{"id":41579,"date":"2024-09-25T16:14:04","date_gmt":"2024-09-25T20:14:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/?p=41579"},"modified":"2024-09-28T17:06:28","modified_gmt":"2024-09-28T21:06:28","slug":"climate-community-development-emerging-investment-frameworks-fuel-transformative-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/climate-community-development-emerging-investment-frameworks-fuel-transformative-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"Climate+Community Development: Emerging Investment Frameworks Fuel Transformative Impact"},"content":{"rendered":"
> Back to October 2024 Issue<\/a><\/div>\n
Above: HopeWorks Station in Everett, WA, a housing and jobs training development project. Enterprise provided a suite of support including a loan, LIHTC, NMTC, grant funding and technical assistance.<\/h5>\n

\"\"<\/a>This article includes excerpts from <\/em>What’s Possible: Investing Now for Prosperous, Sustainable Neighborhoods<\/em><\/a>, a collaboration of Enterprise Community Partners, LISC and the New York Fed. What\u2019s Possible offers practical solutions for clean energy, resilience and equity. It\u2019s intended as a playbook for taking collective action to build a stronger, more inclusive future. <\/em><\/p>\n

In the early 1950s, predominately white neighbors in Bedford, NY, worked to protect a 60-acre hemlock forest in the Mianus River Gorge, a \u201cwild and free river running through a primeval forest,\u201d that was at risk of being turned into a housing development.1<\/sup> They formed a new conservation group, pledged their life insurance policies, and gained financing from The Nature Conservancy to preserve the land. In the following decade, Rachel Carson published Silent Spring<\/em>, a book largely seen as launching the modern environmental movement that also became a rallying point for social activists in the 1960s.2<\/sup><\/p>\n

At the same time, in another Bedford not so far away, real estate agents and speculators employed \u201cblockbusting\u201d to stoke and profit from middle class white flight in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.3<\/sup><\/p>\n

\"What's<\/a><\/em>Economic investment declined, with more than 50 percent of its housing stock being classified as dilapidated and insufficient.4<\/sup> By 1967, recognizing something had to change, the first community development corporations (CDCs) were formed\u2014including the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation\u2014to design, implement, and secure financing to reduce poverty and spur economic growth. This was paired with other positive changes driven by the civil rights movement, righting some of the wrongs of decades of discrimination, redlining, and economic disinvestment.<\/p>\n

Over the years, both the environmental and community development movements have grown and evolved, and both have had numerous successes. But until recently, they have rarely intersected.<\/p>\n

We can no longer afford to work like this. Communities with a history of economic disinvestment bear the greatest costs of environmental disasters and face the greatest risks from climate change. If we are to comprehensively address the challenges facing people and the planet in the twenty-first century, leaders from both the environmental and community development movements need to integrate their approaches.<\/p>\n

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