New Hampshire Community Loan Fund Inc.
Juliana Eades, President
Jodi Sturgeon, Vice President
Betsy Black, Capitalization Director
7 Wall St.
Concord, N.H. 03302
(603) 224-6669
(603) 225-7425 fax
E-mail: bblack@nhclf.org

Organized in 1983 on the model of the Institute of Community Economics (ICE) in Massachusetts, the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund started as a mechanism to help finance grassroots efforts aimed at fighting poverty through economic development with projects that traditional banks wouldn't touch.

Twelve years later, the Fund has secured more than 1,400 units of low and moderate-income housing and, largely through those efforts, created 146 jobs; starting with a loan from the Sisters of Mercy, it has built its loan fund to $5 million with income ranging from major funders like the Episcopal Diocese of New Hampshire to individual lenders; and it has loaned more than $12 million to borrowers, leveraging it to secure nearly $32 million in housing value.

"All of our loans must demonstrate long-term benefits to the poor, leverage other money, and go to places where money would not otherwise be available," Betsy Black said. "Our goal is to do what the banks can't or won't do."

The Fund may be best known for an unusual strategy that began almost by accident but has since become its trademark: Financing "limited-equity" takeovers in which the residents of mobile-home parks purchase the facilities from their original owners and training residents to operate them as cooperatives. The Fund's first loan, purely by coincidence, went to the residents of a mobile-home park in Meredith, N.H., a resort community, where the elderly park owners sought to sell it, and residents feared that a new developer would convert the property to condominiums, essentially forcing them out of their homes. The banks wouldn't talk to the resident group, so the Fund stepped in, establishing the model in which the residents band together, sell memberships in the cooperative for a nominal amount (which is refundable when a member leaves, but unlike property, does not appreciate in value and is unsuitable for speculation), and retire the mortgage with their monthly payments to the coop. The plan worked so well -- and retained the mobile homes as low-cost housing -- that there are now 35 similar limited-equity parks in the state. Perhaps even more surprising, given New Hampshire's conservative image, the success of the model prompted the legislature to pass a state law requiring mobile-home park owners to offer residents first option to purchase if they place their property on the market.

In addition to this kind of loan, the Fund provides considerable training to mobile-home park resident councils and to community-housing groups. It has made other creative economic-development loans, including recent loans to a mental-health center that will allow it to reduce its operating overhead by 33 percent; to a rural community school threatened with the loss of its building; and to a "respite camp" for the families and caregivers of severely disabled and chronically ill individuals.

Over the next five years, the Fund hopes to expand more from housing into community economic development. It has also started a pilot program, "Home of Your Own (HOYO)," facilitating home ownership for developmentally disabled individuals.

Operating out of a well-kept old residence on a busy street in Concord, the state capital, the Fund has a staff of 10 and an annual budget of about $500,000.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

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