Youth Savings Builds Good Habits and Good Citizens

By Rebekkah Barger, NeighborWorks Umpqua
IDA program manager

The financial future of our children is determined, in part, by how much they know about money. NeighborWorks Umpqua offers classes that teach money management skills and financial wellness to our young people between 10 to 17; we call it the “Youth 3As.”  The class introduces financial management concepts at a kid’s level while allowing participants to earn matching dollars towards their own asset purchase. Those asset purchases can be anything athletic, artistic, or academic in nature, hence the name “3As.”Over the years we have worked with many young people, and I would like to believe that our classes have a long lasting effect. To be perfectly honest, though, it’s not that often that we hear back from the kids after they have made their purchase — that is, until I met Morgan and her sister, Quinn.

Morgan and Quinn contacted our office almost two years ago and wanted to save for dance lessons.  They had been very good savers, and by the end of the classes had reached their goal of saving $300 each. This qualified them for our 2:1 match of an additional $600 each — an impressive $1,800 for the two at the end of the program and enough to pay around 50% of their annual dance lesson costs ($1,500-2000 for each girl each year).

I didn’t hear about Morgan and Quinn again until a month ago when Morgan contacted me.  She explained that she was participating in the Miss Outstanding Teen pageant and had chosen financial education and goal setting as her platform. Her goal, she explained, was to teach the concept of goal setting and saving to little kids.  She had made arrangements with the local Boys and Girls Club and had even begun writing grants for some start up money.  She was off and rolling! 

I asked Morgan what inspired her to do this, and she explained that setting goals and then saving for them feels good. For six years, Morgan and her sister had been babysitting, dogwalking, selling doughnuts, doing chores for neighbors and many other fundraising activities to pay for their own dance classes and school trips. Cumulatively, she and her sister had raised thousands of dollars. 

Morgan liked being able to have the things that mattered to her, without needing her parents to pay for it. She thought others should learn to do the same and she is even writing a book about saving.  Morgan is a great example of how our programs create good savers, and good citizens.  

For information about Morgan, or other programs offered by NeighborWorks Umpqua, email Rebekah Barger at rbarger@nwumpqua.org  or visit our website at www.nwumpqua.org

Twin Cities CDC Remakes and Markets Elm Street Area Neighborhood

By Ascala Sisk, Senior Manager
Neighborhood Stabilization
NeighborWorks America

Reposted from StableCommunities.org

Rebuilding and rebranding long struggling neighborhoods isn’t an instantaneous process. As our Stable Communities’ Neighborhood Marketing Program participants know, the work of redeveloping and marketing a neighborhood’s image –and making the substantive improvements that that image shift is built upon—takes time and dedication. This past week, I was excited to join Twin Cities Community Development Corporation, a NeighborWorks network organization, to celebrate another step towards success in these efforts.

On Tuesday, April 9th, I joined the Twin Cities CDC and local and national elected officials at a ribbon cutting in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, where a formerly blighted property has been turned into family-friendly housing. The event celebrated more than the rehabilitation of the seven-unit building, it highlighted the work that Twin Cities CDC has put into the slowly transforming the Elm Street Area Neighborhood, the focus of their neighborhood marketing efforts.

At the event, Congresswoman Niki Tsongas noted the catalytic effect these efforts have on their surrounding neighborhoods, saying, "Strong and healthy communities are built around high-quality and affordable housing…In Fitchburg and across the Commonwealth [of Massachusetts], strong public-private partnerships are helping to provide means and mechanisms for revitalizing our cities and towns.”

It is investments like those being made in Fitchburg that are adding strength to local real estate markets and bolstering community pride. I congratulate Executive Director Mark Dohan and the Twin Cities team for their hard work and terrific achievements and look forward to seeing how Twin Cities’ continued, targeted approach to revitalization transforms Elm Street and all of Fitchburg in the months and years ahead.

Read more about the event here.

Read more about NeighborWorks’ Neighborhood Marketing Program here.

Additional Funding for Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling Program

By Jeanne Fekade-Sellassie
director, NeighborWorks America National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling Program

Today, NeighborWorks America announced that $70.1 million has been awarded to 30 state housing finance agencies (HFAs), 17 HUD-approved housing counseling intermediaries, and 72 community-based NeighborWorks organizations to provide counseling to families and individuals facing the threat of foreclosure.  Just one month after the seventh round of National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling (NFMC) Program funds were appropriated, communities across our country will be able to put the funds to immediate use.

At a time when foreclosures continue to affect communities around the country and unemployment rates remain high, the need for the NFMC funding is critical.  Demand for these funds far exceeded the amount of funding available; eligible applicants requested over $105 million in NFMC grant funds.



In total, more than 1,200 nonprofit counseling agencies and local NeighborWorks organizations across the country are expected to be engaged in the NFMC Program as a result of these awards.  These organizations provide invaluable, free assistance to families at risk of losing their homes, determine client eligibility for the Making Home Affordable programs, help clients understand the complex foreclosure process, and identify possible courses of action so their clients can make informed decisions and take action.

To date, more than 1,560,000 families in all 50 states, Puerto Rico and Guam have received foreclosure counseling through the NFMC Program.  It is estimated that 193,000 families facing the threat of foreclosure will be directly assisted with this seventh round of funding.

