Boston Community Loan Fund (BCLF), based within the nonprofit CDFI Boston Community Capital (BCC), has a 30-year track record of creating, funding and deploying flexible financial products to fill market gaps in low-income communities in New England and the Mid-Atlantic States. BCLF provides loans to nonprofit organizations, community development corporations (CDCs) and local developers that build affordable housing and provide social and community services for underserved communities. Founded on the firm conviction that low-income communities can sustain debt, BCLF makes loans that enhance and stabilize these communities. Their loan products and services are customized to meet the needs and constraints of our borrowers, providing fast, flexible and sufficient capital at each stage of a project’s development.
 
Since 1985, all of BCC’s programs have invested over $1 billion in projects that provide affordable housing, good jobs, and new opportunities in low-income communities, connecting these neighborhoods to the mainstream economy. From financing a health center or a charter school, solar panels or a saw mill, a low-income family or an established developer of affordable housing, their focus remains on developing financial tools, programs and ideas that provide access to opportunity, bridge gaps rather than widen them, and offer the potential and promise to change the world.

HFFI Projects and Projected Impacts

Vicente's Tropical Supermarket

• Acquisition/predevelopment financing, equipment financing, and NMTC leverage lending for 32,000 sq. ft. new location for Vicente's Tropical Supermarket, in Brockton, MA, bringing a vacant former supermarket building back into productive reuse
• Increase healthy food access in a low-income, primarily Cape Verdean and Haitian community
• Create 96 permanent jobs
• Develop an on-site adult primary care/wellness clinic with the Brockton Community Health Center (BCHC), with plans to offered shared nutrition and healthy shopping programs

Haley House

• Financing the acquisition and build-out of a commercial training kitchen located in a café setting
• Provides culinary training for homeless and formerly incarcerated individuals
• Project located in area of focused public and private support for neighborhood transformation
• Site offers weekly pay-what-you can community meals featuring fresh local produce
• After-school program teaches cooking, nutrition, and gardening curriculum for over 300 urban youth each year
• Supports organization whose menu of services also includes a morning soup kitchen, elder meals, and a food pantry offering fresh produce
• Serves over 24,000 meals a year through the soup kitchen and distributes over 65,000 meals a year through the food pantry.

Bornstein & Pearl Food Production Center

• Transformed the former Pearl Meats Factory, which had been vacant for years
• Located in Quincy Corridor – designated HUD CHOICE neighborhood
• 36,000 sq. ft. new industrial food production facility
• Supports growth of local food retailers

Crop Circle Kitchen – second site for this non-profit shared use commercial kitchen

• 150 permanent jobs

Community Solutions

• Rehabilitated a historic factory into a complex focused on improving neighborhood health and creating jobs via tenant microenterprises that support healthy food, improved health, and increased economic opportunity for residents
• Located in the Northeast neighborhood of Hartford, CT
• 64,000 sq. ft.
• Expected to create 200 permanent positions
• Financed a $1,000,000 predevelopment loan, including $500,000 for working capital
• The project is a key priority for local, state and federal sources, and has secured highly competitive federal sources including Promise Zone designation.

Federal HFFI Program
Agency: Treasury, CDFI Fund, Financial Assistance Program
Fiscal Year 2013, $500,000; Fiscal Year 2014, $2,750,000; Fiscal Year 2016 $3,750,000