Community Investing

Community investing is the process of directly investing in low and moderate income areas of a city, county, state, etc., often through or in conjunction with a Community Development Financial Institution (a bank for usually high-risk, low-income borrowers).

The movement puts money to work where credit is hard to find, and those empowered believe that the area is worthy of development. A return on the investment is still expected by investors/lenders, but community investing usually gets measured in non-economic terms.

Think: free kids’ parks with parking meters, where the meters may or may not pay back whatever the “market rate” of interest would be, but the community so appreciates having that park that their elected officials greenlight tax dollars beneath that investment, if so needed, to keep the park functioning...because not enough quarters get dropped into those metal meters.