BY DAVID McPHERSON
Journal Staff Writer
PROVIDENCE -- To former Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin, there's a link between community development to help the poor at the local level and economic competition at the global level.
During a visit to Rhode Island yesterday, Rubin called local community development "an economic imperative" for the United States as it strives to compete with China and India.
The economic emergence of these two Asian powers amounts to "the greatest challenge to the economic order" since the United States' own development into an economic power 100 years ago, Rubin said.
"They have a tremendous focus on the problems of the poor," Rubin said in an interview. He emphasized that by helping the poor, nations boost their productivity and become more competitive.
Treasury secretary for four years under President Bill Clinton, Rubin has been credited by many with helping foster the economic expansion of the late 1990s, along with former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan.
Rubin came to Providence to speak to supporters of the Rhode Island office of Local Initiatives Support Corp., a national nonprofit that secures financing and provides technical help for affordable housing and other community development projects.
Rubin is chairman of the national LISC board.
In Rhode Island over 15 years, LISC said, it has invested more than $150 million helping to create 4,000 new affordable-housing units, child-care facilities for more than 4,000 children and 500,000 square feet of commercial projects and community space.
Of that $150 million, $20 million was raised within Rhode Island and the rest came from outside the state, said Barbara Fields Karlin, founder of the local LISC office 15 years ago.
Rubin addressed local business and community leaders late yesterday afternoon at the Save the Bay Center in Providence overlooking Narragansett Bay.
Before his address, Rubin said in an interview that groups such as LISC need to do a better job of conveying the importance of community economic development to the American people.
Rubin said he became aware of the organization while serving in the Clinton administration. After leaving the Treasury, he agreed to serve as LISC chairman because he supports its social and economic goals and, he said, it is an organization that is run like a business.
"It was about accomplishment, and it was about doing," Rubin said.
Before his career in Washington, Rubin worked as an executive with the Wall Street investment bank Goldman Sachs. Now he is a director and chairman of the executive committee at Citigroup, the nation's largest bank holding company, in addition to serving as LISC chairman.
Rubin's visit to Providence to talk about housing issues came the same day as another leading figure in U.S. banking also traveled to the city to highlight affordable housing.
Hugh McColl Jr., the former chairman and chief executive officer of Bank of America, came to Providence to join in Habitat for Humanity's latest home-building project in the city.
Over the course of 18 years as CEO, McColl, 70, built in Charlotte, N.C., one of the nation's largest banks from what had been a midsize regional bank.
Upon McColl's retirement in 2001, Bank of America honored him with a pledge to help build and fund the construction of 120 new Habitat for Humanity homes for families that otherwise could not afford their own homes.
The company later expanded the pledge to include an additional 100 new homes overseas.
So far, nearly 80 new homes have been built in the United States and about 50 overseas. McColl said he expects the project to be completed by the summer of 2007.
"You can see your work translated into a real something happening, as opposed to hoping something happens," McColl said as he explained his support of Habitat for Humanity.
The home to which McColl lent a hand is being built on Daboll Street on the South Side of Providene for Ana and Julio Alvarez and their family. Under the Habitat for Humanity project, they had already contributed 200 hours of time helping to build a home for another family and they will receive a zero-percent interest loan.
It is the first built in Rhode Island by Bank of America under the McColl project since Bank of America took over the former FleetBoston Financial Corp. in 2004.
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