Projects
For Which We've Provided Financing:
Equity
Trust Fund Borrower Projects
Emmaus
Housing - Denver, CO
The Denver Catholic Worker has maintained a hospitality house and soup kitchen
for homeless people in inner-city Denver for more than 20 years. Workers
who operated the soup kitchen, together with former guests of the hospitality
house, rented nearby housing. This community of committed, intentionally
low-income people was an important humanizing presence in a neighborhood
that was increasingly pressured by Denver's downtown redevelopment - but
eventually the community itself was threatened with displacement as property
was bought up and low-income tenants were forced out. In response, the group
founded the nonprofit Emmaus Housing to purchase property and hold it in
trust to provide secure, affordable housing for low-income people, including
those who continued to assist the homeless. Like other unconventional organizations
(unconventional even among nonprofit housing organizations), the group had
little access to conventional sources of capital. They did have access to
the Equity Trust Fund, which has lent them money to buy housing.
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