Economic Development

LISC’s economic development initiatives boost the health of neighborhoods by investing in the physical and social assets of a community's business district. To make this happen, we support programs and invest in projects that cultivate entrepreneurship, attract new businesses, diversify the local retail mix and stimulate employment. It's the kind of development that grows local job opportunities and incomes, and brings goods and services to places where they're needed.

These changes, in turn, ripple outward, beyond individual neighborhoods, improving the landscape for industry and employment, bolstering cities’ tax revenues and stimulating regional economies.

How we support economic development:

• Through the New Markets Support Company, one of our affiliates, we syndicate federal New Markets Tax Credits to energize retail corridors, clean up brownfield sites and reinforce investment in housing, schools and neighborhood services. 
• Our retail and commercial lending tools offer financing for all stages of a project. They help build affordable housing developments and office buildings, bring supermarkets to food deserts and refurbish main streets.
• LISC’s small business loan program offers financing to small, for-profit businesses for everything from acquisition to equipment to working capital.
• Through MetroEdge, an approach to developing commercial districts, we help local leaders, businesspeople, public officials and investors understand emerging markets, prepare for development and attract and grow businesses.

Of course, local economies can thrive only when residents and businesses aren’t hampered by crime, and the fear of crime. Our community safety programs set up problem-solving partnerships among law enforcement, community developers, residents, businesses and other neighborhood institutions to tackle crime hot spots and other public safety problems.

We also invest in transit-oriented development (TOD), funding housing and businesses near rail and bus lines that connect people to work, school, services and cultural life.