New England USA via Calvert Foundation CIN
Loan
Raises funds for Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) in both the US and around the world
For millions of disadvantaged people in the U.S. and internationally, the door to financial opportunity is closed. Since 1995, Calvert Foundation has been working to open that door and let people in. Calvert Foundation is a nonprofit that has pioneered a new type of investing through our Community Investment Note that delivers a social and financial return. We make it possible for everyday people to invest in organizations around the world that empower people living in low-income communities.
The Note was the first retail impact investment with a global reach available to non-accredited investors, and through our new Women INvesting in Women INitiative (WIN-WIN), Calvert Foundation is the first organization to offer a retail impact investment product with a gender lens. We believe in giving a hand-up and enabling people to lift themselves out of poverty.
Summary
Calvert Foundation gives investors the opportunity to support community development groups building affordable housing, creating jobs and small businesses, and financing community facilities in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
Social Impact
Calvert Foundation has great partners that are actively working to provide affordable housing, jobs, and finance small businesses and community facilities in low-income communities throughout New England. These groups have financed child care centers, job/workforce training programs, drug prevention facilities, low-income housing, farms, and many small businesses and social enterprises. We encourage you to learn more about the groups we support.
Impact Example
Grove Parc Plaza is a 504-unit Section 8 housing development in the Woodlawn neighborhood of Chicago, on three blocks of South Cottage Grove Avenue between the University of Chicago and the terminus of the CTA’s Green Line. Built in the late 1960s to serve the low income residents of Chicago’s Woodlawn community, Grove Parc suffered from significant design flaws and concentrated poverty. By 2007, the property was severely distressed and threatened with foreclosure and demolition. Despite the property’s significant problems, some 400 very low-income households call Grove Parc home.
POAH stepped in to preserve this property’s federal affordable housing subsidies. At the invitation of Grove Parc’s residents, POAH acquired the property in December, 2008 and began to address its significant challenges, working collaboratively with a broad range of stakeholders to develop a comprehensive plan which is revitalizing the broader Woodlawn neighborhood. POAH is replacing Grove Parc’s distressed and obsolete buildings with the new Woodlawn Park development – a variety of distinctive structures combining residential, commercial and recreational uses, making South Cottage Grove Avenue the center of a healthy new mixed-use, mixed-income community. Grove Parc’s Section 8 units will be preserved as an affordable housing resource for current and future residents in the Woodlawn area.
The revitalization began in January, 2008, as POAH’s affiliate, Preservation Housing Management, Inc. (PHM) assumed management of Grove Parc and began to stabilize the property, completing urgent repairs to bring conditions into compliance with HUD physical standards. In addition, PHM has introduced greater resident support and an emphasis on customer service. At the same time, POAH has developed a revitalization plan that preserves all of the 504 deeply subsidized units in the context of a mixed-income community. Approximately 210 of the Section 8 units will remain on site, making up about half of the new Woodlawn Park units. The balance of the existing Section 8 subsidies will be shifted to new or renovated units in the neighborhood.
