The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) is back and with better terms for small businesses. If your nonprofit or the small businesses in your community haven't applied for a PPP loan, you could consider using a CDFI.

Three CDFIs in Ohio are offering PPP loans: IFF, ECDI, and LISC. These CDFIs may still be setting up their systems for this round of PPP, so please be patient, but look into them for your organization and small businesses.

"I think the responsibility relies on all of us," Brook said. "We have the solution within our region, but we do not have the infrastructure and the capacity to be able to deploy those solutions as quickly as those challenges demand." Read more in the Columbus Dispatch.

Finance Fund has two opportunities open throughout March.

Predevelopment Grants - Maximum award of $30,000 and generally to support predevelopment activities related to affordable housing projects.

Economic Development Grants - Maximum award of $100,000 to support economic development projects, including mixed use projects, with vast majority of financing committed.

General Support Grants are available for up to $4,000 to support groups who are building movements for justice and liberation and resisting systemic oppression through grassroots/cultural organizing, art-making and resilience building. Deadline 3/5.

This fund makes grants of up to $4,000 for trainings that help people learn how to collectively use the theory and practice of nonviolent action as part of ongoing campaigns or programs for social justice. Deadline 3/5.

The POWER Initiative supports efforts to create a more vibrant economic future for coal-impacted communities by cultivating economic diversity, enhancing job training and re-employment opportunities, creating jobs in existing or new industries, and attracting new sources of investment. Deadline 3/5.

Recently the DeWine administration introduced the biennium budget. Of note is a proposal that would invest $200 million to provide grants to pay for community infrastructure projects. This would happen in the form of $2 million grants for only smaller communities (those with populations between 1,000 and 75,000 and with an annual median household income of less than $50,000 per year) for projects that include water and sewer projects, downtown revitalization, demolition of blighted properties and redevelopment purposes. This proposal and the entire budget will reworked by the House and Senate.

OCDCA is also advocating for additional community development resources at the state level through the Main Street Job Recovery Program and the Ohio Financial Empowerment Fund.

From Greater Ohio Policy Center: House Bill 143 (HB143) and Senate Bill 84 (SB84) were introduced in the Ohio House of Representatives and the Ohio Senate by Representative Brett Hudson Hillyer (R – Uhrichsville) and Senators Sandra Williams (D – Cleveland) and Michael Rulli (R – Salem). These bills provide dedicated funding to the Clean Ohio Revitalization Fund (CORF). CORF was a highly successful program which, between 2002 and 2013, provided state funding to revitalize brownfields, and in turn, provided the state with a four-to-one economic return. CORF is recognized as a community-responsive tool for brownfield redevelopment efforts. Therefore, public and private stakeholders agree that providing CORF with a dedicated funding source is the most logical solution to addressing the brownfield remediation need in Ohio’s communities.

An Ohio Senate bill that seeks to catch fraud among people applying for and receiving social services will result in increased work for county case workers, as well as fewer low-income people obtaining food aid, Medicaid, and unemployment benefits. Read more about it in the Highland County Press or Cleveland.com. Follow #OhioansagainstSB17 to stay up to date.

The Final Program Year 2021 HDGF Guidelines are now available on OHFA's HDAP webpage. The HDGF program will award Ohio Housing Trust Funds and National Housing Trust Funds to affordable housing developments consisting of four to 24 units. OHFA will begin accepting Intents to Apply from applicants on May 3, 2021. Questions regarding HDGF can be sent to [email protected].

The House of Representatives passed by a vote of 219 to 212 the “American Rescue Plan Act,” a $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package containing $40 billion in essential housing and homelessness assistance, including $26 billion for rental assistance and $5 billion to assist people who are homeless. Although the Senate parliamentarian ruled on the evening of February 25 that the provision to increase the federal minimum wage to $15 per hour violates the parameters of the reconciliation process, congressional leaders in the House kept the provision in the bill. As the bill moves to the Senate, Democratic leaders will determine whether to remove the provision from the Senate bill or keep the provision and likely have it subjected to a “Point of Order” during debate and removed. Senate leaders are expected to skip committee votes and bring the bill to the Senate floor for up to 20 hours of debate, followed by a “vote-a-rama,” during which senators will have the opportunity to offer an unlimited number of amendments to the bill before a floor vote. The House and Senate are aiming to have the bill finalized and sent to President Biden before March 14, when the pandemic-extended unemployment benefits are slated to expire. Read more from NLIHC.

Urge Congressional appropriators to allocate the largest possible slice of the pie to the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development (THUD) subcommittee. It's critical that the THUD subcommittee get the resources they need to fund housing and community development programs at HUD and USDA. Sign the letter by March 5th!

NCRC is re-opening a comment letter we submitted last week for further sign-on that urged the Federal Reserve Board to adopt a more race-conscious Community Reinvestment Act (CRA). Sign the letter by March 5th!

The Restoring Communities Left Behind Act (H.R. 816) was introduced in the House of Representatives by Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). The Restoring Communities Left Behind Act would authorize the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to establish a $5 billion program, that would operate from fiscal years 2021 to 2031, to award competitive grants to eligible local partnerships for neighborhood revitalization activities.