Community Services
Home. What does home mean? To most, it is a safe, comfortable place with access to healthy food, medical care, and a good education. A place to raise kids with green spaces, where they can play safely, laugh, learn and grow. Unfortunately, for residents of many low income communities, that kind of home — that kind of community – does not exist. They stay in unsafe, substandard residences, with no access to healthy food or even the most basic preventative medical care.
Community Opportunities Fund, LLC (COF) plans to use its NMTC allocation to address this need for safe, decent communities on a national basis. COF wants to pull these low income communities out of the rubble and create real communities, one neighborhood at a time.
To create communities, smaller businesses and real estate projects must be included. COF will offer NMTC QLICI funding to small businesses and small real estate developments through the Smith Model which Smith created to deploy smaller (under $5 million) QLICIs to several businesses in one transaction, thereby decreasing the number of entities and fees involved per QLICI, and increasing the benefit to the borrowers. It will use Smith’s NMTC expertise as a platform to create communities to bring health care, healthy food options and decent shelter to those who need them most – one community at a time.
The Smith Model is an innovative approach that truly promises impact and community support unparalleled by other CDEs. Though the trend is toward larger transactions, it is actually the smaller transactions that can have the most dynamic impact in truly Disadvantaged Communities. Using the efficiencies that the Smith Model provides, COF will help borrowers reduce expense as they build communities and create homes.
