Greene County Democrat

Tag: Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs).

  • Newswire : Vice President Kamala Harris announces Nationwide Economic Opportunity Tour

    Vice President Harris speaks with Black business person

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

     

    Vice President Kamala Harris has announced a nationwide Economic Opportunity Tour to spotlight the Biden-Harris Administration’s efforts to foster economic growth, build wealth, and ensure American prosperity.

    The tour, which will begin with a moderated conversation in Atlanta on April 29, will see the Vice President visiting several states to emphasize the administration’s commitment to creating an economy where every person can thrive. A subsequent event is scheduled for Detroit, with more dates and locations to be announced soon.

    “President Biden and I are committed to creating an economy in which every person has the freedom to thrive,” Harris stated. “Our economic approach has delivered great progress, and we will continue to invest in you, your family, and your future.”

    During the tour, Harris plans to highlight the administration’s historic investments that have supported communities and individuals. According to a White House Fact Sheet, these include unprecedented investments in small businesses, the fastest creation of Black-owned small businesses in over 30 years, record job creation, increased access to capital for underserved communities, and significant healthcare reforms such as cutting insulin prices and erasing medical debt.

    The vice president will also discuss the administration’s efforts in education, affordable housing, childcare, reproductive freedom, and boosting the wealth of American families. She will describe additional measures the Biden-Harris Administration takes to build on this work.

    The White House said administration officials, members of Congress, local leaders, and others will join Harris on the tour. Officials said the tour builds on Harris’ extensive travel to communities nationwide. Since the beginning of 2024, she has made more than 35 trips to 16 states, engaging with small business owners and entrepreneurs in underserved communities to discuss challenges and opportunities.

    Earlier this year, Harris announced $32 million in funds to support historically underserved entrepreneurs during a visit to Black Wall Street in Durham, NC. She also announced an SBA rule in Las Vegas that ensures individuals who have served time are eligible for SBA loan programs to start and run small businesses.

    Officials said Harris has always supported minority, rural, and low-income communities. Last year, she announced over $1.73 billion in grants to 603 Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) through Treasury’s CDFI Fund. In 2022, she launched the Economic Opportunity Coalition (EOC), a public-private partnership investing tens of billions of dollars to create opportunity and wealth in historically underserved communities.

    As a senator, Harris secured a transformative $12 billion investment for CDFIs and MDIs in December 2020 and has since worked to ensure the success of these programs. “Since that time, she has worked to ensure these programs are as successful as possible,” administration officials

     

  • Vice President Harris announces slate of actions
    to help Black and minority-owned small businesses

    Vice President Harris speaking at small business forum

    By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Senior National Correspondent

    Vice President Kamala Harris used her time at Freedman’s Bank Forum to announce new public and private-sector efforts to advance racial equity.
    Harris said the administration recognizes the continued difficulty that Black-owned businesses have in finding funding. She acknowledged that they routinely are the first to suffer during an economic downturn.
    Among a slate of new actions by the Biden-Harris administration, the vice president announced that the Small Business Administration (SBA) would propose a rule this fall to expand its lender base by lifting the moratorium on new Small Business Lending Companies.
    The action would allow new lenders to apply for a license to offer SBA-backed 7(a) small business loans.
    Also, the Minority Business Development Agency (MDBA) will issue a $100 million notice of funding opportunity to provide technical assistance grants for entrepreneurship technical assistance providers to help businesses owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals launch, scale, and connect with growth capital.
    Harris said to facilitate greater availability of small-balance mortgages, and HUD would issue requests to solicit specific and actionable feedback on the barriers that prevent the origination of these mortgages and recommendations for increasing the volume of small-mortgage loans in federal programs.
    The White House said these and a host of other new policy steps follow two recent announcements by the administration of billions of dollars in investments for Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs).
    The actions aim to deliver capital and resources to underserved small businesses and the community lenders who serve them, Harris stated. “Small businesses are the engines of our economy and the path to economic prosperity for countless Americans in underserved communities,” the vice president asserted.
    “Community lenders – including CDFIs, MDIs, and others – are vital to unlocking the full economic potential of these communities, turning previously sidelined talent into a source of economic growth and shared prosperity for all.”
    Earlier, Janet Yellen, the U.S. Department of Treasury secretary, said the White House sought to use the Freedman’s Bank Forum to shine a spotlight on how the administration’s pandemic relief efforts supported Black – and minority-owned businesses.
    The forum, launched in 2015, seeks to develop strategies to help stamp out and overcome systemic racism in the financial industry. “Unfortunately, for too long, the small business ecosystem in underserved communities has struggled to keep up with better-funded businesses and entrepreneurs in more prosperous communities,” Harris stated.
    “Entrepreneurs of color regularly report being turned away by traditional financial institutions for loans at higher rates than their white counterparts. And the community lenders committed to filling that gap similarly report that shortfalls in capital and technical capacity limit their ability to invest in the communities that need them the most.”