ANNOUNCEMENT

It is with great sadness that we are announcing the closing of our store in the Fruitvale neighborhood of Oakland, California. We first opened on May 1, 2009. After over 14 years of operation, we have decided to close the store.

We want to thank our customers – many of whom became friends, our supporters, neighbors, funders, the community and our landlord, The Unity Council. We thank you all for your kindness, generosity, support and openness to our unusual approaches. We will miss you all but we remain deeply grateful to all of you. We also remain open to finding new ways to assist this community.

Luis Diaz, the Store Manager, is returning to his home country, Colombia. He will be greatly missed here in the U.S., but he can be contacted easily in the future at [email protected].

Community Development Finance (CDF), our parent nonprofit organization, will continue operations. I will be doing some writing and research. We are continuing our partnership with Teachers Rooted in Oakland (TRiO) and their exciting and important work. We are continuing our work with Ridgeview Terrace Apartments and Jackie Robinson Apartments in San Francisco with our financial training activities. We are looking at other possibilities, especially ones associated with expansion of our lending programs, which were extremely successful; but we also are looking at any other possibilities that can assist the community.

While we are closing our store, we still hope to be able to assist people in Fruitvale, the greater city of Oakland and as far away as our efforts can reach.

Thank you for an incredible 14 years!!

Dan Leibsohn
Executive Director
Community Development Finance
communitydevelopmentfinance.org
[email protected]
July 2023