One state's experiment in private lending, Virginia Community Capital, has been "quietly lending millions" to help neighborhoods across VA.
"In the mid-2000s, well-intended state leaders gave $15 million to start a private, regulated financial institution. It would launch during the Great Recession not in one of the financial centers of the state, but in sleepy Cambria, a part of Christiansburg. And its purpose would be to finance not skyscrapers, data centers or other job-rich ventures, but street-level community development projects, many of them mom and pop, and affordable housing complexes in restored old buildings where available — projects most banks won’t touch. Before regulators would consent to the arrangement that gave birth to Virginia Community Capital Inc., 'it got a very hard look,' said Doug Densmore, the group’s general counsel. 'They just had not seen this sort of thing before.' They now have reason to celebrate the unusual entity’s creation, implausible as the venture might look in hindsight." -- Jeff Sturgeon, the Roanoke Times
