City of Rochester
News Release
(Thursday, Dec. 6, 2018) – The Mayor’s Office of Community Wealth Building is getting national attention after an article written by Mayor Lovely Warren was published in the Biden Forum, an online resource of the Biden Foundation.
The Biden Forum, called a “conversation about the future of the middle class,” ran the article “Building Community Wealth in Rochester, NY” this week.
The article focuses on the decision Mayor Warren made at the start of her second term to create the Mayor’s Office of Community Wealth Building – “an initiative to foster financial stability for residents; build new and equitable systems of business and entrepreneurial development; fight to raise wages to ensure that all who work hard are able to live a happy and comfortable life; and create opportunities to build intergenerational wealth for those who have historically been denied the chance to do so,” she wrote.
“Community Wealth Building is not simply another anti-poverty initiative. Rather, it is a fundamental shift in how my administration approaches community development. This new mindset aims to correct the flawed systems that have consistently — and in many cases intentionally — resulted in unequal outcomes. No longer will we solely work to treat the effects of poverty and inequality; instead, we will attack the root causes of the issues,” the article continues.
To read the article in full, go to https://bidenforum.org/building-community-wealth-in-rochester-ny-37331c1dcdf0.
Mayor Warren got the idea for an Office of Community Wealth Building from a similar initiative in Richmond, Virginia. “I believe that Community Wealth Building is indispensable to creating the future we want to see in cities across the county. I am proud to have placed Rochester in the forefront of this exciting trend,” Mayor Warren wrote on the Biden Forum.
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News Media: For more information, contact Press Officer Jessica Alaimo, 428-7135.