Our Promise
TACDCs promise is to enhance community development throughout Texas and to
improve the lives of low to moderate income Texans by strengthening the capacity
of community development organizations.
TACDC
Fact Sheet
TACDC is a trade association, created
through the cooperative efforts of its members. A number of years ago, CDCs saw
the need to band together to more effectively advocate for the interests of the
communities they serve. They also sought to create a source for training, research, and
services for practitioners in the Community Development field. TACDC has over
150 members spanning the state and reflecting Texas' diversity and geography. Our membership is engaged in producing affordable housing
and community economic development. TACDC advocates for a supportive
environment at the local, state, and federal levels on behalf of those that
create and preserve homes, jobs, small businesses and other community assets.
View Our
Board of Directors
- Click Here
TACDC is governed by a 15-person, member-elected Board of Directors, a
majority of which must represent community-based non-profit entities.
View Our Roundtable - Click Here
The TACDC Roundtable
includes 14 representatives of national intermediaries, private lending
institutions, and community development professionals. The TACDC Roundtable
discusses and suggests policy for the Board’s consideration and supports TACDC’s
work with their financial and staff resources.
About Community Development Corporations
CDCs are sometimes known as Neighborhood Development
Corporations, Community Based Organizations, or Community Housing
Development Organizations.
CDCs vary in size, organizational structure, and in primary mission.
However, most CDCs have a few distinguishing characteristics. A community
development corporation (CDC) is a community organization, which is
community based and whose mission is to serve low income families and
neighborhoods. Its board of directors is representative of the communities
it serves, with community residents and stakeholders serving as board
members.
A CDC develops real estate for housing or commercial
properties which will help meet its community development mission, offers
economic development services such as business loans to small businesses in
low income geographies, and/or operates other programs and services which
help develop and improve the quality of life of the communities its serves. Much of CDCs' strength and effectiveness comes from
its community-based focus. Community-based CDCs can tailor projects and
programs to its community's specific needs and situation.
A CDC can help a community take a proactive role in
its economic, political, and social development. It is a vehicle through
which the community can provide direct involvement and input into present
and future community efforts.
History of Community Economic Development
By: J. Reymundo Ocañas,
Former Executive Director of TACDC
The community economic development (CED) movement has
a long history, some of which we have tried to capture below.
President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty in a
nationally televised, prime time address to a joint session of Congress in
1965. At the same time, many local organizations had been formed to fight
for civil rights, inclusion in local, state and national affairs and for
helping those in need.
Originally, many community based organizations,
neighborhood associations and other groups working to improve conditions in
low income neighborhoods, focused on education, counseling, improvement of
the housing stock and crime control. While this effort was effective in the
beginning, it became increasingly difficult for organizations to do this
without significant government support.
And for the past twenty years, both those engaged in
the field of community economic development and those who funded these
efforts realized that focusing on trying to bring people out of poverty and
moving them out of the neighborhoods was expensive, ineffective and it still
did not eliminate the problems of a poor neighborhood.
Community Development Corporations (CDCs) began appearing in the 1970s and
1980s as a local answer to the problems communities were facing. Many did
not bear the CDC label in their name (and still don't), yet they identify
themselves as such, e.g. Habitat for Humanity, Neighborhood Housing
Services, etc. In addition, many who started out in community organizing for
civil rights efforts moved into the community economic development field as
a new approach to improving their neighborhoods.
CDCs and others in the field discovered that the best
way to cure the problems in low-income neighborhoods was to generate a lot
of homegrown business activity in the same neighborhoods. The first natural
activity centered around housing, a primary need for poor families. During
the 1990s, the evolution of federal programs such as the Community
Development Block Grant (CDBG) and the HOME Program enabled many CDCs to
become successful at improving their communities through housing and to
build assets that could remain a part of the community.
The Community Revitalization Act (CRA) in the 1990s also supported the
growth of these homegrown initiatives by spurring bank investment into poor
neighborhoods and into CDCs. At the end of the 1990s, more CDCs found
themselves seeking to develop business initiatives that could help them
become self-sufficient, and would also serve their constituents through
asset-building, job development and other forms of revitalization rather
than strictly through old-school social services alone.
CDCs developed housing in the forms of apartments,
single family subdivisions and homeless shelters. And they also began to
develop commercial real estate to bring retailers back into the
neighborhoods, along with services that were difficult to find nearby, such
as insurance agents, doctors, supermarkets, etc. Some even started loan
funds to offer small businesses loans in the neighborhoods when these could
not get bank financing. The U.S. Treasury also initiated a program called
the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI) Fund to help create
community loan funds and banking institutions that could spur more
investment by banks and others into poor neighborhoods. Some CDCs created
CDFIs or were created as CDFIs to offer access to capital for housing, small
businesses and more.
Today, the community economic development movement is thriving, with CDCs,
CDFIs and other community groups working to find creative, sustainable
solutions to the problems facing low-income communities. In Texas, TACDC has
identified over 400 CDCs. These work in housing, economic development,
lending, job training, community services and much, much more.
To learn more about CDCs, TACDC invites you to join
the community development network in Texas. Join us as a member or at one of
our events. To join, please go to our
Membership page.
