| Community First® Fund Partner Spotlight: Community Investment Corporation | ||
CIC also operates complementary programs to support its lending activities and the neighborhoods it invests in, such as training to give its small-business customers the skills and information they need to run successful apartment buildings, development and support of policies to preserve affordable rental housing, and a code enforcement program targeting troubled buildings. Recently, CIC received a $9 million, 10-year loan from the Community First Fund, a revolving loan fund that provides direct support to community development financial institutions, community development loan funds, and state housing finance agencies serving Illinois and Wisconsin. In this Community First Fund Partner Spotlight, we ask CIC President Jack Markowski for his thoughts on the organization and its partnership with the Community First Fund. What makes you proudest of CIC and the work it does? CIC is what’s called a social enterprise; we’re pursuing a mission, but with businesslike discipline, and all our activities are self-sustaining. We were able to continue and even increase our lending through the real estate crash of 2008 and after, and we kept delivering positive returns to all of our investors. We were able to do this because we’re local and we specialize in this type of lending: We know the neighborhoods and housing stock very well. We know what makes an owner successful, we do very careful underwriting, and we lend based on projected cash flow rather than just the value of the building. Our owners are small businesspeople, so we stay close to them and help them succeed, servicing our own loans and monitoring all of our projects for financial performance and building condition. How has the investment from the Community First Fund supported CIC’s mission? The Community First Fund has allowed us to expand our lending activities in our target communities. When we close on a loan for acquisition and rehab of a building, we can’t sell it to our investors until the project is finished and the building has been rented up. The Community First Fund has increased the capital available to us so that we can keep lending even when we would otherwise have reached our limit. Over the last year and a half, with the help of the Community First Fund, we’ve provided 141 loans totaling $62 million. What benefits does CIC gain from partnerships with organizations like the FHLBC? These kinds of partnerships are the core of our organization. We’re a vehicle for our partners to invest in affordable housing and keep credit flowing in low- and moderate-income communities. The FHLBC is a major source of funds that we can combine with resources from government, philanthropic, and private-sector partners to accomplish more than any of us could by ourselves. |
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| Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago |
| 200 East Randolph Drive Chicago, IL 60601 www.fhlbc.com |
| This newsletter contains forward-looking statements which are based upon our current expectations and speak only as of the date hereof. These statements may use forward-looking terms, such as "anticipates," "believes," "expects," "could," "plans," "estimates," "may," "should," "will," or their negatives or other variations on these terms. We caution that, by their nature, forward-looking statements involve risk or uncertainty, that actual results could differ materially from those expressed or implied in these forward-looking statements, and that actual events could affect the extent to which a particular objective, projection, estimate, or prediction is realized. These forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties including, but not limited to, the risk factors set forth in our periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which are available on our website at www.fhlbc.com. Copyright © 2016, Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. "Downpayment Plus," "DPP," "Downpayment Plus Advantage," and "DPP Advantage" are registered trademarks of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. "Community First" is a registered trademark of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. |