CDFIs
The Latest
Making Homeownership Affordable: Bringing Fannie and Freddie Back to Mission, a Shelterforce Webinar
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac guarantee most U.S. home loans, which is supposed to make homeownership widely accessible. But is this happening? In this webinar, three field leaders argue that these government-sponsored enterprises need to step up with new products and services to expand access to homeownership.
Explore Articles in this Topic
Search & Filter Within this Topic
filter by Content Type
filter by Date Range
search by Keyword
Credit Where Credit Is Due: Expanding Access to Capital for BIPOC Developers
The dual financial system affects not only Black and Brown consumers, but Black- and Brown-led firms. In the past two years, CDFIs have focused on shifting access to capital for developers.
How CDFIs are Helping Small Businesses Create Good Jobs
Community development financial institutions lend to micro- and small-business owners, but the jobs those businesses create are often minimum wage, part time, or otherwise low quality. What makes a job a good job, and what are CDFIs doing to help small-business borrowers create good jobs?
Lessons from the Last Housing Crisis: How to Get Control of Properties
How to keep affordable apartments and single-family homes out of the hands of institutional investors if the coronavirus pandemic leads to a giant wave of evictions and foreclosures.
CDFIs and the Expansion of the Payroll Protection Program
The Payroll Protection Program is an expansion of a program for banks and credit unions. It offers virtually nothing to nonprofit small-business lenders.
Let’s Interrupt History: Racial Equity in a Time of Crisis
Data on the pandemic shows once again the dramatic consequences of racial inequalities. CDFIs must focus on ensuring equity for Black-owned businesses.
Making Loans to Help Formerly Incarcerated People Get Back on Their Feet
CDFIs and nonprofits are figuring out how to help formerly incarcerated people build credit histories and access capital in order to get their lives going.
Help for Small Businesses
What kinds of emergency measures are advocacy organizations proposing to make sure that when small businesses can open again, they’ll be financially able to do so?
Only Halfway to Economic Democracy
Few books make me so angry that I must resist throwing them across the floor. One such book, published in 2002 (and since updated) was Greg Palast’s The Best Democracy […]
How Successful is Your County in Accessing Community Development Funding?
some communities in the United States seem much better than others at attracting grants and financing for community development—even after adjusting for their relative needs. Here are some of the surprising trends:
Is Success Making CDFIs Too Risk-Averse?
Shelterforce’s Miriam Axel-Lute in conversation with Ed Gorman of NCRC on whether community development financial institutions (CDFIs) are taking enough risk, and therefore, falling short of their mission.
Can Using a Racial Equity Lens Increase Capital in Communities of Color?
If CDFIs adopted traditional appraisal standards to determine loan amounts, they’d make very few loans in the communities they were founded to serve.
Tracing the Roots of CDFIs: A review of Democratizing Finance
This book is a major contribution to increasing knowledge and awareness of how far the community development finance movement has come in 30 years.