We are committed to building communities in which all people have social and economic opportunity – through community development lending, investing and leveraging our firm’s financial expertise.
Through partnerships with educational institutions, government agencies and nonprofits, we provide capital and expertise to produce lasting social and economic benefits, such as affordable housing, small business loans and community services.
Strengthening communities
Morgan Stanley invests both financial and intellectual capital to build stronger, more sustainable communities. We provide affordable housing loans to developers, leverage public incentives, and increase access to capital markets for state and local agencies. To expand our reach in the communities we serve, we work with Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs) whose primary mission is to provide a wide range of financial services and products to underserved communities.
As a community partner, we focus on the development and preservation of affordable housing, the creation of jobs, and the training of job-ready workers through economic and workforce development. We promote financial independence through financial literacy and capability programs for the underbanked.
Advancing equitable transit-oriented development
In 2011, Morgan Stanley became a Class A investor in the Bay Area Transit-Oriented Affordable Housing (TOAH) Fund, a $50 million loan fund designed to catalyze the development of affordable housing and community facilities around transit hubs in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.
The TOAH Fund provides financing for land acquisition, pre-development, and construction to support Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) projects to benefit lower-income communities by increasing access to affordable housing and community facilities around public transportation hubs. The first project funded by the TOAH Fund is in San Francisco's Tenderloin neighborhood and includes an affordable 150-apartment development as well as the community's first full-service grocery store.
The Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF), one of the nation's largest community development financial institutions, manages the TOAH Fund. Together with LIIF, Morgan Stanley released a paper in August 2012 on equitable transit-oriented development and its positive impact for lower-income communities. The paper, "How Transit-Oriented Development Can Help Get America to Work," is available for download here.
Building small businesses
In 2010, Morgan Stanley launched a new initiative to deliver up to $500 million of credit to small businesses seeking to increase investment and create new jobs.
We are working with national nonprofits and local community banks to enable more small business to obtain the long-term capital they need for commercial real estate investments. This initiative, called the Morgan Stanley SBA 504 Program, operates through the U.S. Small Business Administration’s (SBA) 504 Loan Program.
Our initiative will be available through Community Reinvestment Fund, U.S.A. (CRF), a nonprofit corporation, and CDC Direct Capital, a wholly owned subsidiary of CDC Small Business Finance, a certified development company that serves small businesses.
Read our 2012 Sustainability Report for more information.