Making Green Work for Our Communities

NeighborWorks Community Building and Organizing Gulf Coast Partners and Residents Unite to Talk 'Green'

More than 70 Gulf Coast resident leaders, activists, volunteers and community leaders from Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana convened in Biloxi, Mississippi recently to talk green.

The purpose of the two-day workshop, led by NeighborWorks' Community Building and Organizing Programs (CB&O), was to connect community members with one another and share information on how to tap economic development opportunities from an emerging green economy.

“After the BP oil spill, communities along the Gulf Coast have been hungry for knowledge sharing and coalition-building to explore alternative livelihoods in the green industry," said CB&O Director Susan Naimark. "We learned that the various groups most impacted by the oil spill – particularly the Vietnamese, Native American and African-American communities – were not connecting with each other. We were thrilled and honored that NeighborWorks America could play a convening role to fill this void,” Naimark added.

CB&O Senior Program Associate Bernadette Orr, who organized the workshop, emphasized that community building and organizing is a critical component not only in building communities, but for maximizing on opportunities in a green economy.

“Community building relies on empowering residents to define what green is for their communities, and helps galvanize their energy, talents and abilities to create workable solutions,” said Orr. “Community-building and organizing helps change the hearts and minds of people by empowering them to become involved in not only defining the problem, but creating the solutions.”

Continue reading to learn how residents were inspired, energized and determined to take action.

Challenges Facing Nonprofit Developers

In a recent interview with Multi Housing News, Thomas Deyo, deputy director of NeighborWorks America's National Real Estate Programs, discussed the high cost of capital and other challenges facing nonprofit community development organizations. View video below. If you are having trouble with the player, view it here: http://bit.ly/97oZlU.

NeighborWorks Passes One Million Volunteer Hours Mark

NeighborWorks organizations around the country helped generate more than one million volunteer hours in the last five years, building stronger, vibrant, and more connected communities. Combined through the five years, ending with September 30, 2010, volunteers partnering with NeighborWorks organizations put in more than 1.14 million hours, including more than 322,000 hours this year, the largest number reported by member organizations of the Community Building and Organizing Program (CB&O) at NeighborWorks America.

Learn more and view examples that illustrate the success of community building and organizing.

NeighborWorks Homeownership Efforts Get a Boost from $15 Million in CDFI Funds

Efforts to increase sustainable homeownership got a boost recently when 25 members of the NeighborWorks network received nearly $15 million as part of grants made by the U.S. Treasury department’s Community Development Financial Institution program.

Combined with grants from NeighborWorks America, local governments, foundations and the private sector, these NeighborWorks organizations and others affiliates in the network plan to continue making sustainable, affordable homeownership available in communities across the U.S.

Roy Nash, president and CEO of NeighborWorks Waco said, “CDFI funds are a major tool in our work to safely increase homeownership in our market. Being able to help homeowners secure a low-cost, fixed-rate mortgage and a home that is right for their needs is part of what these grants do and do very successfully.”

In addition to the twenty five grant recipients in this latest round of financing, there are 47 additional NeighborWorks organizations with certified CDFI operations. NeighborWorks organizations use these recent CDFI grants and prior grants to foster sustainable housing in a variety of ways, including:

• providing down payment assistance to qualified first-time homebuyers who have successfully completed homeownership education classes
• underwriting the cost of homeownership education classes
• providing capital to support the construction and project management of affordable homes for sale.

Learn more, including the names and location of the award recipients.

What's Next for Financing Affordable Rental Housing?

By Thomas P. Deyo, director, Real Estate Programs, NeighborWorks America and Frances Ferguson, senior manager, Real Estate Programs, NeighborWorks America

The development of affordable rental housing has always been difficult, but the past few years have been especially challenging for developers as the tools—mainly the Low Income Housing Tax Credit—that they’ve relied on the past 25 years or more have begun to show their age and not kept up with market realities.

What’s needed is a new way of thinking for additional financing of affordable rental housing that mirrors the private sector development market; one that creates stronger nonprofit developers, while not abandoning the mission focused reason that nonprofit developers exist: to create and sustain affordable rental housing for those most in need.

The LIHTC, the “golden ticket” for financing most of the affordable rental housing stock in the U.S. over the past few decades, has become less valuable and available as the biggest investors in the credit have largely pulled out of the market.

While a few market areas are seeing a resurgence of tax credit investors, the problems that started in 2008 with less demand and lower LIHTC prices are expected to continue in 2011 in many markets.

This situation forces developers to scramble to fill their project financing gaps either by reducing development fees (which weaken already thinly capitalized developers) and pursuing increasingly complicated, time consuming, and inefficient and more expensive multilayered financing packages or by simply not developing the affordable rental housing that their communities need.

The latter is of grave concern as affordable housing remains a present need as economies weaken and more people need housing within their means.

Continue reading this article, What's Next for Financing Affordable Rental Housing?