In San Francisco, Gordon Chin Left a Legacy of Building Bridges

Rep. Nancy Pelosi presents Chin with his American Flag

Chinatown CDC’s founding Executive Director Gordon Chin retired last Friday drawing national praise for his contributions to San Francisco's communities and to the field of community development since 1977.

About 800 people attended a gala celebration of Chinatown CDC's 34th anniversary and farewell tribute to Chin, including the honorable Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi and special guests such as San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and Assemblyman Mark Leno. Representative Pelosi paid tribute to Chin by presenting him with a United States flag flown in Washington, D.C. in his name.

Chin’s leadership at Chinatown CDC has had a huge impact on San Francisco residents and neighborhoods. The organization assists more than 4,000 residents and manages 2,300 units of housing in the greater San Francisco area.



 San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee honors Gordon Chin

The nonprofit is one of San Francisco’s most important
community organizations because of its leadership in affordable housing issues and city matters in the past 30 years, Doug Shoemaker, director of the Mayor’s Office of Housing told the San Francisco Chronicle.

Robert Burns, director of Field Operations for NeighborWorks America added, “Gordon's work on behalf of low income and working class residents of San Francisco embodied the core values of NeighborWorks and sets an example for all of us to follow within our own communities.”

Chin spoke of his 34 years at Chinatown CDC as the best and thanked his wife Dorothy for all her support. He plans to write, consult and focus on developing The Gordon Chin Leadership Fund, which will expand community leadership programs and enhance Chinatown CDC's ability to respond quickly to important community issues.

“It’s always been about building bridges between people, partnerships within the community and between communities,” Chin said.

"A heartfelt thanks to all of you who joined us for the evening celebration," said Fei Tsen, chair of Chinatown CDC board of directors. "It was a truly joyful event and so great to have the opportunity to speak with so many of you. On behalf of the children and families who benefit from your help, a very special mahalo from the heart."

On October 1, Norman Fong became Chinatown CDC's executive director. He has been with the nonprofit since 1990. Fong is committed to building upon Chin's legacy and model of leadership to ensure Chinatown CDC continues pave the way in the community development field.

Housing Partnership Network and Citi Foundation Launch Fund to Advance Innovations in Neighborhood Stabilization

Citi Foundation announced recently that it is committing $2.75 million to the Housing Partnership Network (HPN) to support the neighborhood stabilization efforts of community-based housing organizations in 10 metropolitan areas across the country. The Innovations in Neighborhood Stabilization and Foreclosure Prevention Initiative will provide the community based organizations with grants and other resources to support high-impact neighborhood revitalization projects over a two-year period. HPN has been a partner with NeighborWorks America and five other national organizations in neighborhood stabilization efforts through the National Community Stabilization Trust. HPN also collaborates with NeighborWorks America on the StrengthMatters Initiative.

Four NeighborWorks organizations will be a part of the Citi Foundation and HPN initiative:

Housing Development Fund will work to stabilize Connecticut cities with high rates of foreclosure by developing a cohort of “landlord entrepreneurs” who will play a significant role as owner-occupants in a new, coordinated financing and training model for the purchase, rehabilitation and responsible management of owner-occupied small multi-family properties.

HAP Housing will advance strategic neighborhood approaches for the stabilization of three low-income Springfield, Massachusetts neighborhoods hit hard first by the effects of foreclosures and abandonment, and then by a devastating F-3 tornado on June 1, 2011.

Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago will implement a new model for advising homeowners through a network of Resolution Specialists who will work in partnership with the homeowner, lender, and servicer to modify mortgages through the new national Mortgage Resolution Fund effort.

Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City, Inc. (NHSNYC) in collaboration with the New York Mortgage Coalition (NYMC) and the Long Island Housing Partnership (LIDP) will create a foreclosure intervention program for existing homeowners who may qualify to own or rent their homes if prices were reset to current market valuations.

Proposed Jobs Bill Includes $15 Billion for Project Rebuild, “Next Generation” of NSP

by Sarah Greenberg,
Senior Manager for Community Stabilization
NeighborWorks America

This post originally appeared in Stabilize, the blog of NeighborWorks America's Stable Communities Initiative.

President Obama has proposed the American Jobs Act, containing a variety of incentives and programs aimed at getting more Americans back to work.

One of the components of the bill is Project Rebuild, described as the “next generation” of the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP). The bill proposes a $15 billion budget (more than double the total allocations of NSP Rounds 1, 2 and 3 combined) — two-thirds of which would be allocated directly to participating jurisdictions (as in NSP Rounds 1 and 3), and the other third would be allocated through a competitive process (as in NSP Round 2).

The overall American Jobs Act and Project Rebuild are drawing criticism, and their likelihood of passage is uncertain. Project Rebuild is intended to connect Americans looking for work, with the work needed to repair and repurpose residential and commercial properties. Like NSP, Project Rebuild would be focused on acquiring, rehabilitating and re-occupying foreclosed residential property, but there are several modifications:

• It broadens eligible uses to allow commercial projects and other job creating activities, capped at 30 percent.
  Many regions with concentrated home foreclosures also have concentrations of vacant commercial structures that weigh on property values and make it less likely that new businesses will come into the community and invest new capital. Project Rebuild will tackle this problem directly by allowing grantees to rebuild and repurpose distressed commercial real estate.
• Up to 10 percent of formula grants may be used for establishing and operating a jobs program to maintain eligible properties in target neighborhoods.
  Project Rebuild will enable grantees to use funds to establish property maintenance programs to create jobs and mitigate “visible scars” left by vacant/abandoned properties.
• Each state will receive a minimum of $20 million of the $10 billion in formula funds.
• Beyond this baseline, funds will be targeted to areas with home foreclosures, homes in default or delinquency, and other factors determined by HUD, such as unemployment, commercial foreclosures, and other economic conditions.

