As an emerging CDFI serving the state of MN with small dollar consumer lending, this funding is essential to us to help combat predatory lending that strips wealth from low-income communities and allows us to provide stabilizing capital to communities to stay housed, employed, and (re)build credit to reach their asset building goals (e.g. car and home ownership) for the future.
I am a real estate broker and development consultant working with emerging developers, small businesses and nonprofits. Many of my clients cannot finance their projects with traditional debt and equity because they don’t come from generational wealth and because their projects are more challenging because they are in markets that are not achieving their full potential yet or meeting critical community needs that don’t produce quite as much profit. CDFI lending has stepped in the gap to solve dozens of critical projects that just need a little boost to get to the finish line, and CDFIs are critical partners to Platform’s work.
Since its inception, the CDFI Fund has been a staunch supporter of CDFIs like MEDA whose mission is focused on rebuilding and stabilizing some of the most impoverished and underserved communities across the country.