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                        During three decades of working to close the financial gaps that confront a disproportionate number of low-income, minority and […]

I like chocolate chocolate chip and I like peanut butter and chocolate but I’ll take a stand and say that twice as much of one great thing—chocolate—is more awesome than […]

What do Saul Alinsky, Students for a Democratic Society, HUD, and the Housing and Community Development Department of Fairfax County, Virginia, have in common? Conrad Egan. Over his five-decade career, […]

Investments and funding motivated by the Community Reinvestment Act are more foundational to the work of community developers than is often discussed. But if regulations change the incentives for banks, the effects on communities will be dramatic.

The details, lessons, and impact of two innovative community development funds created by Enterprise Community Partners.

Some CDFIs approve loans based on a person’s character instead of their credit score. But they only recommend
doing so when you know the applicant.

If CDFIs adopted traditional appraisal standards to determine loan amounts, they’d make very few loans in the communities they were founded to serve.

Once upon a time, I saw the problem of providing responsible financial services as purely a policy problem. We needed better rules, ones that require that all people, even those […]

The Payroll Protection Program is an expansion of a program for banks and credit unions. It offers virtually nothing to nonprofit small-business lenders.

As credit tightens and higher and higher numbers of commercial real estate loans enter default, CDCs are stepping up to fill the financing gap in economic development deals from which conventional lenders have been retreating.

When plans to develop affordable housing units in San Bernardino hit a funding roadblock, Dignity Health committed a $1.2 million bridge loan to help fill the gap. But the health system didn’t stop there.

A majority of mainstream lenders base loan approvals on a hotly debated three-digit score. Are there better, fairer ways to assess risk?