Opportunity Finance Network celebrates 25 years
The Opportunity Finance Network, the nation’s leading association of community development financial institutions (CDFIs) held its 25th annual conference in Charlotte, North Carolina last month. Information regarding sessions held and many of the presentations made at the conference are available here. Among the highlights of the conference was the presentation of the industry’s third annual Wachovia NEXT awards.
Winning the grand prize, a $5.5 million award ($500,000 of which is in the form of a grant and $5 million of which is in the form of a low-interest loan) is the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund. New Hampshire Community Loan Fund is known especially for its work in developing loans for resident-owned cooperatives of manufactured housing sites. The cooperative, by providing stable title, has helped residents obtain standard mortgages, thereby lowering residents’ housing costs and helping them build equity and wealth. This model has been so successful that with the aid of the Ford Foundation, CFED, and others, a national entity, ROC USA has been formed to extend the model to all 50 states. As the ROC USA website explains, with the community secured via a cooperative, “traditional mortgage lenders (as opposed to “chattel” or personal property lenders) have begun lending in New Hampshire’s co-ops. These lenders include local banks, Fannie Mae, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, and New Hampshire Housing (the State housing finance authority).” Today, homeowners in New Hampshire now own 20 percent of all manufactured home communities in the state. As of May 2009, 92 communities have been acquired by the roughly 5,000 homeowners who live in them. For more information, see the award description here.
Additional honorees at the Opportunity Finance Network conference include the following:
The second place award recipient was the Federation of Appalachian Housing Enterprises (FAHE). FAHE received a $2.75 million award ($250,000 of which is in the form of a grant and $2.5 million of which is in the form of a a low-interest loan). Founded in 1980, the FAHE provided $41 million in direct financing and produced 3,800 homes in 2008. For more information, see the award description here.
Four other organizations received $25,000 grants.
Citizen Potawatomi Community Development Corporation (CPCDC), based in Shawnee, Oklahoma was awarded the Community Impact prize. CPCDC provides a range of programs including various lending programs, financial education, and an Individual Development Account (IDA) matched savings program. In the past three years the group has made 80 business loans totaling nearly $5 million, provided 5,850 hours of business development training, and provided customized business consultations to more than 2,300 Native Americans.
Newberg, Oregon-based CASA (Community And Shelter Assistance) of Oregon won the Advocacy award for its work in obtaining state tax credits and set asides for farm worker housing in Oregon. More recently, CASA of Oregon turned its advocacy efforts to manufactured housing, establishing a Manufactured Housing Park Conversion Program predicated on the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund model and successfully advocating the state legislature for the inclusion of nonprofit, limited equity cooperatives as owners of manufactured housing parks. It also helped obtain a $10 million set aside in the Oregon Affordable Housing Tax Credits to help these cooperatives finance the purchase of parks.
San Francisco-based Pacific Community Ventures received the Innovation award for its work in providing health care access and financial literacy training to business owners and their low/moderate income employees, and for providing impact measurement services to other social investors. The first community development venture capital fund in California, Pacific Community Ventures goes beyond providing financing to stimulate business development in low-income communities. It has supported financial literacy education in the firms in which it invests and, in 2008, piloted the Vida Card to help provide California’s uninsured low-income workers with convenient and affordable basic medical care. In 2000, Pacific Community Ventures developed InSight, a system that measures the social impact of its investments. In 2005, PCV made InSight available to other social investors and is now providing it to pension funds, fund managers, and foundations to help these investors demonstrate their community impacts.
New York City-based Seedco Financial was selected to receive the Financing award for its post-Hurricane(s) Katrina and Rita business lending program in Louisiana. Building on its successful emergency loan program in New York City after September 11 and a number of other emergency lending initiatives, Seedco Financial piloted a $500,000 business lending program in New Orleans which grew rapidly, reaching $8 million in loan originations in only two years. The program has since grown into a $26-million statewide economic development initiative.
Posted by Steve Dubb on 11/16/2009 at 06:00 PM
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