The Family Self-Sufficiency Program
Leveraging housing assistance as a platform for economic mobility through the federal government’s largest, and least well known, asset building program for low- income families
Abstract
Poverty is not just an income problem. It is also a wealth problem. All people need opportunities to invest in themselves and in their children in order to move their families forward. Yet, anti-poverty programs in the U.S. have, traditionally, done very little to promote wealth- building among the families they serve. The Family Self- Sufficiency (FSS) program, a program of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), which serves residents of federally subsidized housing, is one particularly powerful opportunity to change that trend. For the past seven years, Compass Working Capital (“Compass”) -- a national nonprofit financial services organization headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts -- has implemented and expanded an innovative, evidence- based model for the program that is helping to show what this program can really do.
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Copyright (c) 2017 Sherry Riva (Author)
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