Bank of America Charitable Foundation Looks to Move the Needle on Affordable Housing
When it comes to bank philanthropy, the biggest story over the past several years is the massive outpouring of investment for urban youth and employment. But financial giants are also steady funders in an area even closer to home: community development and housing. With a recent grant of $3.75 million to Enterprise Community Partners, the Bank of America Charitable Foundation continues a longstanding history of support for affordable housing initiatives.
Community development funding from a bank isn’t the flashiest of grants. But this funding can have major repercussions, including whether or not a low-income family finds housing, or how prosperous a neighborhood will be a decade from now.
To be sure, the big banks bear enormous blame for stripping wealth from low-income communities through predatory mortgage lending in recent years, and given that disgraceful history, it's hard not to be ambivalent about their current efforts to help these same communities. As a matter of practice, though, nonprofits working to alleviate a pernicious housing crisis need all the help they can get. . .