Union Miles Development Corporation
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 Headquarters of the Union Miles Development Corporation in 2017 | |
 | |
| Abbreviation | UMDC |
|---|---|
| Formation | May 1, 1981 |
| Founded at | Union-Miles Park, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. |
| Type | Community development corporation |
| Legal status | Nonprofit organization |
| Location |
|
| Coordinates | 41°26′49″N 81°37′19″W / 41.4468359°N 81.6220714°W |
Executive Director | Roshawn Sample[1] |
| Website | unionmiles |
The Union Miles Development Corporation is a nonprofit community development corporation serving the Union-Miles Park statistical planning area in Cleveland, Ohio, in the United States. Created in 1981 by the Union Miles Community Coalition, it was successful in drawing national attention to discriminatory practices in lending practices and won passage of an Ohio law reforming housing foreclosure procedures.
CCCA organizing
Cleveland had long suffered from racially discriminatory practices by lending institutions.[2][3] The Union-Miles Park neighborhood, once a working class, white area, had suffered the loss of most of its employers in the 1959s and 1960s and seen extensive white flight. By the 1970s, the area was overwhelmingly African American, poor, crime-ridden, and decaying.[4] The 1973–75 recession hit the area especially hard.[5] Many of the most affordable homes were owned or leased by federal, city, or state public housing agencies, yet these homes were some of the most decrepit in the area.[6][7]
The Union-Miles Community Coalition was the culmination of a decade-long process of social justice organizing in Cleveland. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Cleveland formed the Commission on Catholic Community Action (CCCA) in June 1969 to institutionalize its attempts to stem the economic and social losses in the greater Cleveland area.[8] CCCA sought to preserve neighborhoods where the Catholic Church had invested a great deal of financial and human capital in staff, churches, and schools.[9] A major programming area was Union-Miles Park, where there were a large number of Roman Catholic church which were rapidly losing members.[10] CCCA organizers initially used community organizing tactics pioneered by Saul Alinsky. Strongly left-wing groups began to form at the block level.[11] These were too radical for the diocese, which shifted its community organizing efforts to focus on empowerment[12] and asset and wealth preservation.[13] CCCA worked with the Catholic Campaign for Human Development and The George Gund Foundation to organize homeowners and the poor as part of their empowerment initiative.[14]
CCCA efforts led directly to the creation of the Union Miles Development Corporation (UMDC).[15] In January 1979, the CCCA helped local neighborhood block groups form a "reinvestment committee" to agitate around discriminatory practices in home improvement loans.[16] In May 1979, the Union-Miles Community Coalition began picketing area housing lenders, including the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).[6] Realizing that a neighborhood-wide effort was needed, CCCA organizers began pushing for the "reinvestment committee" to build an even larger, more representative coalition[17] which would focus not just on the financial industry but on a range of community issues.[4] During the summer, 185 groups in the Union-Miles Park neighborhood joined the new coalition. The new group, calling itself the Union Miles Community Coalition (UMCC), met for the first time on September 29, 1979.[17]
UMCC efforts
UMCC initially focused its efforts on the practices of two federal agencies, the FHA and Veterans' Administration (VA). Both were major sources of low-interest home and home improvement loans in the area.[18][a] In October 1979, UMCC became first community group to win a hearing before the Comptroller of the Currency regarding discriminatory practices in violation of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act.[20]
By 1980, it had become clear to CCCA organizers that the wider issue of economic development in Union-Miles Park needed to be tackled. But neither Famicos Corp. nor Lutheran Housing Corp. (the two largest nonprofit housing lenders in the city) wanted to become involved in the issue. CCCA staff pushed for the UMCC to establish a nonprofit corporate subsidiary, the Union Miles Development Corporation (UMDC), to take on these issues. Very gradually through 1980 and early 1981, UMCC began adopting procedures and resolutions to establish the new body.[21]