CDF recently reviewed its lending programs and their impacts. There are some important conclusions from this review. Click the title above to read on!
Advocacy
Community Development Finance (CDF) continues to evolve and respond to community needs. Most recently, our unique infrastructure has proven useful to a variety of public agencies, nonprofits and a foundation in supplying needed backup services. These services all assist people in need, low-income households, and people of color.
Primarily, these services involve payments in some way. To summarize briefly our disbursement/payment programs through November 2022:
CDF has developed a wide range of tools to assist its clients and customers, including loans, financial literacy training/coaching, payments assistance, check cashing, wiring money, etc. These financial services, which mostly are provided at a greatly reduced price or at no price, have proven very helpful to our customers and clients. But we have never had grant-making capacity as one of those tools.
Alameda County’s Community Development Agency awarded CDF $535,000 in August 2022 to create a low-cost financial services program in an unincorporated area of the county (Cherryland and Ashland). The funds are to be used to create a new store to offer a range of low-cost financial services including lending, financial coaching, check cashing and related […]
Teachers Rooted in Oakland (TRiO): A Partnership Between the Oakland Mayor’s Office, Community Development Finance (CDF), Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), DGI, and Philanthropic Partners Our Mission: To advance educational equity by addressing the cost of living and providing affordable housing to increase the recruitment & retention of highly skilled and committed Black, Latinx, and […]
Community Development Finance (CDF) has participated in a number of partnerships since opening in 2009. We recently announced our new partnership with Our Biswas which has provided funds to enable us to make interest-free loans. Our Biswas, an international lender headquartered in East Lansing, Michigan, uses the Nano Finance method and has wanted to […]
Community Development Finance (CDF) wishes to announce a new partnership with Our Biswas. This non-profit organization works overseas offering financial support to very low income women. Please visit www.ourbiswasusa.org to learn about the organization.
Our Biswas is working through the innovative concept of Nano Finance to provide emergency and basic needs to thousands of […]
Addressing Gentrification and Homelessness Pressures and Community Development Needs in the Bay Area
There has been a great deal of discussion about the lack of affordable housing, nonprofit office space, homeless housing and artists’ housing in Oakland due to the tragic warehouse fire, the issues associated with SROs and their conversions, the need for broader community development options and programs, the lack of good jobs, problems faced by small businesses, bank closures, and the overall increasing pressures from gentrification including rent and housing sales price increases. These same conditions exist throughout the Bay Area for the most part. Many excellent solutions presently exist and are in operation, and many excellent recommendations have been made. …The need for additional strategies and a more encompassing approach have become clear from several recent events….
Pay day loans are very controversial. On one hand, payday loans are reviled by many public officials, members of the clergy, policy makers, academics and researchers, analysts, journalists, advocates and others who have created a somewhat relentless attack on this financial service product over the last several years.
Payday loans and associated non-bank financial services are not popular products by the standard definition. Depending on which figures one uses, 3 percent to 5 percent of American consumers view payday lending or associated non-bank financial services like check cashing favorably.
Many important, innovative and effective programs to address these issues have been implemented around the country and have had a positive impact on large numbers of people in the U.S. However, in total, these existing programs, while excellent in so many ways, have not been able to address the changing needs of unbanked people or […]