Financial Empowerment | City of Norfolk, Virginia

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:

Create and Regularly Update a Public Data Dashboard on Key Racial Equity Metrics

Establish a Hub for Financial Education and Related Supports

Collaborate with Local Schools to Pilot New Financial Education Interventions

Dedicate Funding for New Career Bridge Programming

Prepare Equity and Opportunity Indicators for Housing-Related Investments

Pursue Regional Housing Collaborations

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.