Executive Director’s Corner

Dear Friend,

Amidst these uncertain times - as concerns born of the economic crisis permeate the news headlines and fill our family dinner conversations - we at the Institute understand that our responsibility to serve New Jersey residents, and model solutions nationally, is greater than ever before. I assure you that we are responding to meet these hardships. Indeed, more so than ever, the Institute's work is focusing on developing and implementing practical solutions grounded in the common 'bread and butter' threads we read in the headlines and hear from our families and neighbors: in a nutshell, the need for good jobs and equal opportunity.

Current Events

The present financial crisis, gripping the family pocketbook and institutional portfolios alike, not only impacts our work but underscores the importance of that work and uniqueness of our approach as a think and do tank. Amidst recent measures of economic underperformance, there are also indices of injustice that may be discerned through not only analysis but compassion. For example, while the stock market has lost 40 % of its value, New Jersey faces the highest number of foreclosures on record with 9.2 percent of mortgage holders either in foreclosure or late on payments. The poorest borrowers with the most expensive, subprime loans face foreclosure more often.

For many families, a subprime loan foreclosure is the final stop of a tragic odyssey that began with mortgage brokers misrepresenting what they were even remotely qualified to borrow; shoving stacks of loan documents before some Spanish-speaking borrowers, lacking English proficiency, with the predatory lending prose written in English and the innocuous (although hardly innocent) text in Spanish; and even steering qualified borrowers away from relatively low cost prime loans to ruinously high interest/fee subprime loans.

Less quantifiable but no less of an index of injustice is the story of a young man I met, with a previously near perfect credit score, who faced the prospect of losing his house, having lost his pristine credit, simply because he was unscrupulously convinced to reject a prime loan to accept a subprime loan. Other measures of injustice were the stories of those facing foreclosure, who stood at a press conference with the Institute calling for the NJ Legislature to pass our anti-foreclosure legislation.

These stories of hardworking people, losing their American Dream (and ours), highlight the nearly unique role of NJISJ in New Jersey. This role is revealed through both our crafting the Home Ownership Preservation Act to decrease foreclosures and implementing a program, with Hudson City Savings Bank, to get low interest prime loans into communities at ground zero for predatory lending.

The need for both the policies advocated and programs implemented by the Institute speaks to the relative uniqueness of our approach as a think and do tank. Among the nation's approximately 1400 think tanks, most do not - perhaps cannot - embrace both public policy research and community level action and programs; or aspire to both reach the highest levels of policy making and the grassroots leadership of union halls, neighborhoods and houses of faith. Whether the foreclosure crisis, driver licenses as an employment barrier, moving urban citizens into the construction trades and the middle class, creating Newark's first community court, or enhancing public safety by reducing by half the number of juveniles in criminal detention, or ushering ex-offenders into jobs and responsibility, the Institute's approach is essential. Candidly, the current economy makes our already ambitious justice agenda all the more difficult - and important. Then again, Alan Lowenstein founded the Institute to confront difficult challenges on difficult but promising terrain, New Jersey's urban communities. These challenges, this work and this approach call for your continued support.



- Cornell William Brooks, Esq.