News

Reinvestment Fund applauds the nomination of Pamela Patenaude to be Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Ms. Patenaude is the President of the J. Ronald Terwilliger Foundation for Housing America’s Families, a national nonprofit education and research organization dedicated to illuminating the affordable housing crisis in America. She has served as a member of Reinvestment Fund’s Policy Advisory Board since 2014.

Reinvestment Fund, an S&P AA rated Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), today announced the pricing of $50 million in general obligation bonds. Reinvestment Fund is one of the first CDFIs to access the capital markets and their bonds were oversubscribed, confirming a significant demand among institutional investors for the unique impact investing opportunities their CDFI provides low-income communities across the country.

“The CDFI industry was founded on the faith, trust and patience of a unique class of American investor. These forerunners to impact investors accepted an unconventional and illiquid investment vehicle for many years in the pursuit of a socially responsible outcome for themselves and underinvested communities,” said Donald Hinkle-Brown, President and CEO, in making the announcement.

Reinvestment Fund is honored to have been selected by USDA as the National Fund Manager for the agency’s Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI), and we are eager to lead this national effort to invest in healthy food access, an economic engine in communities that helps create much-needed jobs and spur small business growth. As the National Fund Manager, Reinvestment Fund is committed to building a more equitable food system that supports the health and economic vibrancy of all Americans, especially those that have not benefited significantly from HFFI investment to date—including rural communities, food systems entrepreneurs, and women- and minority-owned businesses.

The United States Department of Agriculture has announced the selection of Reinvestment Fund to serve as the National Fund Manager for the Healthy Food Financing Initiative (HFFI). The announcement, which came from Agriculture Under Secretary Lisa Mensah, is a capstone to Reinvestment Fund’s decade plus efforts to bring equitable access to healthy food to communities across America.

As the National Fund Manager, Reinvestment Fund will raise private capital, provide financial and technical assistance to regional, state and local partnerships, and channel capital to fund eligible projects that will improve access to fresh, healthy foods in underserved rural areas.

Philadelphia, December 19, 2016 — Reinvestment Fund announced the financing of its fourth Pay for Success project today. The Salt Lake County initiative aims to offer a better program to address a long-running county problem – persistent homelessness. Local nonprofit, The Road Home, will operate the Homes Not Jail Program.

The Homes Not Jail program will provide services to improve housing stability, criminal justice and behavioral health outcomes for the persistently homeless. It will serve 315 individuals offering a range of housing assistance and support services including access to behavioral health treatment and employment counseling. Rental assistance through the private rental market and intensive case management are included in the six-year project.

Philadelphia, December 19—Reinvestment Fund was awarded a $3 million program-related investment by The Kresge Foundation to support its creative placemaking efforts in Baltimore, Atlanta and New Orleans. Reinvestment Fund is one of six organizations that received a total of $14 million in investments from Kresge.

Reinvestment Fund has made over $95 million in arts-related investments—from the Crane Arts building, an old bath fixtures warehouse in Philadelphia that now includes studios and makerspace to the revival of the Center Theater in Baltimore, MD, which sat vacant for decades.

Baltimore, December 14th —A collection of local public, private, non-profit entities today announced a $10 million loan initiative to help finance neighborhood revitalization projects in a group of Baltimore City neighborhoods where traditional funding may be hard to come by.

Known as the Central Baltimore Future Fund or CBFF, the multi-million lending initiative is designed to work in collaboration with a comprehensive revitalization strategy for a cluster of central Baltimore neighborhoods by providing loans to developers and building owners who are seeking to build or restore high-impact projects.

The CBFF will be managed by Reinvestment Fund, a national leader in the financing of neighborhood revitalization. Reinvestment Fund, which is headquartered in Philadelphia with an office in Baltimore, is responsible for underwriting, closing and monitoring the CBFF loans.

Philadelphia, November 29th —This Giving Tuesday, Reinvestment Fund is pleased to announce our inaugural Community Champion Award, a $15,000 grant to CASA Philadelphia. The award is part of the Reinvestment Fund’s Employee Giving Program, which launched this year.

Annually, Reinvestment Fund employees are invited to nominate eligible organizations for Community Champion Awards. Nominations are reviewed by a staff award committee, whose recommendations are then approved by the Reinvestment Fund’s Community Advisory Board.

Reinvestment Fund has long supported economic equality through its work, including expanding access to quality education for thousands of children by investing in education facilities across the country. Sadly, the most vulnerable children in our communities, like those in foster care, need further intervention to be able to walk through those doors of opportunity.

Atlanta, November 15th — JPMorgan Chase & Co. has awarded a $4 million grant to Equity Atlanta Collaborative— a new group that brings together Access to Capital for Entrepreneurs Inc. (ACE), Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership (ANDP), and Reinvestment Fund. The nonprofits will work together to provide targeted loan capital and consulting services for high-quality affordable housing projects and small businesses in underserved communities in south Atlanta and Gwinnett County.

As part of JPMorgan Chase’s PRO Neighborhoods initiative, the new Equity Atlanta Collaborative partnership was selected and is one of five projects nationwide led by Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) to accelerate economic recovery. The five CDFI collaboratives selected for the grant are located in Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, Miami and New York.

This July, longtime community members were able to move into their new homes in Mount Holly, NJ. TRF Development Partners helped craft a resolution to a conflict between the township and residents who were displaced by the demolition of 300 homes in favor of new construction, market rate housing. Central to our development plan for the Parker Green subdivision is the integration of new families with existing residents in a mixed-income community.

The community had previously filed a lawsuit that made its way to the Supreme Court docket in 2014; but the Parker Green plan and the resulting settlement agreement led to the withdrawal of the lawsuit. Construction is underway on additional units of affordable housing, which will be complete in late 2016.