You’re an entrepreneur with a good idea. Now you need money to light your project’s fire in Dallas.
Here’s the cold, hard reality: It’ll be enormously easier to get financing if you and your idea germinated north of Interstate 30 rather than south.
That troubling disparity is a big reason why Dallas suffers an income and asset gap, both racially and geographically.
The Dallas Morning News and city leaders want to find practical solutions to end this economic imbalance. To get the ball rolling, the newspaper will host a community conversation Thursday to pinpoint the next steps.
The discussion is the second of our “Come Together” events and part of the newspaper’s Bridging Dallas’ North-South Gap project. The city won’t close the economic and quality-of-life gaps that we’ve focused on the past seven years until more capital flows into underserved communities.
We’ll kick things off Thursday with Mayor Mike Rawlings and Dallas Federal Reserve President Richard Fisher assessing the local economic landscape and business challenges. Then a panel of experts will dig into what lenders and would-be entrepreneurs face when they sit down across the table from one another to talk about financial resources.
For starters, we need blunt answers about why lending institutions are so leery of enterprises rooted in southern Dallas.
The age-old charges of the redlining of business loans are well-known. Bankers, in turn, will tell you that too many southern Dallas enterprises have turned out to be dry holes.
And the very fact that the southern half of the city boasts less development than the north leads to doubts that it can support new ventures.
A big goal for Thursday night is to find strategies to break this chicken-and-egg conundrum.
Another vexing question involves the cultural and generational myths that surround money and financial institutions. For instance, some residents believe their cash is safer under the mattress than in a bank. So when it’s time to find a lender, it’s a cold start, with neither side having any knowledge of the other.
Sometimes it’s a matter of never developing habits around saving and banking. Maybe it’s not having a credit score — or not understanding why a credit score is important. Or coming up with a great idea but not knowing how to turn it into a business plan.
Thursday’s discussion is about knocking down roadblocks and myths like these. It’s about finding the right tools to do that work — whether for entrepreneurs seeking seed money for big ideas or parents wanting to provide a good financial education for their children.
That’s an aggressive and ambitious agenda for one night’s work. But, hey, bold thinking is the best thinking.
FINDING COMMON GROUND
The “Connecting Capital With Underserved Communities” discussion is free and open to the public. Seats will be awarded on a first-come, first-served basis.
When: 7-8:30 p.m. Thursday
Where: Adamson High School, 201 E. Ninth St., Dallas
To R.S.V.P.: prekindle.com/cometogether
Participants:
Mayor Mike Rawlings, who will moderate the discussion
Richard Fisher, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
Panelists:
Mike Casey, chairman, Grand Bank of Texas
Dr. Susan McElroy, University of Texas at Dallas associate professor of economics and education policy
John Martinez, president of the Regional Hispanic Contractors Association
Michelle Singletary, author and nationally syndicated personal finance columnist
