To this day, State Rep. and Connecticut Speaker of the House, Matt Ritter, gets stopped by Hartford residents to discuss the work his grandparents started more than 60 years ago to increase affordable housing in Connecticut.
George and Pat Ritter helped establish the Connecticut Housing Investment Fund, in response to discriminatory housing practices that prevented Black and Brown families from purchasing homes.
“To go into Bloomfield and to an all-white neighborhood to pose as the buyer of a house and buy it, and then sign the deed over to an African American family, that is you know something that is hard to fathom that had to happen in the 1960s, but it is true,” Ritter said.
A decade ago, three organizations, including the one founded by the Ritters, merged to create Capital for Change, a Community Development Financial Institution and nonprofit that provides gap funding for affordable housing projects and developments.
Ritter said his grandparents’ dedication to housing equity and affordability has impacted his work.
“It shaped me more in terms of, I think my values, my relationships, and how I interact with people and how I see the world, I think that's been the greatest contribution,” Ritter said.
Capital for Change is comprised of Connecticut Housing Investment Fund, which was the oldest of the three organizations which merged to create Capital for Change. The other two organizations are the Greater New Haven Community Loan Fund and the Community Capital fund, which served the Fairfield County area, according to Chief Executive Officer Diane Smith.
Smith the goal in consolidating the three organizations was to make sure no element of care integral to the original groups was overlooked.
“There wasn't a streamlining or a selection of, and we're going to just focus on this,” Smith said. “It was all of the work that was associated with serving low and moderate income communities in small business and economic development, community development, neighborhood stabilization, affordable housing.”
Over the last decade, Capital for Change helped construct more than 25,000 housing units across Connecticut and contributed $376 million to housing development projects, according to Smith.
Looking forward, Capital for Change wants to continue work on smaller affordable developments and affordable homeownership, Smith said.
“That seems at this point is really our sweet spot,” Smith said. “A lot of Connecticut's, particularly in the center cities and the first-ring towns, have a lot of this stock where they have two or three family homes, they've got smaller apartment buildings that need repair, both nonprofit and for-profit owners who want to keep these in good repair.”
