Financial Empowerment

In May 2025, the city released the Norfolk Blueprint for Financial Empowerment, with a focus on racial wealth equity – particularly for Black residents. The Blueprint provides a comprehensive overview of the history and current challenges faced in Norfolk and provides actionable recommendations that the city can take to promote economic empowerment, including:

1. Create and Regularly Update a Public Data Dashboard on Key Racial Equity Metrics
2. Establish a Hub for Financial Education and Related Supports
3. Collaborate with Local Schools to Pilot New Financial Education Interventions
4. Dedicate Funding for New Career Bridge Programming
5. Prepare Equity and Opportunity Indicators for Housing-Related Investments
6. Pursue Regional Housing Collaborations
7. Explore the Use of Performance-Based and Capacity Building Grants

To inform the blueprint, the Department of Housing and Community Development, with the support of Recover Fund, engaged several thousand residents and nearly 50 stakeholders over a ten-month period, including government agencies, nonprofit organizations, universities, civic leagues, affordable housing developers, and financial institutions. The blueprint focuses specifically on affordable housing, jobs and income, and financial education.  

Read the full Blueprint

The timeline for achieving these recommendations ranges from immediate, short-term, and long-term. While it will take several years to fully achieve some of these recommendations, the 2025 Action Plan for Financial Empowerment reflects what the city has committed to accomplish in 2025.

Read the 2025 Action Plan

The preparation of the Blueprint for Financial Empowerment was supported with a $75,000 grant from the national nonprofit, Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund (CFE Fund). In 2023, the Norfolk Department of Housing and Community Development (NDHCD) was chosen through a competitive application process to participate in the CFE Fund's CityStart initiative. 

The Financial Empowerment Center (FEC) Academy provides technical assistance, planning funds, and implementation support to help cities launch a Financial Empowerment Center. 

Financial Empowerment Centers provide integrated, professional, one-on-one financial counseling as a free public service to residents. If implemented, the FEC will help clients of all backgrounds manage their finances, pay down debt, increase savings, establish, and build credit, and access safe and affordable mainstream banking products that will enable residents to address their financial challenges, needs and plans for their futures. 

In August 2024, Norfolk Department of Housing and Community Development (NDHCD) was awarded a $20,000 planning grant from the Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund as part of the FEC Academy. During this year-long month planning grant process, NDHCD will seek to identify partner organizations to lead or support an FEC, determine the size and scope of an FEC, and seek grants and other financial support. 

If successful, at the end of phase two NDHCD  will present a proposal to City Council with a plan to move forward with the implementation of a Financial Empowerment Center. 

The Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund’s (CFE Fund’s) mission is to leverage municipal engagement to improve the financial stability of low and moderate-income households by embedding financial empowerment strategies into local government infrastructure. The CFE Fund works with over 100 mayoral administrations and their partners to implement innovative programs and policies - and measures its success accordingly. (Learn more about the CFE Fund.)