LISC Twin Cities has launched the Community Asset Transition Fund to ensure that local residents and cooperatives can take ownership of properties and land along the cities’ cultural corridors. It's part of the push for “more inclusion, engagement and ownership by people of color, not only to repair what was damaged, but also to help generate new prosperity and wealth for members of the community,” says Peter McLaughlin, LISC Twin Cities ED, in an article on the fund in Impact Alpha.
The excerpt below was originally published:
Helping communities acquire assets and rebuild small businesses in Minnesota
By Dennis Price, Impact Alpha
The conviction of former officer Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd sent a signal to residents of Minneapolis that their voices were heard and that Black lives matter.
Two new real estate and small business funds aim to do the same – by strengthening the role of community development financial institutions.
CDFIs, with long track records and deep community ties, became a key financial lifeline during the pandemic for Black and Brown-owned businesses, as well as affordable housing and other social infrastructure in low-income neighborhoods. Still, CDFIs themselves often lack access to flexible capital needed to invest more deeply in communities.
The Community Asset Transition Fund, managed by LISC Twin Cities, has raised an initial $30 million to temporarily acquire and ensure properties and land along multiple cultural corridors in the city become owned by local residents or cooperatively owned.
Separately, the Minnesota Inclusive Growth Fund, managed by Minneapolis-based Community Reinvestment Fund, has secured $10 million in commitments to deploy to a half-dozen organizations serving the city’s Black and Brown-owned businesses.
Both funds grew out of the Integrated Capital Initiative of the Minnesota Council on Foundations, a COVID-era mobilization of foundation program-related investments and grants to support the state’s CDFIs. A Minnesota Council on Foundation survey of dozens of Minnesota CDFIs identified a demand for at least $75 million in program-related investments and another $11 million in grants.
“CDFIs are really an important tool and instrument to garner capital and provide access to markets that are not working,” says Eric Muschler of the McKnight Foundation, which provided low-interest loans of $5 million to each fund.