NeighborWorks America Kicks Off National Homeownership Month

Today NeighborWorks America kicked off National Homeownership Month by announcing a series of activities that will highlight the important role that informed, prepared and engaged residents play in healthy communities through long-term, affordable homeownership.

“For more than 30 years, NeighborWorks America and its network of affiliates around the country have supported and encouraged affordable and long-term homeownership,” said Eileen Fitzgerald, Acting CEO of NeighborWorks America. “From providing homeownership tips and urging homeowners facing foreclosure to talk to the right people, to strengthening communities through NeighborWorks Week and NeighborWorks HomeOwnership Centers, throughout National Homeownership Month we are working to get good information in the hands of potential homebuyers and current homeowners so they can achieve and sustain homeownership.”

NeighborWorks America activities during Homeownership Month include:

• NeighborWorks Week (June 4-11, 2011): Every year during NeighborWorks Week – the first week in June – NeighborWorks America and the NeighborWorks network mobilize tens of thousands of volunteers, business leaders, neighbors, friends and local and national elected and civic leaders for a week of neighborhood change and awareness. Homes are rehabbed and repaired, properties are painted and landscaped, neighborhood tours are conducted, partnerships are recognized, and education events are held. During this week NeighborWorks America will highlight NeighborWorks Week events happening across the country on www.nw.org, the NeighborWorks News blog, NeighborWorks’ Facebook fan page and our YouTube channel.

• HomeOwnership Centers (June 13-17, 2011): NeighborWorks HomeOwnership Centers are one-stop shops for all things related to homeownership. From professional homebuyer advice and education on affordable mortgage loans, to home repair and rehab guidance and foreclosure intervention counseling, NeighborWorks HomeOwnership Centers pave the road to long-term affordable homeownership for thousands of homebuyers and homeowners each year. During this week, NeighborWorks America will highlight the services NeighborWorks HomeOwnership Centers offer and help you locate one in your community. This information will be available on www.nw.org, the NeighborWorks News blog, NeighborWorks’ Facebook fan page and our YouTube channel.

• Homebuyer Education (June 20-24, 2011): Everyday homeownership advisors work with potential homebuyers to prepare them for long-term, affordable homeownership. During this week NeighborWorks America will offer consumer tips on how to prepare for homeownership, seven steps to obtain a mortgage, and more on www.nw.org, the NeighborWorks News blog, NeighborWorks’ Facebook fan page and our YouTube channel.

• Loan Scam Alert Campaign (June 27-30, 2011): Every day homeowners facing financial difficulty fall victim to vicious scam artists. During the last week in June, NeighborWorks will remind homeowners of the signs of a loan modification scam, how to report scams and point homeowners facing foreclosure to the right people – nonprofit, HUD approved counseling agencies who offer foreclosure intervention counseling. This information will be available on www.nw.org, the NeighborWorks News blog, the Loan Scam Alert Campaign’s Facebook fan page and our YouTube channel.

When Nonprofits Expand Their Reach, Governance Issues Deserve Attention

Chelsea Neighborhood Developers (CND) in Chelsea, Massachusetts, like many successful NeighborWorks organizations, is in the process of expanding geographically. As the expansion evolved, Executive Director Ann Houston and CND’s board of directors recognized the agency’s governance model would need to adapt.

Houston collaborated with Hilary Marcus, CND’s relationship manager at NeighborWorks America, to talk with peers and consultants while researching best practices in governance. You can see the results of their exploration in the report available on NeighborWorks' website.

CND's new governance model is still in the works. The authors note that many NeighborWorks organizations are facing expansion challenges and hope this report will spark discussion on this issue. The authors can be reached at ahouston@chelseand.org and hmarcus@nw.org.

A Shared Vision for Consumer Financial Capability

By Eileen Fitzgerald, Acting CEO, NeighborWorks America

Good partners, like NeighborWorks America and the Citi Foundation, share a common vision. We both believe in financial inclusion and economic empowerment for everyone. And we realize that while helping consumers build financial knowledge and skills is important, it doesn’t go far enough. Timely, relevant financial information needs to be coupled with ongoing coaching and access to appropriate financial products and services to help consumers convert financial knowledge into positive financial practices necessary to achieve long-term, sustainable results.   

The Citi Foundation has been a leader in championing this new financial capability approach, and NeighborWorks America has a long history of providing top-notch training to financial educators. Capitalizing on the strengths of NeighborWorks America, the Citi Foundation has made a $5 million grant to expand financial capability programs across the nation.

How will we get the job done? Quite simply by building the skills of more than 400 financial education practitioners. Equipped with the best training available in financial capability and coaching, practitioners will be better prepared to assist residents in low and moderate income communities who want to improve their financial situation. We are also strengthening and expanding the financial coaching programs of 31 best-in-class organizations across the U.S. through grants and a range of technical assistance support. 

Here is what we are setting out to achieve with the Citi Foundation: Helping people access and select safe and appropriate financial products and services and providing ongoing financial coaching that helps consumers work toward their financial goals over the course of their lives. Because results are important to us, the project will also employ new Success Measures data collection tools to measure how these financial capability programs change consumer financial attitudes, behaviors and resiliency over time. For over 15 years, we have collaborated with the Citi Foundation and are enthusiastic about this next phase of our work together. We anticipate thousands of Americans will become more skillful in managing their personal finances as a result of this dynamic partnership.  And we look forward to sharing the lessons learned across the field.

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I Bet You Don’t Know What Co-Housing Is!

