Watch Senior Economic Justice Correspondent Oscar Perry Abello in conversation with Angela Dowell, Chief Financial Officer at Chicago Community Loan Fund — the latest in Next City’s Bottom Line Conversations webinar series. In our last edition of Bottom Line Conversations, we talked about how the landscape for community-controlled real estate has changed (or not changed). One theme that emerged was the tension of perceived versus actual risk. For a project that is community-owned, or perhaps more broadly a project where the developer or sponsor is something or someone who doesn’t have as much experience or a large portfolio, what does it take for a lender to finance a project responsibly under those constraints? What can other institutions, like local government, local private investors or the federal government do to change the way lenders on the ground work with “riskier” projects? We’ll dive further into that conversation with Angela Dowell. As chief financial officer at Chicago Community Loan Fund, Dowell has spent years living at the focal point where the dreams and aspirations of communities have to balance up against the constraints imposed by funders against taking on too much risk. There’s some good news from the past few years. Funders have changed practices at least temporarily, making space for more perceived risk in the projects that Dowell’s organization can finance. Could those changes become permanent? Could things move even more in that direction? We’ll talk and learn more about it with Dowell. [[person_2]] [[person_1]] Next City’s series “The Bottom Line” explores scalable solutions for problems related to affordability, inclusive economic growth and access to capital. The series is made possible with support from Citi.