Our local CDFI has been essential to supporting our organization, our members and so many people in our community who have struggled to access capital and financial services. They understand how to work with our communities and have assisted so many first time home-buyers and new businesses in getting on track and being financially stable. For many of our members this is where they’ve opened their first bank account and learned how to manage their finances.
Since 2008, CDFI Sustainable Neighborhoods has lent over $600 million to New York State homeowners at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure. Our lending programs have stabilized tens of thousands of households, thus preventing family displacement that leads to personal financial hardship and expenditures of substantial government funding needed to prevent or address homelessness across New York’s rural, suburban, and urban regions.
The CDFI Fund helps us at Cooperative Federal provide programs for home ownership, small business, consumer credit and financial education for our community, which helps to strengthen the local economy through giving the public access to said services. During a time of high inflation and economic unease, it is more crucial than ever that we continue to be enabled to provide this aid. While I work for Cooperative Federal itself, I have also been a member for several years prior and their free financial education helped me directly to improve my financial situation. Without these programs, people who are already struggling and often cannot afford out of pocket financial education/counseling have nowhere to turn. If we as a country want to achieve greatness, we need to be serving the American people, not stripping them of their ability to raise themselves up!