In addition to the grant funding, the NFMC appropriations provide funding to train foreclosure counselors and to administer the program.  With these funds, NeighborWorks has conducted over 156 local, regional, and national trainings and has provided over 12,100 training scholarships and over 23,000 course completion certificates to individuals attending these trainings.  Nearly 5,800 participants have completed one or more of the three foreclosure e-learning courses developed with NFMC funds: Foreclosure Basics, Understanding and Applying Loss-Mitigation Tools, and Using Effective Practices to Improve your Foreclosure Counseling Program.  NeighborWorks expects to train 2,000 counselors with the seventh round of NFMC funding.

Learn more at http://nw.org/network/foreclosure/nfmcp/round7.asp 

How Tax Prep Sites Help Recruit New Clients

By Darren Hamm,
deputy director, NHSGC

The yearly obligation to file taxes is often a rare opportunity for people to really reflect on their finances and to connect with community organizations that can help them year-round. This can help save them money and help nonprofits reach new clients.

Last year Neighborhood Housing Services of Greater Cleveland (NHSGC) started a financial capability program and this tax season marks the second year of our first Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program, which helps Cleveland residents of lower incomes receive free help filing their taxes. We chose to run this VITA site because, if you’re talking about asset building, there’s really nothing more direct than saving someone $450 in tax prep and having their refund— often 50% of their annual income—invested in the local environment (utilities, groceries, car repair, tuition) or helping that person pay down debt.

So far this season, NHSGC has assisted in returning more than $750,000 in income tax returns to more than 400 people throughout northeast Ohio, further saving these taxpayers more than $160,000 in filing fees.  This is great for the residents and it’s also an important way for NHSGC to reach new clients.

We identify potential clients by having VITA site tax filers complete surveys on how they will use their refund, their biggest challenges financially and other such questions that can assess their financial capability. We then connect tax filers to services that can address those needs. Sometimes the services are ones we provide and other times we connect tax filers to our local partners. Our hope is that those who haven’t worked with us yet will remember we are here if need arises.

Volunteers from Charter One Bank and Darren Hamm, NHSGC

This approach has already paid off for us and for our new clients. In the past few months we’ve assisted tax filers with foreclosure, helped them register and take homeownership courses, and apply for home repair loans. We’ve been able to help these new clients because they share many characteristics with our current clients, such as geographic location. However, as a group, the new clients/tax filers are more likely to rent than own and they generally have more modest incomes, so we keep that in mind when explaining our services.

Overall, we feel it’s been a successful tax season and we hope to maintain relationships with clients in the coming year.  To close out, we’re hosting a Super Saturday event on April 13 in partnership with Charter One Bank. Tax filers will have their taxes prepared, learn about opportunities to save their tax refund, and be entered into a Cleveland Saves drawing for opening up a savings account on site.

Mountain Housing Opportunities: Building Homes as a Community

This blog is part of our 35th Anniversary Celebration series, highlighting NeighborWorks member organizations which are celebrating milestone years marking either their membership in the network or their incorporation as an organization.

By Brittany Hutson, NeighborWorks
America Public Relations fellow

Twenty-five years ago, a group of 10 volunteers completed seven home repairs in seven months for seniors in the Asheville area. These repairs included roof and porch repairs, replacing furnaces, correcting electrical hazards, and water and sewer problems. Out of this effort was born Mountain Housing Opportunities, a community development corporation based in Asheville, North Carolina, that builds and improves homes, neighborhoods, and communities for people of Asheville and Buncombe County. Several of those volunteers served on the original board of directors of Mountain Housing, including Executive Director Scott Dedman. Today, the organization completes 150 emergency home repairs each year for families with children and elderly and disabled homeowners.

In the early 1990s, Mountain Housing moved into developing single family homes and affordable/workforce apartments, and later townhomes and condominiums for first-time homebuyers.  Since the financial crisis, Mountain Housing has temporarily stopped producing multifamily homes for homeownership.

Self Help Homeownership families work together to frame a house

“We are building single family homes and have expanded our production of apartments since the rental market continues to expand dramatically,” says Dedman. As part of the organization’s single family home development effort, Mountain Housing worked with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Rural Development office to start a Self-Help Homeownership program, where families spend approximately 20 hours per week building their own homes for about eight months. “We build six homes per years with families through that program,” explains Dedman. Production for apartments averages about 60 per year. To date, 535 apartments have been completed.

Two members of the six Self Help HomeOwnership
families measure wood to cut for their home

Mountain Housing became a NeighborWorks charter member five years ago, and since then, Dedman says the organization has dramatically grown in production and services. For example, after becoming a member, Mountain Housing began a down payment assistance program that provides an average of 25 to 30 homebuyers per year with loans for as much as $15,000 per home.

Since Mountain Housing earned a LEED Gold certification for a building completed in 2010, they have been incorporating even more green features into their developments. Dedman is also proud that Mountain Housing has helped more than 4,500 families and individuals. “We’ve saved people’s homes and lives through emergency repair,” he says. “We’re providing families with children and elderly and disabled folks a safe and attractive apartment in good neighborhoods. We’ve helped families move up in their quality of life.” 

Learn more about Mountain Housing Opportunities at http://www.mtnhousing.org