The Detroit Financial Well-Being Innovation Challenge brought teams together at a showcase event this spring hosted by GreenLight Fund at Durfee Innovation Society. The five-year challenge that launched in February 2022 is run by United Way for Southeastern Michigan in partnership with the University of Michigan’s Poverty Solutions.

A representative survey from U-M’s Detroit Metro Area Communities Study demonstrates that Black Detroit residents adopted these safety measures earlier than other groups. While 59% of Black residents were wearing masks at that point in the pandemic, only 38% of white residents and 35% of Latino residents were doing so.

As one of the least connected major U.S. cities, the need to close the digital divide in Detroit is significant. Over a third of households in Detroit lack broadband internet access, defined federally as a 25 megabits per second download speed and 3 megabits per second upload speed. Lack of access compounds dozens of other quality-of-life issues and dramatically affects access to education, the ability to find better jobs or to gain timely information about the COVID-19 pandemic.

Residents want living-wage jobs, good schools, affordable housing, accessible health care, and other foundations of economic well-being.

Survey responses indicate Detroit’s unemployment rate dropped from 48% in May and June to 38% in late July. One-quarter of Detroiters in the labor force say they remain unemployed due to layoffs and business closures resulting from the pandemic.

To understand Detroit’s transformation over the past decade, some say you need to visit the city in person to witness the vast changes. That message and enthusiasm for how young leaders can have a long-term impact on the city came through loud and clear at the Detroit Impact Conference.

According to the forecast, the city’s unemployment rate will continue to fall from 18.7% in July 2013, when the city filed for bankruptcy, to 8.6% in 2019, and to 7.9% by 2023 and 2024, improving faster than the statewide measure.

A growing partnership on economic mobility with the city of Detroit, a new collaboration with Harvard University, community voices, policy impact and student engagement are among the highlights in the…

The University of Michigan and Harvard University are forming two new partnerships designed to spur economic mobility and reduce poverty in Detroit, as well as combine resources and expertise in response to the national opioid crisis.