Helping CDFIs Locate Equitable Recovery Program (ERP) Eligible Areas
Data on the new Equitable Recovery Program from the CDFI Fund is now available on PolicyMap
The Equitable Recovery Program (ERP) will provide approximately $1.73 billion in awards to Certified CDFIs to help communities respond to the economic impacts of COVID-19. This new funding is to be used in specific, eligible census tracts where the impact of COVID-19 has been severe and where communities exhibit the most need. These eligible census tracts, along with the criteria for eligibility, are now available on PolicyMap and can help CDFIs more easily prepare their applications due in August of 2022.
The CDFI Fund will prioritize funding to certified CDFIs who not only commit to use their ERP funding in these eligible census tracts, as shown in purple on the map above, but also have a track record or a growing portfolio of investments in these census tracts.
With this new data, PolicyMap can help CDFIs identify where future investment will need to take place in order to compete for this funding and determine how much of their historic activities have taken place in these areas. CDFIs can easily upload and geocode the locations of their investments and calculate what percentage of their investments sit within these tracts.
In the example below, PPP loans in San Antonio of over $150,000 have been loaded on top of the ERP eligibility layer. By using the download feature in PolicyMap, it’s simple to pull a list of PPP loans that fall within these ERP eligibility areas and understand the percentage of these loans that assisted these communities. In this example, 1,904 (54%) of PPP loans went to businesses within ERP eligible census tracts while 1,602 (46%) went to businesses outside of these census tracts.
Eligible areas are census tracts that demonstrate ‘‘severe impact’’ of the COVID–19 pandemic and have a median income at or below 120% of the Area Median Income and are CDFI Investment Areas; or are Native Areas. To learn more about the full set of requirements to apply for the ERP, visit the CDFI Fund website here.