Michigan Community Capital

MCC aims to meet communities where they are and to break the cycle of systemic disinvestment. Because each community has slightly different needs and challenges and because we serve all communities in Michigan, we maintain significant organizational flexibility. From addressing contamination to a lack of lower- and middle-income housing, to a lack of activity and safety due to poor occupancy in a community’s downtown...regardless of the problems we take them on. Our process begins by attempting to use the least intensive tools including partnership building, education and community organizing to achieve consensus. If solutions through partnership fail to materialize with sufficient capacity, MCC brings highly flexible loans from our unregulated loan fund to the table as well as our affordable insurance program. In the case where the private sector cannot be activated or engaged to help solve the problem initially, MCC can go as far as purchasing, developing, and managing housing, mixed-use, industrial and neighborhood service organization projects. We support small businesses, grocery stores, co-ops, and attainable and affordable housing at whatever level of need they have in order to thrive. There is no simple solution do decades of disinvestment and Michigan's highly cyclical economy. Flexibility and creativity are required and that is what we bring to the table.

Our process is simple. 1) Achieve consensus about the problem and its root causes. 2) Engage with the private sector and government as a match maker and in some cases as a financial conduit to bring collaborative resources together. 3) If resources remain scarce utilize our fundraising capacity and flexible capital combined with our highly skilled operating experience in real estate to take a loss-leading position in the community in an effort to pave the way for other projects in the future.

Following these three simple steps we ensure that we are always leading with community engagement and consensus which we feel is critical to solving complex socio-economic disinvestment problems.

MCC brings deep experience in community engagement, complex project finance skills, insurance risk management, federal, state and local capitalization vehicle asset maps and fundraising and fund development expertise to the table. In addition, our team can take troubled assets and restructure them and operate them as a long hold investment with over 2 decades of experience at our senior staff level. MCC also has a strong balance sheet, close partnerships with banks and critical state agencies and has historically been successful with a number of competitive federal programs. This combined experience allows our relatively small organization to achieve outsized operational results.

MCC has fostered over $1B in projects in it's first 14 years. At any time MCC has between $25 and $50 Million dollars in project value under construction, restructuring or redevelopment. We work aggressively to the maximum extent our balance sheet allows to address inequity and disinvestment in low and moderate income areas of Michigan. In markets where MCC has delivered product we see follow on investment, an easing of housing scarcity a boost in tax base and housing quality and increased employment opportunities. Our work is fundamentally limited by the level of grant funds and retained earnings we can amass since our capital partners in the banking community must limit their lending to us if our Net Assets run below 20% on a global basis. Securing both restricted and unrestricted grants which boost net assets is the single biggest factor in our ability to leverage additional capital and facilitate more projects. MCC is currently carrying a 5 year pipeline which is constrained by a lack of grants facilitating our Net Asset Ratios.