It can be a tough sell convincing funders to put capital into low-income places. But the returns can benefit everyone, especially when investments make possible innovative combinations of health services, housing and small businesses that upend the root causes poverty-borne disease. In an article from the Build Healthy Places Network, LISC's Emily Chen describes how investment in health clinics combined with other infrastructure helps patients, creates jobs and transforms neighborhoods.
The excerpt below is from:
"Investing With Health in Mind"
By Kathleen Costanza, Build Healthy Places network (as posted on Medium)
Connecting Health and Housing
A little more than 30 miles south of Chelsea Flats [see full article], another innovative investment vehicle is at work. Vicente’s Tropical Grocery is a family-owned store in Brockton, Massachusetts. The supermarket opened in June, and local customers can be seen loading up on specialty produce like yuca, Costa Rican yams, and plantains.
Manuel Vicente founded his first store 21 years ago, and today his son, Jason Barbosa, runs two locations with his three brothers. When Barbosa was looking for the second location, he said he felt an “obligation” to invest in the city and chose a spot near the entrance of Brockton’s downtown area, on a plot that had been vacant for nearly 30 years.
Next to the supermarket is the new Brockton Neighborhood Health Center, which was developed in partnership with the grocery store. At the health center, residents receive medical care and can attend cooking and nutrition classes that use Caribbean and African ingredients from customers’ home cuisines.
Financing the expansion of the store and health center together was not easy. But like Chelsea Flats, it too received a unique form of investment, including backing from a new fund called the Healthy Futures Fund, or HFF.
HFF is a $200 million partnership between the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a large, national community development financial institution, or CDFI, the Kresge Foundation, and Morgan Stanley. Formed in 2012, the fund aims to break the link between poverty and poor health by bringing together nontraditional partners who together can bring opportunities for better health to low-income neighborhoods. Continued[+]...