When Bloomington, Indiana, was looking to fund a recent affordable housing project, they looked outside their city — and even their state — to secure financing. A single-family home on West 9th Street near downtown Bloomington, Indiana, was renovated by Bloomington Cooperative Living to create 18 new, affordable units with funding help from Local Enterprise Assistance Fund (LEAF), a Boston-based CDFI.
That funding connection was made possible by CDFI Friendly Bloomington, a nearly two-year-old organization that was borne out of the realization that creating a CDFI just for Bloomington wasn’t the most practical path. Instead, Bloomington established itself as the first “CDFI Friendly City,” serving as a new model for encouraging investments from CDFIs outside the region into local Bloomington projects focused on dealing with social and economic inequities.
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