Location: Nationwide
Website: stablecommunities.org/ncst
The U.S. housing market remains extremely uneven. While some areas have rebounded significantly from the recession and have a robust housing market, others – especially communities of color, lower-income areas, and cities where economic activity remains depressed – continue to grapple with high rates of vacant, abandoned and distressed properties that weaken nearby home values, create health and safety risks, lower local tax revenues, and thwart neighborhood revitalization efforts.
The National Community Stabilization Trust (NCST) is a non-profit organization that works to restore vacant and abandoned properties to productive use and protect neighborhoods from blight. Our programs facilitate the rehabilitation of vacant but structurally sound homes, enable safe, targeted demolition when necessary, and support creative and
productive re-use of vacant land.
Established in 2008 by the sponsors listed to the left, NCST offers a unique blend of policy expertise and on-the-ground experience working with local partners to eliminate the blight caused by vacant and foreclosed properties and severely delinquent mortgages in distressed communities.
NCST supports neighborhoods and fights blight through these key activities:
Provide community-based buyers an opportunity to acquire vacant, abandoned and distressed properties as part of a neighborhood revitalization strategy. Our First Look REO acquisition program gives local affordable housing and community development organizations the opportunity to obtain properties in their market areas before they are marketed more broadly. In many cases, REO properties can be acquired at discounts that help make it financially feasible for nonprofit buyers to rehabilitate these properties for new occupants.
Partner with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in their Neighborhood Stabilization Initiative.
This partnership offers Fannie and Freddie REO properties to local affordable housing and community development organizations through a special First Look program in 18 strategic markets around the country, mostly east of the Mississippi river.
In collaboration with the Housing Partnership Network (HPN), NCST manages a portfolio of highly distressed mortgages to resolve delinquencies, assist homeowners, and prepare vacant properties for productive disposition. Financial institutions donate these mortgages to NCST and HPN to assist with asset resolution.
Along with many national and local partners, including our six sponsors, we research solutions and advocate for policies to help communities address blight and high rates of vacant, abandoned, and distressed properties.
Offer financing to support local housing work.
Our REO Capital Fund aggregates capital from philanthropic and social investment sources to provide flexible financing for local organizations to acquire and rehabilitate single family homes.
Showing posts with label Blight. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Blight. Show all posts
Monday, December 12, 2016
Monday, October 12, 2015
Blights out
Location: New Orleans, LA
Website: blightsout.org
Blights Out is a collaborative and creative initiative to unite residents, artists, architects, and organizers in the design of a new, inclusive model for development. Our experiential method of “performing architecture” guides us through the purchase, design, and restoration of a blighted structure into a cultural resource center that will seed creative action around issues of blight, disinvestment, and housing. Blights Out will partner with a local Community Land Trust as the cultural organizing arm of the permanently affordable housing movement to share the tools and inspiration for New Orleans residents to build the destinies of their own neighborhoods.
Our objectives are:
- To purchase and restore a blighted property in the Lower Mid-City/ Tremé neighborhood transforming it into functional “social sculpture”: a multipurpose community cultural resource center and socio- economic asset, which will serve at the “mothership” hub of Blights Out’s creative output.
- To align New Orleans’ traditional modes of cultural organizing with today’s most pressing concerns. We believe that the Social Aid nd Pleasure Club is a strong model that can be employed in new terrain. As such, we are using art tofacilitate civic engagement with blight, disinvestment, and housing through programming that draws on New Orleans’traditions of performance, storytelling, and community organizing.
- To partner with a local Community Land Trust (CLT)to organize educational materials and programming on alternative development models, including the CLT.
- To record, visualize, and amplify the history of the neighborhood.
- To document our process and present it as a replicable model for action through the publication of a toolkit that will consolidate scattered resources on housing, lending, and blight remediation in New Orleans, thus serving an unmet need identified at the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center 2015 Annual Fit for King Conference.
Blights Out produces public art inspired by neighborhood stories, architecture, and history, culled from the multi-disciplinary research and critical interactive strategies that we employ.
Blights Out is a collaborative process, involving residents, artists, architects, and organizers, at all stages of conception and implementation.
Our institutional partners include: the National Organization of Minority Architects; Press Street; Newcomb Art Museum at Tulane University; Junebug Productions; New Orleans Master Crafts Guild; Prospect New Orleans; Loyola Law School Human Rights Clinic; Creative Capital; Justice and Beyond Coalition and The St. Roch Community Church. Economic models and development schemes have been perfected by maximizing profit at the expense of people.” “The American Dream is an individual vision incompatible with collective needs.” “Artists will always hasten gentrification.” We intend to deconstruct these truisms and prove them false through the design of an actionable model for community-powered neighborhood development.
