bank accounts. Having contributed to a dramatic decline in the number of un- and under-banked residents, we're now going deeper to ensure equitable banking access by addressing the most critical barriers low-income residents and residents of color face opening an account: a negative ChexSystems record and leviable debt. This month, we'll be introducing ChexAdvisor , a tool that allows a financial coach to review a client’s ChexSystems report in real-time, just as a coach helps clients review their credit report. This powerful new capability will allow individuals to understand a negative banking record and work with their coach to resolve it.

Participants 2,922 youth have a credit union account Engagement Youth have allocated 60% of funds to savings Impact Youth have $2.8 million between checking and savings

At the same time, we’re supporting safe banking access for youth, collaborating for the fifth year in a row with the Department of Children, Youth & their Families, MyPath, and The San Francisco Federal Credit Union to integrate financial capability into youth workforce and employment programs funded through the City. We're also seeking to expand our work with City departments to support at-risk transitional age youth.

Smart Money Coaching offers free and confidential one-on-one financial coaching at 17 locations across the City in partnership with the Human Services Agency, Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development, Hope SF, the Public Library, and the Department of Aging and Adult Services. Since launching in 2015, Smart Money Coaching has supported more than 2,400 low-income clients—many in social services and public housing—in over 6,400 coaching sessions to achieve positive financial outcomes—from opening a safe, affordable bank account to saving for a financial emergency. Smart Money Coaching is now expanding this free, public service to support anyone working, living or receiving services in San Francisco. The Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development just released their next five-year Request for Proposal (RFP) with up to $750,000 annually to support financial capability services, including one-on-one financial coaching. And we just released our Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for service providers to expand coaching to employees and retirees of the City, at-risk transitional age youth, and low-income communities and communities of color.

Participants 2,484 clients Engagement 57% attended >1 session Impact 46% of multi-session clients achieved positive outcome

“Every time I walk out of a session, I am reminded I CAN do this. Having a coach who is non-judgmental encourages me to be honest with myself and, most importantly, reminds me that change and stability are a possibility.”

Participants 33,000 students have an account Engagement 23% of families contributing Impact Families have saved $4.2 million for a total of $6.8 million

Kindergarten to College (K2C) — the first publicly-funded children's savings account program in the Country — kicks off this school year with some exciting developments. First, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved funding for 11,000 new accounts this school year, including all students in 8th and 9th grade who were not a part of the original 2011 pilot cohort. Now all San Francisco Unified School District students K-9 have a K2C account. Support for these new accounts comes as K2C receives $926,892 from the California Student Aid Commission to support outreach and strengthen engagement, particularly among low-income families and families of color who face the greatest barriers to post-secondary education.

This State funding to K2C comes on the heels of Governor Newsom’s 2019-20 budget announcement that the State will provide $50 million to create a state-level children’s savings account (CSA) program and funding for local replication of programs like K2C. We are working closely with CSA practitioners across the State in a new CSA coalition to help ensure these State funds build progressive and equitable CSAs: universal, automatic accounts that families can contribute to directly, including in cash. Confirming the growing visibility of CSAs across the country, K2C was recently featured on the PBS Newshour .

Using Our Voice for Economic Justice

For most Americans, an investment in higher education is a key driver of economic mobility. However, rapidly rising costs of attending college, combined with stagnant wages and inadequate support for vulnerable borrowers, are undermining the transformative power of post-secondary education. We recognize student loan debt as a crisis with clear and dangerous implications for both the financial stability and economic mobility of Bay Area households. In April, we released a new report with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, “ At What Cost? Student Loan Debt in the Bay Area ” and co-hosted the Bay Area’s first Student Debt Summit, to highlight both widespread borrower burden, and high levels of delinquency and default among borrowers in low-income neighborhoods and neighborhoods with the a high percentage of African American and Latinx residents. The Federal Reserve Bank just launched a new interactive student debt mappin g too l that will further support efforts to address student debt.

To support borrowers, we're partnering with the Mayor’s Office of Housing and Community Development to train front line staffs of City and nonprofit agencies, and provide consumer justice legal clinics , with an emphasis on student debt. The Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development's current RFP will expand consumer debt clinics while we partner with additional City departments and community-based organizations to expand both college affordability counseling and targeted support for at-risk borrowers.

About the Office of Financial Empowerment

The Office of Financial Empowerment is a unique private-public partnership housed within the Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector that convenes, innovates and advocates to strengthen economic security and mobility of low-income San Franciscans. For more than a decade, under the leadership of Treasurer José Cisneros, the OFE has engaged partners inside and outside City Hall to equip San Franciscans with knowledge, skills and resources to strengthen their financial health and well-being. At the same time, the Office has leveraged what has worked on the ground to model what is possible across the country.

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