(Inactive) (Inactive) The Reinvestment Fund

(Inactive) (Inactive) The Reinvestment Fund

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Founded in 1985, The Reinvestment Fund (TRF) is primarily a community development financial institution (CDFI). The Fund follows a wealth- building agenda for low- and moderate-income people through the strategic use of capital, information, and market/systems innovation. TRF works to alleviate poverty through financial support of affordable housing, community service organizations, small businesses, workforce development programs, and energy conservation projects. Its Public Policy and Program Assessment Department, headed by Ira Goldstein, conducts research into a broad array of economic development issues, including housing issues impacting on households and communities.

TRF’s portfolio of research includes: 1) creating and using impact assessment tools for the community and economic development industry; 2) building a model to analyze real estate markets in distressed cities and towns and translating that analysis into practical public resource allocation decisions; and 3) influencing housing and workforce investment decisions that affect TRF's service communities. Its work on community indicators resulted in a widely disseminated product, the Philadelphia Indicators Project CD-ROM (PIP). One of the project's goals is to broaden access to information regarding neighborhood profile data, the end result being a more effective and concerted neighborhood revitalization. Released in June 2002, PIP databases include property-based data and indicators on demographics, vital statistics, and housing. Data are available at the parcel level and/or census tract level; the software also allows users to aggregate units of measurement to create customized areas. More recently, it launched its national indicator and mapping effort, PolicyMap,

The Fund continues to use neighborhood-level data in research on issues as diverse as affordable housing, vacant land and building use, and access to credit. In a recent study, the Policy Department looked at the nature and impact of predatory lending in the Philadelphia mortgage market using data from Homeowner's Emergency Mortgage Assistance Program applications and the Philadelphia Sheriff's Office. The potential outgrowth of this research will be a multi-faceted approach to eliminating the threat of predatory lending to TRF's service community. It has taken the lead in developing assessments of foreclosure interventions in Philadelphia. Its work on Philadelphia’s Neighborhood Transformation Initiative generated a method for neighborhood market value analysis, which has been applied in many cities as part of efforts to focus policies aimed at neighborhood revitalization. A complete listing of their analyses and many of their presentation can be found at TRF’s Resource Center, http://www.trfund.com/resource/index.html