Page 6 RAIN March/April 1985 La~d, ·Housing, and . ' Community Finance: CHUCK MATTHEI· Talks About the Institute for Community. Economics "We·need a new sort of element in the infrastructure of finance in this society." So says Chuck Matthei in the following interview. What's exciting is that we are starting to see the beginnings of such a thing take shape with the creation of institutions such as ARABLE and EarthBank (see our last issue) and social investment programs such as Working Assets and Calvert Social Investment Fund. The revolving loan fund operated by the Institute for Community Economics (ICE), which Matthei represents, goes further than most social investment funds toward developing a financing mechanism truly oriented toward the needs of specific communities. Between their loan fund and their technical assistance to community land trusts and other community·groups, the people at ICE are doing exemplary work. What's more, they use their work in the field to raise . fundamental questions about the nature of c;apital and finance in our society. .ICE publishes a quarterly newsletter called. Community Economics. If you wish to be put on the mailing list, write to Institute for Community Economics, 151 Montague City Road, Greenfield, MA 01301. The following transcript is excerpted from a much longer interview we did with Matthei when he was in Portland recently. It's a shame we don't.have space to publish the whole thing. Matthei impressed us all with his insights into the ,nature of our present economic system and his ability to cite numerous working models for alternative approaches. -FLS RAIN: Let's start with the basics. What does ICE do? Matthei: ICE is a Sm<;lll non-profit organization that provides technical and financial assistance to community-based qevelopment projects in primarily low-income communities in both urban and rural areas around the country, primarily on site in the eastern half of the country although occasionaJly further west. We work on the average on site with about 40 community groups in . 15 states each year. Our services to those groups vary according to the situation and the need. Most of the work is with land- and housing-related projects. In a much smaller number,ofinstances we work with economic development or cooperative business development, but primarily it'.s land and housing. For the most part we work with community land . trusts and limited equity cooperatives, occasionally with nonprofit housing corporations, almost never with projects through which properties might eventually transfer onto the open speculative market again. That's a qualification in our technical assistance, and it's a qualification in our lending criteria as well. It's not an absolute prohibition-we have the flexibility at our own · discretion to mal<e an exception, but we feel very strongly about the need for the development of limited equity housing models. Not only practically, to get the most use for the dollar over time, but also in a more basic and political sense because we feel that the.ability to get to the root causes of the social, and for that matter, environmental problems that many peoplea~e concerned about requires, in part, a willingness to confront the institutions of land ownership and the patterns of land tenure and land transfer. We have to take a look at the structure of property, and particulafly in that regard at the allocation of.equity. So we have both a practical
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