Project Rebuild also seeks to scale up successful land bank models, providing infusions of capital to leverage private sector investment, and to empower and expand collaborations with for-profit developers where appropriate.

Other features of Project Rebuild include:

• Project Rebuild will provide funding to purchase, rehabilitate, and/or redevelop foreclosed, abandoned, demolished, or vacant properties. Funding can also establish and operate land banks or demolish blighted structures.
• Project Rebuild will support an estimated 191,000 jobs and treat at least 150,000 properties across all 50 states.
• HUD will allocate formula funds within 30 days of Congressional enactment of Project Rebuild, complete the competition, and obligate all funds within 150 days of enactment. Grantees will have three years to spend 100 percent of funding. HUD will establish further benchmarks for expenditures at one year and two years.
• Formula funding will go directly to states and entitlement communities across the country. Competitive funds will be available to states, local governments, for-profit entities, non-profit entities and consortia of these entities.
• Strict standards of oversight will ensure good stewardship of these funds. HUD will strengthen existing accountability procedures by requiring that grantees have an internal auditor to continually monitor grantee performance to prevent fraud or abuse. Grantees will be required to provide quarterly progress reports and HUD will recapture funds from underperforming or mismanaged grantees to reallocate those funds to areas with greatest need.

The Project Rebuild proposal is an acknowledgement of the importance of neighborhoods to Americans’ quality of life and to the economy, and of the effective work of nonprofits, government and their private sector partners in stabilizing communities.

Project Rebuild would leverage the significant investment in capacity building of grantees and their partners in foreclosed property acquisition, rehab and repurposing. By adding much-needed capital to this capacity, Project Rebuild has the potential to not only create jobs, but to enable communities to scale up their impact and achieve the momentum necessary to tip more neighborhoods back to a trend of improvement.

Here are a Fact Sheet and FAQ on Project Rebuild.

NeighborWorks America Announces $3.65 Million in Expansion Grants for NeighborWorks Organizations

Today NeighborWorks America announced $3.65 million in grant funding to nonprofit organizations that will enable them to expand their service areas and reach deeper within underserved communities.

“The expansion grants announced today are a truly efficient use of funding for the nonprofit industry.  Instead of starting from scratch, the expansion grants enable NeighborWorks organizations to broaden their reach and bring their already established services and best practices into underserved communities,” said Eileen Fitzgerald, CEO of NeighborWorks America. 

The grants help organizations like Neighborhood Development Services in Ravenna, Ohio, to further expand their reach into 17 counties in southeast Ohio. Through their expansion, Neighborhood Development Services will develop affordable multifamily and owner-occupied homes for low- and moderate-income residents, work to develop the local economies in this region, and bring much-needed services to the residents, such as: financial education, homebuyer education, foreclosure intervention counseling, and other resident services.

The expansion grants will also assist Tierra del Sol, of Anthony, N.M., in its efforts to develop affordable rental housing for agricultural workers, low-income senior citizens, and persons with disabilities, rehabilitate owner-occupied homes, and provide financial and homebuyer education to residents in of five western Texas counties: El Paso, Hudspeth, Culberson, Jeff Davis and Presidio.

The $3.65 million in grant funding is being provided to 25 organizations nationwide. See who they are.

Why is Affordable Housing So Important? The Health and Development of Children Depend on It

Children playing at an after school program, sponsored by
Chelsea Neighborhood Developers in Massachusetts. 

by Leila Edmonds, Director
National Initiatives and Applied Research
NeighborWorks America

When there is housing instability, the most vulnerable in our society suffer. We recently shed a light on this issue at our symposium on senior housing in Atlanta, and now a recent study has again confirmed what we’ve always known: unstable housing has a significant, negative impact on the health and development of young children.

The study was published by the American Journal of Public Health, and it found that when children are moved multiple times a year or live in households where there is overcrowding, they have a greater risk for poor health (18 percent) than children living in secure households (11 percent). In addition, 22 percent of caregivers in households reporting multiple moves within a single year reported developmental problems in their children, whereas only 14 percent of caregivers in secure households reported similar risks.

These problems are compounded when families are poor and there’s not always food on the table. We’ve all seen the headlines on the growth in poverty in America. The U.S. Census Bureau reported that in 2010, 25.3 percent of children under the age of six lived in poverty in the U.S. When housing insecurity is combined with food insecurity, the risk for poor health, developmental delays and hospitalization are even greater.

This is why the work we do at NeighborWorks America and across the network of 235 organizations is so very important: the health and development of our children depend on it. In 2007 NeighborWorks America released about a report on the benefits of homeownership. We found that children of homeowners are 25 percent more likely to graduate high school, 116 percent more likely to attend college and teenage pregnancy is 20 percent less likely.

Consistent housing also produces higher reading and math scores and lower rates of becoming involved in the juvenile justice system.

NeighborWorks encourages families and individuals searching for safe, affordable and stable housing to find a local housing counseling agency in their area. Providing affordable housing is the first step towards fighting the rise in poverty and homelessness in children. http://www.nw.org/network/nwdata/homeownershipcenter.asp.