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The CDFI Industry: Its Origins and Development

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Community Economic Development in the United States
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Abstract

The community development movement in America was shaped initially by the adoption of the community development corporation (CDC) model, by some of the largest of the nation’s private philanthropies as an answer to the numerous and intermingled problems of the nation’s burgeoning “urban crisis.” The choice of this kind of a community-based institution to grapple with the problems of economically distressed, and frequently minority, communities, however appropriate and successful initially, had far-reaching and long-term consequences for the American community development, and the community development financial institution (CDFI), movement. This was a kind of decision that economists and historians frequently describe as a critical juncture in a path-dependent process, in this case, the creation and sustenance of the American community development movement. The adoption of the CDC model was a choice that “locked in” a set of programmatic choices that shape not only the way in which activities were managed by these neighborhood organizations originally but also the choices available for community development from that point forward.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Paul Pierson, “Increasing Returns, Path Dependence, and the Study of Politics,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 94, No. 2 (June, 2000): 252–257.

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  6. 6.

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  7. 7.

    Beauregard, When America Became Suburban, 2–4, 19–20.

  8. 8.

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  10. 10.

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  11. 11.

    Randy Stoecker, “The Community Development Corporation Model of Urban Redevelopment: A Political Economy Critique and an Alternative” accessed at http://comm-org.wis.edu/papers96/cdc.html.

  12. 12.

    O’Connor, “Community Action,” notes that Paul Ylvisaker, the economist who headed the Gray Areas program at the Ford Foundation, had a nuanced and sensitive understanding of American race relations but also understood that any project he proposed had to appear to steer clear of the question of race. See p. 607.

  13. 13.

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  14. 14.

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  18. 18.

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    Harry Edward Berndt, New Rulers in the Ghetto: The Community Development Corporation and the Ghetto (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1977), 32–37.

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    http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/local/ford_foundation.html.

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  22. 22.

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  23. 23.

    See Cliff Rosenthal’s comments in his introduction of Sister Corinne Florek to the 37th Annual Conference on Serving the Underserved in Los Angeles, 2011 at https://vimeo.com/27207091.

  24. 24.

    See Carol Nackenoff, The Fictional Republic: Horatio Alger and American Political Discourse (New York: Oxford, 1994).

  25. 25.

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  26. 26.

    Thomas Piketty, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, 20–27, 244–252.

  27. 27.

    Kirby White and Charles Matthei, “Community Land Trusts” in Severyn T. Bruyn and James Meehan (eds.) Beyond the Market and the State: New Directions in Community Development (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 50–54.

  28. 28.

    Eulogy for Matthei by Emmett Jarrett at http://www.thewitness.org/archive/march2003/commentremembering.html.

  29. 29.

    http://equitytrust.org/chuck-matthei/.

  30. 30.

    Mark Pinsky’s interview June 11, 2015; Cliff Rosenthal’s introduction of Sister Corinne, ibid., at https://vimeo.com/27207091.

  31. 31.

    Chuck Matthei, “U.S. Land Reform Movements: The Theory Behind the Practice” Social Policy (Spring, 1992): 37–38.

  32. 32.

    Kirby White and Charles Matthei, “Community Land Trusts” in Severyn T. Bruyn and James Meehan (eds.) Beyond Market and the State: New Directions in Community Development (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 54.

  33. 33.

    White and Matthei, “Community Land Trust”, 41.

  34. 34.

    Matthei, “Land Reform Movements”: 37–41; Chuck Matthei, “Equity Trust: A Financial Interest in Property: A Moral Principle of Fairness,” Sojourner (Nov., 1993).

  35. 35.

    Institute for Community Economics, “Recommendations to the Millennial Housing Commission” (Springfield, MA: ICE, 2001) accessed at community-wealth.org/content/recommendations-milliennial-housing-commission.

  36. 36.

    Mark Pinsky’s interview, June 11 2015.

  37. 37.

    Judith D. Feins, Urban Housing Disinvestment and Neighborhood Decline: A Study of Public Policy Outcomes (Chicago: University of Chicago Ph.D. diss., 1977). Feins’ dissertation on urban disinvestment and the programmatic space it provided to alternative financial institutions (such as CDFIs) was an analysis that primarily used ShoreBank as its case study.

  38. 38.

    Richard P. Taub, Community Capitalism (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Press, 1988), 101–111.

  39. 39.

    Kevin Fox Gotham, Race, Real Estate, and Uneven Development (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002), 11–13.

  40. 40.

    David M.P. Freund, Colored Property: State Policy & White Racial Politics in Suburban America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 128–135; Melvin L. Oliver and Thomas M. Shapiro, Black Wealth, White Wealth: A New Perspective on Racial Inequality (New York: Rutledge, 2007), 147–151.

  41. 41.

    Brian D. Boyer, Cities Destroyed for Cash: The FHA Scandal at HUD (Chicago: Follett Publishing Company, 1973), 20–23; Irving Welfeld, HUD Scandals: Howling Headlines and Silent Fiascoes (New Brunswick: Transaction Press, 1992), 29–37.

  42. 42.

    Mark Pinsky’s interview June 11, 2015.

  43. 43.

    http://ofn.org/sites/default/files/Principles_Community_Dev_Lending_2014.pdf.

  44. 44.

    Ibid.

  45. 45.

    Ibid., 2–4.

  46. 46.

    Ibid., 5–6.

  47. 47.

    Ibid., 6–11.

  48. 48.

    Mark A. Pinsky, “Coalition of Lenders and Investors Help Create the Community Development Financial Institution Act of 1994”, Shelterforce Magazine Issue #79, January/February 1995. National Housing Institute at http://www.nhi.org/online/issues/79/coallaw.html.

  49. 49.

    Hyman J. Minsky, et al., Community development banking: A proposal to establish a nationwide system of community development banks (Annandale, N.Y.: Jerome Levy Institute, 1993), 10–11, ii.

  50. 50.

    United States Senate, Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, “Hearings on the Proposed Community Development Financial Act of 1993” (Washington: GPO, 1993), 13.

  51. 51.

    Ibid.

  52. 52.

    Senate Committee on Banking, “Hearings”, 6.

  53. 53.

    Senate Committee on Banking, “Hearings”, 16.

  54. 54.

    Senate Committee on Banking, “Hearings”, 131.

  55. 55.

    Senate Committee on Banking, “Hearings,”138.

  56. 56.

    Senate Committee on Banking, “Hearings,” 18.

  57. 57.

    Senate Committee on Banking, “Hearings,” 47.

  58. 58.

    Senate Committee on Banking, “Hearings,” 43.

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Greer, J.L., Gonzales, O. (2017). The CDFI Industry: Its Origins and Development. In: Community Economic Development in the United States. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-69810-3_3

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