The CDFI Fund responded in June with $90 million in awards provided by the government's stimulus package - with another round anticipated to reach the streets in September, for a total planned 2009 disbursement of $207 million.

The stimulus package also doubled, to $6.5 billion, the amount of New Market Tax Credits the CDFI Fund would back for approved community development investments this year.

But many think it will take more to fill in an expected 39 percent drop in available CDFI capital. The CDFI Fund last year recommended that Treasury set aside up to $2 billion from Troubled Asset Relief Program funds for CDFIs.

Where has the money gone? CDFIs have lost several of their primary benefactors of recent years, either to failure or mergers; Wachovia Corp., Washington Mutual Inc., and Merrill Lynch were among the most active in CDFIs. (The investments earn banks Community Reinvestment Act credit.) The overall market downturn, too, has played a role; a recent study presented to the Fed showed that CDFIs were frequently found to have lost "concessionary" funding or short-term capital lines. Self-Help, a community development credit union in Durham, N.C., had only hours to replace a $25 million overnight facility called in by a lender on the day Lehman Bros. collapsed. Another CDFI had to cut ties with a lender that sought full collateral on loans already guaranteed by the Small Business Administration, and ordered the CDFI to cede interest in the loans (a violation of SBA guidelines), according to Paul Weech, a former chief of staff with the SBA who interviewed dozens of CDFIs for the study.

Loans that are being renewed for CDFIs are coming with rate hikes of 200 to 250 basis points, according to Weech.

The market for Low-Income Housing Tax Credits is perhaps the most critical loss for CDFIs. The credits in recent years had provided about $8 billion annually in equity financing for developers of affordable housing projects as they neared closing. But 40 percent of that volume came from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae purchases, which were halted in the spring of 2008.

"Most of the projects that have gone on in Detroit have been so because they've been subsidized by tax credits," says Ray Waters, president of ShoreBank Enterprise Detroit - the nonprofit arm of ShoreBank in Chicago. Without the tax credits, banks became hesitant to pick up pre-development loans and that forced ShoreBank to turn away from funding new developments almost exclusively in favor of rehab projects.

In his June remarks on CDFIs, Bernanke called for bringing new venture capital investors into the stagnant LIHTC market. Some of the market has been ameliorated with a program under the 2008 Home Economic Recovery Act to provide grants to states in lieu of tax credit investments for housing developers.

The act also opened up another possible new funding channel for CDFIs: membership in the Federal Home Loan Bank System. So far, only a "small number" of CDFIs - those that are banks, thrifts and credit unions - will have the capacity to qualify for collateralized advanced for lending, says Pinsky, whose network is negotiating less restrictive CDFI terms on asset requirements with the Home Loan Bank System's regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency. "Most CDFIs tend to be unregulated institutions, and that creates a challenge for the FHFA and Federal Home Loan banks, who need a certain amount of 'apples-to-apples' information," says Pinsky.