Website: blightsout.org
Blights Out is a collaborative and creative initiative to unite residents, artists, architects, and organizers in the design of a new, inclusive model for development. Our experiential method of “performing architecture” guides us through the purchase, design, and restoration of a blighted structure into a cultural resource center that will seed creative action around issues of blight, disinvestment, and housing. Blights Out will partner with a local Community Land Trust as the cultural organizing arm of the permanently affordable housing movement to share the tools and inspiration for New Orleans residents to build the destinies of their own neighborhoods.
Our objectives are:
- To purchase and restore a blighted property in the Lower Mid-City/ Tremé neighborhood transforming it into functional “social sculpture”: a multipurpose community cultural resource center and socio- economic asset, which will serve at the “mothership” hub of Blights Out’s creative output.
- To align New Orleans’ traditional modes of cultural organizing with today’s most pressing concerns. We believe that the Social Aid nd Pleasure Club is a strong model that can be employed in new terrain. As such, we are using art tofacilitate civic engagement with blight, disinvestment, and housing through programming that draws on New Orleans’traditions of performance, storytelling, and community organizing.
- To partner with a local Community Land Trust (CLT)to organize educational materials and programming on alternative development models, including the CLT.
- To record, visualize, and amplify the history of the neighborhood.
- To document our process and present it as a replicable model for action through the publication of a toolkit that will consolidate scattered resources on housing, lending, and blight remediation in New Orleans, thus serving an unmet need identified at the Greater New Orleans Fair Housing Action Center 2015 Annual Fit for King Conference.
Blights Out produces public art inspired by neighborhood stories, architecture, and history, culled from the multi-disciplinary research and critical interactive strategies that we employ.
Blights Out is a collaborative process, involving residents, artists, architects, and organizers, at all stages of conception and implementation.
Our institutional partners include: the National Organization of Minority Architects; Press Street; Newcomb Art Museum at Tulane University; Junebug Productions; New Orleans Master Crafts Guild; Prospect New Orleans; Loyola Law School Human Rights Clinic; Creative Capital; Justice and Beyond Coalition and The St. Roch Community Church. Economic models and development schemes have been perfected by maximizing profit at the expense of people.” “The American Dream is an individual vision incompatible with collective needs.” “Artists will always hasten gentrification.” We intend to deconstruct these truisms and prove them false through the design of an actionable model for community-powered neighborhood development.
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Center for Community Progress
Location: Nationwide
Website: www.communityprogress.net
Founded in 2010, the Center for Community Progress is the only national 501(c)3 nonprofit organization solely dedicated to building a future in which entrenched, systemic blight no longer exists in American communities. The mission of Community Progress is to ensure that communities have the vision, knowledge, and systems to transform blighted, vacant, and other problem properties into assets supporting neighborhood vitality.
As a national leader on solutions for blight and vacancy, Community Progress serves as the leading resource for local, state and federal policies and best practices that address the full cycle of property revitalization, from blight prevention, through the acquisition and maintenance of problem properties, to their productive reuse.
Community Progress provides technical assistance to communities nationwide, hosts the national Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference, and offers numerous other resources and services to help communities transform blighted properties into community assets.
Major support for Community Progress is generously provided by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
Website: www.communityprogress.net
Founded in 2010, the Center for Community Progress is the only national 501(c)3 nonprofit organization solely dedicated to building a future in which entrenched, systemic blight no longer exists in American communities. The mission of Community Progress is to ensure that communities have the vision, knowledge, and systems to transform blighted, vacant, and other problem properties into assets supporting neighborhood vitality.
As a national leader on solutions for blight and vacancy, Community Progress serves as the leading resource for local, state and federal policies and best practices that address the full cycle of property revitalization, from blight prevention, through the acquisition and maintenance of problem properties, to their productive reuse.
Community Progress provides technical assistance to communities nationwide, hosts the national Reclaiming Vacant Properties Conference, and offers numerous other resources and services to help communities transform blighted properties into community assets.
Major support for Community Progress is generously provided by the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and the Ford Foundation.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Positively Paseo
Location: Oklahoma City, OK
Website:
www.positivelypaseo.org
Positively Paseo is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit community housing development organization, or CHDO, working to revitalize the Paseo Historic District and Classen Ten Penn neighborhoods in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Our mission is to increase homeownership by providing families and individuals with low-to-moderate income levels the opportunity to purchase a rehabilitated, restored, or newly constructed home that is affordable and of good quality.
Like other inner-city Oklahoma City neighborhoods, Paseo and Classen Ten Penn suffered in the 1970′s and 80′s when development began in the suburbs and drew families away from the center of the city.
This suburban flight led to urban blight – leaving behind large swaths of vacant, boarded up blocks. Homes deteriorated and crime moved in. The economic recession of the 1980′s led to further deterioration with the end result being a nearly abandoned inner city.
