GOALs REPORT

Introduction

Resilience. That’s the word that comes to mind for 2021.  Merriam-Webster defines resilience as the ability to withstand or adjust to challenges. The devastating health and economic impacts of COVID-19, which disproportionately fell on low-income communities and communities of color, severely tested the resilience of families, and communities, to a degree not seen in generations.

Families across the Commonwealth demonstrated extraordinary resilience in response to unprecedented challenges. For many communities, sustained resilience and recovery rely on the existence of social capital, mutual aid, and community leadership. CDCs, built on these values and practiced in their use, play an essential role in community resilience, and in efforts to redress and reduce- and make progress toward eliminating- unjust disparities in the pandemic’s impacts.

MACDC’s 2022 GOALs Survey documents much of the collective impact of CDCs statewide in calendar year 2021. Perhaps it’s not surprising that these impacts are greater than in 2020, as few of us were prepared for the pandemic. Yet, in comparing the collective impact of CDCs in 2021 to 2019, pre-COVID, CDC contributions to community resilience jump off the page!

• 1,717 homes were created or preserved, 11% more than in 2019

• 6,744 jobs were created or preserved, a 62% increase from 2019

• 3,416 entrepreneurs were provided technical or financial assistance, almost 3 times the 1,256 entrepreneurs provided such assistance in 2019

• 86,124 families were served, 23% more than in 2019

• $1.45 billion was invested, a 58% increase from 2019

Much of this “ramping up” was targeted to address those most impacted by the pandemic. More than $43 million in loans and grants were provided to small business entrepreneurs, almost 5 times the amount provided pre-COVID.  The CDCs’ response to helping families access the emergency rental assistance provided by the state and federal governments, so essential to preventing an avalanche of evictions, was even more impressive. 

In 2021, CDCs collectively made more than $162 million available to renters, 9 times the amount provided in 2019. Even when comparing the 2021 emergency cash assistance to renters with the amount provided in 2020, when it was first needed, the increase from 2020 to 2021 was more than fivefold.

Of course, the dollars alone don’t tell the whole story. In the pages of this report, we tell some of these qualitative stories: CDCs in Cambridge and Somerville providing job skills in growing sectors such as biomedical and information technology; providing leadership training in Springfield and Holyoke to residents, who developed the skills to train others; developing tiny homes in Worcester for people struggling with chronic homelessness and mental health challenges; and providing safe space and learning opportunities for youth in Boston. 

We still have far to go to achieve a true commonwealth, defined by Merriam-Webster as “one founded on law and united by compact or tacit agreement of the people for the common good.”  We hope that seeing this progress inspires us to renew our commitment to fighting the deep inequities that remain.  The work continues.