Ming and Pemba Sherpa with their daughters:
Cheten and Chewang
Photo taken by Jon Shenton, marketing and communications
coordinator at Champlain Housing Trust

by Sara Varela,

Communications Specialist, Community Building and Organizing

Champlain Housing Trust (CHT), a NeighborWorks member, is located in northwestern Vermont. CHT is a community land trust that supports strong, vital communities. Here is an example of the type of work they do as reported by Julia Curry, co-op and community organizer at CHT.

"Ming and Pemba Sherpa came to Vermont from Nepal eighteen years ago, but life really changed when they discovered Champlain Housing Trust  in 2004. They were raising twin daughters, Cheten and Chewang, in a small one-bedroom apartment, so were happy to learn they could afford a spacious three-bedroom place from CHT for almost the same monthly rent as their previous place. Their long-term hope, though, was to buy a home.

They found that opportunity at East Village Co-housing in Burlington, where a community of 32 condominium owners live collaboratively. Co-housing balances the privacy of separate apartments with a commitment to interaction and sustainability.

When the Sherpa Family first looked into buying they were told they could not get the mortgage they needed, despite their good credit. Once they learned about CHT's shared equity program, though, things moved quickly. They met the requirements, got a mortgage with a bank that knows CHT’s program, and bought their townhouse less than a month later.

“There’s a lot that we like about living here,” Pemba comments. “The home is a good size and very energy-efficient. We work with other residents to grow a vegetable garden. I think it’s important that our daughters are learning where food comes from and what it takes to raise it.” “[It] feels more like life did in Nepal, because we are friends with our neighbors and do so much together. We have much more of a sense of community here and it feels safer for the girls, since we know our neighbors well,” Ming adds.

Residents of East Village cook some dinners together in the common area, meet periodically to manage the property, and get together informally in other ways. The values of sustainability and community are also evident in the location—with easy walking and bus access, to reduce car dependence—and the community’s choice to set more apartments at affordable prices than city regulations require. “Living here is sustainable and peaceful,” Pemba concludes. “It feels like family to us.”

As a demonstration of this sustainable mission, the co-housing community, the Champlain Housing Trust and the City of Burlington won the Home Depot Foundation’s 2010 Award for Excellence in Sustainable Community Development, a national award that recognizes the unique implementation of sustainability initiatives in Burlington, as exemplified by East Village Co-housing. Nine of the 32 homes at East Village are in Champlain Housing Trust’s shared equity portfolio, making them permanently affordable, and there are multiple “green” aspects of the development.

I was fascinated by the co-housing concept and thought I’d share this story here. For more information about the East Village Co-housing or to learn what co-housing is all about, click here: www.bcoho.org/index.html. This is a great way to build community!

For more information about Champlain Housing Trust visit their website: www.champlainhousingtrust.org/

Neighborhood Stabilization at 3



Sarah Greenberg
Senior Manager, Community Stabilization
NeighborWorks America

Sitting in a roomful of community development practitioners brought together by the Center for Community Progress, the Greater Ohio Policy Center, and Enterprise Community Partners to create a new toolkit for neighborhood change, I was struck by how a new subset of community development has grown up over the past three years.  Venerable names in community development mixed with young leaders in the field like those on my staff, providing an interesting study on both continuity and change in the field.

We should not underestimate the stimulus effects of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program.  The program, a response to the foreclosure crisis, has stimulated new thinking and new leadership in the field.  National intermediaries like NeighborWorks, Enterprise, LISC, and the Housing Partnership Network began as early as 2007 to redeploy existing staff and add new staff to focus on community stabilization and foreclosure response.  I have been privileged to lead these efforts at NeighborWorks America.  These programs grew rapidly, both catalyzing and documenting key trends in the field, including:

• A new national intermediary designed to facilitate the efficient transfer of foreclosed properties to local stabilization efforts through the National First Look Program.
• The growth of a regional or sometimes local intermediary function that can provide the leadership needed to coordinate stabilization efforts - providing real estate development capacity; creating real property data systems; land banking properties for future disposition; branding and marketing distressed communities as places of opportunity; and generating or supplementing end buyer financing products through the creation of new loan pools. 
• Attempts to intervene earlier in the cycle of distress through purchasing delinquent mortgage notes, short sales, and fast-track foreclosure processes for vacant units.
• A return to a more comprehensive, place-based approach to community development that mobilizes residents and stakeholders towards a common goal.

And the field has risen to the challenge.  NeighborWorks alone has trained thousands of practitioners through a new community stabilization curriculum offered through the NeighborWorks Training Institute and online; HUD has trained thousands more in NSP-specific areas with the help of a small army of technical assistance providers, many of whom have been in the field for several decades.

Sunbelt communities that have never dealt with stabilization issues learned from Rust Belt communities that pioneered neighborhood revitalization initiatives.  Communities devastated by the foreclosure crisis learned from the response to other recent crises like Hurricane Katrina and the EF5 tornado that leveled Greensburg, KS.  Old programs were reexamined and lessons gleaned from their execution, such as the Resolution Trust Company, HUD’s Asset Control Area program, and the 203(k) loan program.

More than 9,500 units have already been returned to productive use through the Neighborhood Stabilization Program, with programmatic projections in the hundreds of thousands of units.  In the NeighborWorks Network at least 130 local organizations have taken advantage of NSP funding to support their stabilization efforts, many adding staff and capacity in the process.  For all of these reasons I believe that even with all of its challenges, as a field we will ultimately consider NSP a success as a stimulus program.

How will this work continue when NSP funds are gone, especially given recent cuts to essential long-term programs like CDBG and HUD Housing Counseling?  This is but the latest in a series of challenges in community development, and sitting in that room yesterday reflecting on the community of stabilization practitioners that has grown over the past three years, I have faith that we will again join together as an industry to craft creative responses.