CEDAC's support has assisted the community development sector in Massachusetts to achieve a year of significant productivity in 2018. Community-based affordable housing developers and non-profit child care providers from Boston to Pittsfield have utilized CEDAC's early-stage capital financing and technical assistance to improve their communities with an infrastructure that reflects the needs of local residents. We've also spent time over the past year commemorating our 40th anniversary, and reflecting on the events and the people who have led us to where we are today.
CEDAC was created in 1978 to address the needs of residents living and working in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods throughout Massachusetts by providing the tools and resources to rebuild their communities. Forty years later, CEDAC supports this mission by delivering financial and technical assistance programs in affordable housing development and preservation, and early education, to our non-profit partners.
Governor Charlie Baker and the Massachusetts Legislature enacted a $1.8 billion Housing Bond Bill in 2018, the largest in the Commonwealth's history. This Bond Bill provides the capital subsidies that are used to create and preserve affordable housing, along with high-quality early childhood education (ECE) and out-of-school time (OST) facilities. CEDAC works closely with the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD) and its state agency partners on several of the bond programs used to develop supportive housing for homeless families or other vulnerable populations.
In 2018, CEDAC's affiliate, the Children's Investment Fund (CIF), was certified as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) by the U.S. Department of the Treasury's CDFI Fund. This designation enables the organization to apply for federal funding that will be deployed as low-cost capital to ECE and OST facilities throughout the Commonwealth. In its first year of eligibility, CIF was awarded $300,000 from the CDFI Fund, an auspicious beginning for this effort and evidence of the growing recognition that quality child care is a crucial part of community development.
Perhaps there is no better way to see how the vision of 1978 has evolved into building strong communities in 2018 than to focus on CEDAC's robust pipeline of affordable housing, supportive housing, and child care facilities projects that have opened or are under development. This includes a new Educare facility in Springfield, based on a nationally recognized early education model that is among just 24 of its kind in the country (top left); the preservation acquisition by Fenway CDC of Burbank Gardens, an expiring use project with 52 units in Boston (bottom left); new supportive housing for seniors organized by the Sisters of Providence in West Springfield (top right); and a redevelopment in Uxbridge to turn a 19th century school building into affordable housing units for families (bottom right), among many others. CEDAC provided effective technical and financial assistance to numerous non-profit organizations, who addressed community needs with each of these projects.
A reflection on the past 40 years of community development work is not complete without visiting with those who helped to create CEDAC in the first place. It's been illuminating to talk with these individuals, especially Mel King, who not only organized a weekly roundtable discussion in the mid-1970s that led to the ideas underpinning CEDAC but also filed the legislation as a State Representative in 1978 that officially established the agency.
Mel spoke about the state of community development, past, present and future, and reminded us that the idea of CEDAC grew from the struggles of everyday citizens to organize and advocate for a better future. CEDAC has a continuing mission to empower local communities to create this vision and then assemble the resources to implement it.
Over the past four decades, CEDAC's accomplishments could be easily framed in terms of the numbers of units we've created, the dollar investment in communities we've committed, the number of child care facilities we've helped to upgrade. Yet we believe our accomplishments should more importantly be measured by how well we've laid the foundation for strong neighborhoods across the Commonwealth.
Furthermore, our achievements provide the groundwork for where we are going. We will continue to meet the needs for additional supportive housing opportunities serving elders, persons with disabilities, veterans, and homeless individuals and families; increase capital for quality child care facilities; and expand public-private and cross-sector partnerships, such as the growing engagement between community developers and the health care industry.
As we've been thinking about our past, we are gratified to achieve so many of our goals and milestones in 2018. We're looking forward to the next 40 years.
Roger Herzog
CEDAC Executive Director
Janelle Chan
CEDAC Board Chair
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