McCaffery is proud to announce and support through its Community Development Entity, SCORE-CDE, an award of $10 million of New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC) to Esperanza Health Centers. Esperanza Health Centers will use the allocation to finance the construction and equipping of a new Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) in Chicago’s southwest Brighton Park neighborhood. The new FQHC will provide pediatric care, primary care, laboratory services, women’s health, family medicine, geriatric care, behavioral health services, and senior programming, including adult daycare with transportation to and from the facility. Additionally, the award enables Esperanza to establish a family residency practice with Chicago’s Rush University to help train new healthcare providers.
Awarded $35 million in New Markets Tax Credits (NMTC) from the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Community Development Financial Institutes (CDFI) Fund in the 2021 distribution round, SCORE seeks to invest in operating businesses and community education and healthcare facilities within highly distressed, low-income areas that have experienced a loss of skilled employment, educational achievement, and adequate access to goods and services.
“We are proud to support these Chicago nonprofits and help these organizations grow their impact within the communities they each serve,” said McCaffery President and SCORE Governing Board Member, Ed Woodbury. “The grants will allow these valuable neighborhood resources to enrich programming, expand their reach to more individuals, and ultimately, positively influence today’s workforce.”
Esperanza applied to SCORE-CDE for NMTC Funding because it was unable to meet the demand for medical care in the predominately Hispanic community due to spatial constraints. According to Esperanza, there are roughly 78,000 individuals lacking adequate health services on Chicago’s Southwest side. For residents of the mostly Hispanic Brighton Park population and adjacent neighborhoods, there are few other options to access healthcare due to high rates of poverty, low insurance rates, and language barriers. To bridge the language barrier, all Esperanza medical providers are bi-lingual in English and Spanish. Additionally, Esperanza provides uninsured patients with resources to help them access Medicare/Medicaid insurance programs as well as private insurance plans.
“Just three years after opening our flagship clinic in Brighton Park, it became vividly clear that we would need additional space to keep up with the growing demand for primary care in our neighborhoods,” said Dan Fulwiler, President & CEO of Esperanza Health Centers. “Thanks to our partnership with SCORE-CDE, Esperanza is now on the brink of realizing its vision for a transformative new health campus on the southwest side of Chicago, nearly 70,000 sq. ft. of combined clinical and community space housing services of the highest quality for people of every age. This will truly represent a new chapter for health access in our communities.”
To comprehensively address community needs in the Brighton Park neighborhood, McCaffery also made a $200,000 donation to PODER through its JOBS fund. Financed by SCORE’s NMTC activity, the JOBS Fund is a 501c(3) that makes grants and loans to not-for-profit organizations focused on economic growth and job training for low-income persons in the communities that SCORE serves.
As a nonprofit organization that works to teach Spanish-speaking immigrants the skills needed to obtain gainful employment, PODER works with individuals in the Brighton Park neighborhood and with Hispanic communities throughout the greater Chicago area. Participants who complete the appropriate PODER training may be eligible for job placement with Esperanza Health Centers.
The NMTC Program attracts private capital into low-income communities by permitting individual and corporate investors to receive a tax credit against their federal income tax in exchange for making investments on qualified projects within economically distressed communities. The credit totals 39 percent of the original investment amount and is claimed over a period of seven years. Per the CDFI Fund’s website, for every $1.00 invested by the federal government, the NMTC Program generates more than $8.00 of private investment.
Through FY 2022, SCORE has financed 44 businesses throughout Illinois and Indiana that have supported the creation of more than 5,400 jobs, provided increased healthcare access to more than 131,000 individuals, and provided educational services to more than 5,250 individuals.
SCORE’s controlling entity, McCaffery Interests, was founded in 1990 with a mission of transforming urban neighborhoods in ways that inspire community, create opportunities, and foster the ideals of smart growth. McCaffery has invested more than $1 billion in urban revitalization and facilitated over $2.3 billion in urban revitalization projects and with over 80% being in disadvantaged communities.