Promote investment in New Haven through increased home ownership, micro-enterprise and improved access to financial services.

• Link families to home buying programs from prime lenders in order to increase home ownership among residents
  
• Link families to entrepreneurial training and small business start-up services
  
• Identify and cultivate opportunities for micro-enterprise business start-ups
  
• Establish a community development credit union to serve inner-city residents
  

The community investment component of NLC's work is highly dependent on creating effective partnerships and linkages to other organizations already engaged in various community development endeavors. For example, NLC's proposed first-time homebuyer training will be focused on providing high quality financial training to prospective home buyers, then connecting the graduates to programs offered by the City of New Haven, local community development corporations, or the banks themselves, for the actual purchase. NLC is not interested in developing housing. Rather, our focus will be on creating a pipeline of pre-qualified, properly training and certified prospective home buyers who are interested in purchasing homes in New Haven. Similarly, NLC will seek and encourage persons who are already conducting informal businesses to explore the possibilities of expanding their businesses into formal entities. This will be done thorough exposure to entrepreneurial training, connecting these individuals with mentors, and facilitating access to potential sources of start-up funding.