IT’S BEEN MORE than seven years since the Boston Federal Reserve Bank published a report, titled “The Color of Wealth in Boston,” that has served as something of a regional wake-up call to the issue of the enormous racial wealth gap in Greater Boston. The report highlighted the now-often cited, but still no less jaw-dropping figures on household net worth in the region. They showed that the median net worth of White households was $247,000; for Hispanics it ranged from $0 to $3,000 depending on their background, while for US born Black households it was just $8. 

Are we making any progress in closing those gaps? What are the most promising approaches to doing so? Betty Francisco, the CEO of the Boston Impact Initiative, a nonprofit impact investment fund working to increase wealth and asset-building opportunities for communities of color, and Mike, Leyba co-executive director of the community organizing group City Life/Vida Urbana, dug in on those questions on this week’s Codcast. 

By Michael Jonas, Commonwealth Magazine