The CDFI Fund announced New Markets Tax Credit (NMTC) awards to 104 organizations today, including a $65 million allocation for LISC, the largest amount allocated to recipient groups. It brings LISC’s total NMTC awards to nearly $1.3 billion, which we have leveraged to fuel the development of retail, manufacturing, health care, childcare, and education facilities in under-resourced communities. LISC’s NMTC work is managed by its affiliate, Broadstreet Impact Services, a community investor and fund services firm focused social and economic impact across the country.

An article in QCity Metro describes the life-changing impact of LISC and Uber's partnership, the Health Access Fund, offering free rides to medical and other appointments that contribute to health and wellbeing. In Charlotte, NC, as in other cities where the Fund operates, rides are coordinated through locally rooted groups like Care Ring, a 70-year-old community organization that since March has been able to offer 2,600 rides to primary and specialist care appointments, food access points, case management meetings and much more.

Here’s a compelling tale of system change in action: An article in the Boston Globe digs into how Rhode Island’s nascent participatory budgeting process dovetailed with the state’s Health Equity Zones (which have a long history of support from LISC) to fund programs and neighborhood assets that residents (as young as age 13) determined their communities needed.

A deeply reported article in the New York Times delves into the story of creating the 11th Street Bridge Park linking Anacostia with adjacent neighborhoods. The piece features LISC and our DC team’s integral and longtime involvement in a community-centered project that has aimed, from its inception, to nurture connection, growth and vitality without displacing Black residents in the process.

By Jeanne Cola, executive director of LISC Rhode Island

In an op-ed for the Providence Journal, Jeanne Cola, executive director of LISC Rhode Island, makes the important case for state government to leverage private and public resources to create quality housing that can stem the affordability crisis and boost local economies. Writes Cola, of the current funding opportunities, “We must get this right.”   The excerpt below was originally published by The Providence Journal Opinion/Cola: Governor, legislature must do more to address housing crisis By Jeanne Cola, executive director of LISC Rhode Island

A group of experts, including Julia Ryan, LISC’s VP for Health Programs, gathered for a webinar hosted by U.S. News & World Report, to offer insight and solutions to tackling disparities in COVID vaccination distribution.