Recognizing CDCs: Partners in Community Development

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 and weekend celebrating some of our CDC partners’ 40th (and even a few 50th!) anniversaries at gala dinners and street parties – and, our friends at Massachusetts Association of Community Development Corporations (MACDC) will mark their 35th anniversary this November.

Community development corporations (CDCs) form the backbone of the state’s affordable housing sector. As of this year, 61 CDCs have been formally certified by the Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD), representing every corner of the state – from the Berkshires to Nantucket. With thousands of affordable housing units in their portfolios and programs that include small business lending, community organizing and workforce development, these organizations represent a major engine of revitalization and redevelopment in the Commonwealth.

40 years ago, CDCs represented a new and exciting pathway for the redevelopment of our neglected cities, driven by the people who live there.  But as new non-profit organizations, CDCs needed to develop technical real estate skills, and few had balance sheets that would readily attract conventional lenders. That’s where we came in.

Supporting the Sector

CEDAC put together a small team of “experts” who could provide the technical assistance that CDCs required to get some of those early projects done, in some cases even acting as project managers for organizations that had only minimal staffing. And while many organizations have grown into large, sophisticated real estate developers, CEDAC staff continue to provide deep technical assistance, especially to smaller non-profit developers.

We quickly learned, however, that what organizations needed most was money: early stage financing to pay for predevelopment activities such as architectural design, development consulting, environmental engineering and legal analysis. Our predevelopment lending program responded to that need, and remains one of the only available sources of unsecured predevelopment loans for CDCs and other non-profit developers. Since that time, we’ve added our acquisition loan program, line of credit, and bridge loan program – each time in response to what our borrowers tell us they need.  It’s worth noting that our loan loss rate is less than half of 1%, far lower than that of most commercial lenders – it is a testament to our partnerships, and to CDCs’ high capacity to manage their projects to completion.

Developing as we Develop

Together with our CDC partners, we’ve learned to use tax credits, to integrate commercial uses into residential developments, to support our most vulnerable residents with supportive services, to preserve existing affordable housing at risk of loss to the market, and so much more. We’ve also been MACDC’s partner as a founding donor and steering committee member of the Mel King Institute for Community Building, which offers trainings and workshops on every conceivable topic in the field of community development. And we’ve cheered on CDC advocacy on so many topics, including the passage of the Community Preservation Act in Boston and other communities; the Community Investment Tax Credit legislation that provides CDCs with unrestricted operating funds; and the new Community Scale Housing Initiative for small housing projects.

The community development sector in Massachusetts has matured over the past four decades into a sophisticated movement. CEDAC is so proud of the opportunities we’ve had to support our CDC partners throughout that time, and we can’t wait to work together on the next wave of innovation.

 

Guiding Quality Early Education Facility Design

A well-designed, well-equipped environment supports learning, but child care programs are often located in church basements, old storefronts, and other substandard spaces that were not intended for educational uses. At Children’s Investment Fund (the Fund), we believe that all children deserve to learn in safe physical environments that help support healthy development. That is why we have spent the last 26 years working with non-profit providers to create high-quality educational spaces for Massachusetts’ children. We are pleased to release the Design Guidelines for Construction or Renovation of Facilities for Early Education and Out-of-School Time Programs, a new resource that presents standards and best practices unique to early childhood education (ECE) and out-of-school time (OST) settings.

 

A State Resource
In 2014, the Early Education and Out of School Time (EEOST) Capital Fund was established to provide capital grants to ECE and OST providers to improve the quality of program facilities. The early education and care sector rejoiced and 21 projects have received EEOST capital grants for a total of $15.2 million.  The demand for this valuable state resource is high.

EEOST supports the learning and healthy development of young children, many of whom spend over 40 hours a week in early learning and afterschool settings. Because of EEOST, children are benefiting from facility improvements such as larger classrooms with access to sinks and bathrooms, indoor gyms, more natural light, and better heating, cooling, and ventilation.

When it comes to child care facilities, both quality standards and best practices often push beyond  regulations and codes, making it difficult for programs and their consultants to make decisions about their facilities based on these overlapping frameworks. The Fund has worked closely with the Massachusetts Department of Early Education and Care (EEC), which administers EEOST and is responsible for licensing ECE and OST facilities and ensuring the health and safety of children served, to create guidelines on facility design.

Three tiers of design considerations come into play:

  1. Licensing regulations (overseen by EEC; focus on minimum square footage, the safety of stairways and furnishings, and the absence of potential hazards) and Codes (Building, Fire, Energy)
  2. Quality standards (Quality, Rating, and Improvement System (QRIS); Head Start guidelines; National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) accreditation)
  3. Best practices for children’s spaces, based on child development research and on-the-ground examples

 

A New  Tool
The Design Guidelines resource was created to be a tool for organizations applying to EEOST, however the information is helpful to all ECE and OST providers in Massachusetts, architects, and others working to create high-quality spaces for children. A training on the Design Guidelines will be held on September 19th at the Boston Society of Architects. Architects who attend can earn two AIA continuing education credits.

It comes down to this: quality space matters. The physical environment in which a child learns is important to their social, emotional, and cognitive development. Through the Design Guidelines, we continue working to ensure that more children benefit from high-quality learning environments.

Celebrating 40 Years of Community Development in Massachusetts

Welcome to CEDAC’s new blog.

We plan to use this platform to share additional news, helpful information and perspectives on important topics. The launch of this blog coincides with a very special milestone for CEDAC – our 40th anniversary year – and we thought we’d take this opportunity to announce an exciting year-long effort to celebrate CEDAC past, present, and future.

Despite it feeling like yesterday to many, it has been 40 years since CEDAC was established. Sponsored by then state representative Mel King of Boston, the legislation that established CEDAC sought to strengthen the state’s economic development infrastructure as a result of the urban disinvestment process in the 1960s and 70s that impacted Massachusetts communities. Mel and community allies determined that successfully reshaping the state’s approach to economic development would require a new organization exclusively focused on providing specialized knowledge, capital assistance, and other capacity-building tools to accelerate the ability of non-profit community development corporations to move forward with their projects.

CEDAC was just that.

We began as a provider of technical assistance to these nascent community economic development efforts. Soon the focus turned to affordable housing development, and almost immediately our assistance expanded to providing access to capital in the form of very early-stage predevelopment financing that non-profit developers needed to turn their vision into a reality.

It’s important to note that Massachusetts did not always have the well-developed, savvy network of community development organizations that now exists. In addition to the evolution of the CDCs, we’ve seen the Commonwealth’s community development infrastructure grow to include other crucial organizations and important capital funding programs to meet the needs of communities and their residents.

We’ve evolved too.

In 1991, Children’s Investment Fund, which provides grants and loans to non-profit community-based child care providers to help them improve their facilities, became an affiliate of CEDAC. From 2003 to 2017, CEDAC founded and managed the Commonwealth Workforce Coalition (CWC), which provides professional development to the state’s workforce development community. CWC is now managed by the Center for Social Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

Enhanced by these changes, CEDAC’s mission remains strong. As a unique community development financial institution, we continue to support the growth and effectiveness of the state’s non-profit community development sector. We are proud of the work that we do and proud to partner with community-based organizations across Massachusetts that strengthen their communities through three key building blocks of community development: housing, child care, and workforce development.

Over the next year, we will highlight the important work that CEDAC, our community partners, and others have done to promote community development in the past four decades in a variety of ways. This blog will periodically focus on developments and initiatives that are important to the community development sector in Massachusetts. Additionally, we will have additional exciting events to announce in the upcoming months. So please stay tuned!