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Affordable Housing: Solid Partnerships and a Foundation of LIIF’s Work 

LIIF has a longstanding history of innovative capital deployment that supports the expansion of the housing supply. While we have invested significant amounts to produce and preserve housing, we continued to grapple with a persistent housing crisis that significantly burdened Black, Latino, and other people and communities of color. As we embarked on our strategic…

Early Care and Education: LIIF Expanding Our Support of the Sector to Set Up Parents and Children for Success  

Creating communities of opportunity, equity and well-being requires us to examine how historically excluded communities are able to access quality, affordable child care. Through our strategic planning process, LIIF identified early care and education (ECE) as a vital component to a thriving community because when children are provided with high-quality care and education, they are…

LIIF’s New IRP Framework Centering Impact in Our Lending

LIIF’s strategic pillar of impact-led lending springs from our goal of nimble deployment of capital as the vehicle for effecting deeper impact in the communities we serve. With racial equity center to our mission, LIIF needed to consider where and how our efforts as a CDFI addressed the systemic inequities that create barriers to opportunity…

$20 Million Partnership Aims to Co-Locate Child Care with Affordable Housing

Child care has been widely recognized as an essential public resource that can produce a triple halo effect across society: thriving small businesses, high-quality early education for children, and broader economic opportunity and support for working parents. Yet child care supply gaps across the country continue to limit this potential, with Black, Latino, Indigenous, and…

Inspiration from the Field: Education Impact Tool and Its Effects on Our Lending

In our strategic plan, LIIF committed to shifting the way we do business through a new impact-led lending approach informed by equity-centric decision-making tools.   An “impact-led lending approach” means that our investments in vital community assets like affordable homes, quality early care and education, schools and other facilities will be driven by qualitative and quantitative rubrics to help us predict whether an investment or program drives expanded access, improved outcomes,…

A New Community Revitalization Fund Could Accelerate Equitable Development

For years the predominantly Black neighborhood of Avondale in Cincinnati has seen a dramatic disinvestment that left the community with underutilized and unsafe amenities like Avondale Town Center, a suburban style retail strip with neither a walkable neighborhood center nor quality retail options. The city-owned Town Center site was originally developed in 1983 and quickly…

LIIF and 90+ Partners Sign Letter in Support of the Community Revitalization Fund

Today 97 organizations from across the country sent a letter to congressional leadership showing support for the Biden-Harris administration’s proposed Community Revitalization Fund. The Community Revitalization Fund would establish a new grant program, administered by HUD, to invest in community assets that build wealth for existing residents, increase community engagement and strengthen civic infrastructure. The…

Today We Remember George Floyd and Reaffirm Our Commitments

Today, we remember George Floyd and every Black life lost in the fight for racial equity. Today, we remember history and ground ourselves in our commitment to the work ahead. One year after the senseless murder of George Floyd, the fight continues for a more just and equitable society for people of color. In the…

Can Creative Capital Solutions Safeguard Child Care?

This story is part of LIIF’s 2020 Annual Impact Report. Up on a hill, east of the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C., a new, brightly colored child care facility with a distant view of the Capitol building is preparing to open its doors. Kidspace is a success story amid a year of early care and…