If Trump Cuts This Little-Known Federal Program, It Will Gut Low-Income Communities
“The CDFI fund was launched by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in 1994 specifically to direct funds to disadvantaged communities. It does so by providing grants to CDFIs, which are private financial institutions that offer affordable lending to low-income communities that often cannot access lending resources offered through mainstream financial institutions due to a lack of solid credit history or an unwillingness to sign up for a bank account, which, because of late-payment and overdraft fees, are often seen as an impossible expense. There are over 1,000 CDFIs across the U.S., and though the grants that the CDFI Fund awards to CDFIs are relatively small, CDFIs are able to leverage those dollars to bring in private investors and create substantial funding streams that go directly into city and neighborhood-level projects.”