In partnership with the Massachusetts Housing Partnership (MHP) and Clark University, CEDAC launched a series of workshops with community development corporations (CDCs) in Worcester in order to develop a shared agenda for continued City and State investment in affordable housing projects. We recently completed the second year of these workshops, with topics derived from e...

The Department of Mental Health (DMH) embraces a community-based approach to treatment and recovery from mental illness, which focuses on the question of how individuals can have more active control over their lives and thrive in their respective communities. DMH’s mission “assures and provides access to services and supports to meet the mental health needs of individu...

On Friday, November 17th, the Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations (MACDC) will celebrate its 35th anniversary at an event in Boston. MACDC represents the Commonwealth’s mission-driven non-profit community development organizations, who are “dedicated to working together and with others to create places of opportunity where people of diverse ...

Today in a special guest blog, CEDAC’s founding executive director, Carl Sussman, shares how and why CEDAC was established. Before CEDAC, Carl was a Cambridge Institute fellow in the early 1970s, and in the mid and late 1970s, he was active in crafting the state’s community development finance policies. Carl was the executive director of CEDAC for 15 years and played a...

Over the past four decades, CEDAC and the Massachusetts CDC movement have literally grown up together. We even share a piece of legislation: Chapter 40H contains both CEDAC’s enabling language, and the definition of a Community Development Corporation. As we look ahead to our 40th anniversary, we’ve taken note that in the past few years, we’ve spent many an evening a...