What It Does

Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) serve low-wealth communities through banking services, loans, and equity products offered to individuals, businesses, and nonprofit organizations.

• Community Development Credit Unions (CDCUs).   CDCUs are financial cooperatives owned by low-income residents.  They provide affordable credit and retail financial services in geographic areas that often are not well served by corporate banks. The CDCU model originated in the 1930s, largely in impoverished black communities in the South.
• Conceptual model: Community and Individual Investment Corporations (CIICs). CIICs are a model of resident ownership of CDFIs created by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in the mid-1990s.  CIICs would be community development banks owned and controlled by low-wealth residents.  Residents would become owners by purchasing stock in the bank.  Serving Empowerment Zones and Enterprise Communities, CIICs would build assets for residents and provide them with a voice in community development decisions. While several communities have applied for CIIC funding, only one has been established to date (described below). It has not yet implemented the resident ownership feature.