Floyd H. Flake Jamaica, New York

Former U.S. Representative Reverend Dr. Floyd H. Flake is the senior pastor of the 12,000 member Allen African Methodist Episcopal Church in Jamaica, Queens. During his 23-year pastorate, Allen has become one of the nation’s foremost Christian churches and non-profit corporations. The church’s annual operating budget of $29 million, expansive commercial and residential development, 500-student private school, and various commercial and social service enterprises have placed it among the nation’s most productive religious and urban development institutions. The 11 corporations, church administrative offices, school, and ministries comprise an 825-person workforce, making it one of the Boroughs of Queen’s three largest private sector employers.

In the U.S. Congress, Representative Floyd Flake established a reputation for bipartisan, innovative legislative initiatives to revitalize urban commercial and residential communities. One of them is the Community Development Financial Institutions Act of 1993. It contained a provision named the Bank Enterprise Act (BEA), authored by Representative Floyd Flake, which provided incentives for financial institutions to make market-oriented investments in destabilized urban and rural economies. These BEA provisions continue to yield millions of dollars worth of direct and secondary investment for residential and commercial growth, needed Federal insurance relief for banks, and increased private sector capital flow in communities with declining economic fortunes. The BEA has directly impacted the volume of residential mortgage and commercial lending in grossly under-invested locales. The BEA is a major component of the Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI), which funds many of the economic development projects in urban and rural communities.

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