With some of the homes dating back to the Land Run of 1889 and neighborhoods designed by G.A. Nichols in the early 1900′s, it is important to save these historic buildings and make these neighborhoods safe again for families.
So began the work of Positively Paseo…
In the mid 1980′s residents of Paseo and surrounding historic neighborhoods joined forces with area church officials, non-profit community associations, local bankers, and commercial property owners to set in place a plan to revitalize the Paseo neighborhood.
Backed by an endorsement from a study by the Urban Land Institute in Washington D.C., Positively Paseo was formed to lead the way in housing rehabilitation. With a focus on owner-occupancy, staff and volunteers began to renovate deteriorated single-family homes and build new homes on long vacant lots. Initial funding sources included bank loans and federal grants administered by the City of Oklahoma City.
This work began more than 20 years ago and because of patience and perseverance, the Paseo Historic District (as it is now known) has undergone a renaissance. Property values have stabilized, criminal activity has all but vanished, and a strong neighborhood association continues to unite neighbors.
It is because of this success that Positively Paseo has joined forces with Classen Ten Penn residents in order to model the work that has been done in Paseo in another deteriorated inner-city Oklahoma City neighborhood.
The Classen Ten Penn neighborhood has a long history and, by some accounts, served as a home for at least one famous writer – Ralph Ellison. Today, the neighborhood boasts another famous resident, Wayne Coyne, of the band The Flaming Lips, and his wife and photographer, Michelle Martin-Coyne. A thriving commercial and arts district – The Plaza District – serves as the heart of the neighborhood.
All locally-owned, the district is home to four restaurants, a winery, a beauty salon, art galleries, a dance studio, an interior design studio, a floral designer, a tattoo parlor, retro and vintage shops, and The Lyric Theatre, Oklahoma’s only professional year-round musical theatre company. On the second Friday of each month, LIVE on the Plaza hosts a family-friendly event.
Classen Ten Penn is undoubtedly an ethnically and economically diverse hub of Oklahoma City and certainly a neighborhood to watch – maybe even a place to call your next home…
Website:
www.positivelypaseo.org
Positively Paseo is a 501 (c) (3) non-profit community housing development organization, or CHDO, working to revitalize the Paseo Historic District and Classen Ten Penn neighborhoods in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Our mission is to increase homeownership by providing families and individuals with low-to-moderate income levels the opportunity to purchase a rehabilitated, restored, or newly constructed home that is affordable and of good quality.
Like other inner-city Oklahoma City neighborhoods, Paseo and Classen Ten Penn suffered in the 1970′s and 80′s when development began in the suburbs and drew families away from the center of the city.
This suburban flight led to urban blight – leaving behind large swaths of vacant, boarded up blocks. Homes deteriorated and crime moved in. The economic recession of the 1980′s led to further deterioration with the end result being a nearly abandoned inner city.
With some of the homes dating back to the Land Run of 1889 and neighborhoods designed by G.A. Nichols in the early 1900′s, it is important to save these historic buildings and make these neighborhoods safe again for families.
So began the work of Positively Paseo…
In the mid 1980′s residents of Paseo and surrounding historic neighborhoods joined forces with area church officials, non-profit community associations, local bankers, and commercial property owners to set in place a plan to revitalize the Paseo neighborhood.
Backed by an endorsement from a study by the Urban Land Institute in Washington D.C., Positively Paseo was formed to lead the way in housing rehabilitation. With a focus on owner-occupancy, staff and volunteers began to renovate deteriorated single-family homes and build new homes on long vacant lots. Initial funding sources included bank loans and federal grants administered by the City of Oklahoma City.
This work began more than 20 years ago and because of patience and perseverance, the Paseo Historic District (as it is now known) has undergone a renaissance. Property values have stabilized, criminal activity has all but vanished, and a strong neighborhood association continues to unite neighbors.
It is because of this success that Positively Paseo has joined forces with Classen Ten Penn residents in order to model the work that has been done in Paseo in another deteriorated inner-city Oklahoma City neighborhood.
The Classen Ten Penn neighborhood has a long history and, by some accounts, served as a home for at least one famous writer – Ralph Ellison. Today, the neighborhood boasts another famous resident, Wayne Coyne, of the band The Flaming Lips, and his wife and photographer, Michelle Martin-Coyne. A thriving commercial and arts district – The Plaza District – serves as the heart of the neighborhood.
All locally-owned, the district is home to four restaurants, a winery, a beauty salon, art galleries, a dance studio, an interior design studio, a floral designer, a tattoo parlor, retro and vintage shops, and The Lyric Theatre, Oklahoma’s only professional year-round musical theatre company. On the second Friday of each month, LIVE on the Plaza hosts a family-friendly event.
Classen Ten Penn is undoubtedly an ethnically and economically diverse hub of Oklahoma City and certainly a neighborhood to watch – maybe even a place to call your next home…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)