WASHINGTON - The Interagency Community Investment Committee, currently chaired by Adrianne Todman, Acting Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), hosted a Roundtable and Listening Session to highlight the Administration’s accomplishments of place-based investments, boosting housing supply across the federal government, and small business investments.

“Over the past year, it was my honor to lead the Interagency Community Investment Committee, focusing on investing in under-resourced communities and ensuring fair access to the opportunities created by this Administration,” said HUD Acting Secretary Adrianne Todman. “We are highlighting the progress our eight federal agencies have made in the past year, from expanding access to affordable housing to reducing barriers of access to capital.”

Last June, the Interagency Community Investment Committee (ICIC) released its 2023 Action Plan; which outlined ambitious new actions to facilitate the flow of more resources into under-resourced communities across the country. Today’s announcements highlight progress on the ICIC’s inaugural plan to support cities and towns across the United States. This work builds upon the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to achieving long-term equitable growth by building an economy from the bottom up and middle out. Ultimately, this Administration’s efforts will unlock the economic potential of communities of color, low-income communities, rural areas, tribal communities, and other historically underserved communities, resulting in a stronger economy for everyone. The ICIC was created to improve the operational coordination of federal investment programs and maximize their collective impact.

Today, the Biden-Harris Administration is announcing that the ICIC agencies have collectively:

Adopted a ‘No Wrong Doors’ for Small Businesses Trying to Access Capital

• The ICIC members adopted a ‘no wrong door’ policy to ensure that small businesses and entrepreneurs get the assistance and information most relevant to them. SBA, Commerce, Treasury and USDA have built a online tool for small businesses. They will soon distribute resource guides for small businesses across a nationwide network of field offices on the full suite of federal capital products and technical assistance programs.

Supported community finance market development through access to secondary markets

• Agencies collaborated to build and scale infrastructure for community-financed affordable housing. HUD, through Ginnie Mae (GNMA), and USDA presented webinars to over 165 community-based lenders across the Federal Home Loan Bank districts of Chicago, Des Moines, Topeka, Boston, and Pittsburgh to scale their initiative of the Mortgage Partnership Finance® Program (MPF®). The MPF Program provides smaller mortgage lenders with access to the secondary mortgage market by pooling government-backed mortgages and securitizing them into GNMA-backed securities.

Strengthened our understanding of federal community investment flows

• The ICIC launched a pilot to analyze the extent of federal community and economic development investments in twelve diverse communities, including urban and rural areas.
  • The Departments of Treasury and Commerce led complementary research and analysis using data from ICIC agencies. The effort led to initial observations and recommendations on the flow of federal community and economic development funds in specific communities. Specifically, a need to align metrics and data to ascertain measurement of the cumulative impact. The working paper also highlights additional research opportunities that can be undertaken to benchmark and evaluate the economic impacts of investments. Read the full study here.
  • The 12 communities analyzed are Toledo, OH; Pinal County, AZ; Carolina, PR; Las Cruces, NM; Rochester, NY; Whitley County, KY; Brownsville, TX; Boston, MA; Anchorage, AK; Macon-Bibb County, GA; Kansas City, MO; Pine Ridge Reservation, SD

Leveraged the Convening Power of the Federal Government to Connect Rural Communities to Capital

• Agencies connected rural communities to capital for growing small businesses, developing affordable housing, and workforce training. Through the Rural Partners Network (RPN) USDA has built relationships with over 1,200 stakeholders and 384 new connections within socially vulnerable, distressed, and persistent poverty communities to receive direct support. Through the alignment of RPN and federal staff in collaboration with networks, a continued increase in federal application activity, federal investments, and new collaborations have continued to increase. This alignment has contributed to nearly $2.8 billion in direct federal investments into RPN communities, as well as the identification of technical and capacity building assistance facilitating increased capacity in communities to navigate and competitively pursue federal resources.
• USDA was able to leverage their partnership in the ICIC to host webinars with ICIC agencies on how new and existing programs impact and can be accessed by rural communities. The Departments of Transportation, Energy, Treasury and Health and Human Services as well as the Appalachian Regional Authority collectively reached 634 registered rural community members increasing awareness on how rural communities can access federal resources.

Identified Opportunities to Improve the Alignment of Federal Investments to Maximize Community Impact, including expanding access to capital and affordable housing.

• Treasury expanded eligible activities under the State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds program to include HUD Title I Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) projects. New eligible activities will enable local jurisdictions to make additional significant housing, community development, and infrastructure investments. Treasury and HUD updated an Affordable Housing: How to Guide to showcase how housing developers can use SLFRF funds and describes how funds can be layered. To amplify these changes HUD and Treasury hosted a webinar, with 135 local governments in attendance, earlier in 2024.
• In March 2024, Treasury announced new efforts to increase the supply of housing in 2024. These measures will make it easier for SLFRF recipients to use available funds to boost housing supply and will allow Emergency Rental Assistance (ERA) recipients to use their remaining funds for predevelopment and acquisition costs for affordable housing serving very low-income families. Treasury and HUD announced a new agreement to indefinitely extend the Federal Financing Bank’s (FFB) financing support for a risk-sharing initiative between HUD and state and local housing finance agencies.
• HUD created tools to connect climate resources with efforts to expand housing supply. HUD worked with USDA, the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Transportation, Treasury, and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to identify resources under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL), Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and other recently enacted laws which can promote the development of fair, equitable, and affordable housing. HUD also published the Climate Resources for Housing Supply Framework. HUD also launched the Build for the Future, Funding Navigator, and a technical assistance website to support efforts to enhance climate resiliency, energy efficiency, renewable energy integration, healthy housing, workforce development and environmental justice.
• ICIC Agencies worked together to support deep community impact under EPA’s historic $27 billion Green House Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) and continue efforts to increase awareness of funding opportunities through technical assistance and community engagement. In the coming year, EPA will continue to work collaboratively to align and promote the $27 billion GGRF with continued efforts around community investments and economic development, especially as it pertains to housing and small businesses.
• USDA and EPA have partnered to announce progress on wastewater treatment projects in rural communities coming out of EPA’s expansion of Closing the Wastewater Access Gap from 11 communities to 150 communities.

Continued Public-Private Coordination

• There is a continuous need for coordinated actions between the public and private sectors to achieve sustainable community development. In 2022, the Vice President announced with the ICIC the formation of the Economic Opportunity Coalition (EOC), a private coalition of 30+ corporations and foundations committed to investing in underserved communities and entrepreneurs. Since then, the EOC has secured $1 billion in corporate deposits to Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) and Minority Depository Institutions (MDIs) to expand their lending power. The EOC is continuing this commitment by pledging to raise an additional $2 billion by late 2024. In October 2023, the EOC also issued a call to action for large corporations to strengthen domestic supply chains and build wealth for the underserved. The EOC asked companies in the Investing in America sectors to commit 15 percent of their procurement budget to small and disadvantaged businesses by 2025. Micron, Air Products, and Xcel Energy signed on to this commitment as first movers.

The ICIC members include the Department of Agriculture (USDA), Department of Commerce (Commerce), Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Department of the Treasury (Treasury), Department of Transportation (DOT), the Small Business Administration (SBA), Department of Energy (DOE) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).