Fall 2018 Newsletter

From the Desk of the Executive Director

Dear Friends,

Happy Fall! The days may be growing shorter now, but the summer months proved to be productive ones in the community development sector.  This season’s newsletter celebrates the one year anniversary of INSITES, CEDAC’s blog, which has become recommended reading in the Commonwealth’s non-profit, community-based affordable housing, and child care provider world.  And we also recap some important achievements from the last several months.

In particular, the Children’s Investment Fund had a lot going on over the summer.  The most significant news is that the Fund was certified as a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) by the U.S. Department of Treasury. We also just received the great news that the Children’s Investment Fund has received a $300,000 Financial Assistance grant from the CDFI Fund. The award is the Fund’s first federal grant as a newly certified CDFI. It will enable the team to provide low-cost loans to more non-profit early education centers across the state. Additionally, a new round of Early Education and Out of School Time (EEOST) Capital Fund grants were announced by Governor Baker and the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC), and the Fund held a training to help providers develop natural play spaces.

On the Housing front, you’ll read about the projects that received affordable rental housing capital funding awards from the Baker/Polito administration. We heard from our partners at the Department of Mental Health (DMH) about the role that housing plays in addressing populations living with mental illness, and we offered an analysis of extremely low-income renters in the country’s central cities.

Finally, we had the chance to highlight a community leader in Central Massachusetts and celebrate milestone work anniversaries within CEDAC.  One of the milestones we were planning on highlighting this year was that of Senior Project Manager, Bronia Clifton, who has been with us for almost 25 years.  The sad news is that Bronia will be leaving CEDAC, but the good news is that she is heading to an exciting new position as the Supportive Housing and Special Projects Manager for the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD).  We expect that given our work in supportive housing, we’ll still have many opportunities to collaborate with Bronia, and we wish her well in her new job.  That leaves us an opening, so if you know anyone who’s interested, please have them check out the Senior Project Manager job posting on our website.

As always, we hope you have a chance to learn a little more about our work, and if you have any questions or comments, drop me a line at rherzog@cedac.org or 617-727-5944.

Thank you!

Roger Herzog
Executive Director