Organizations

The Living Cities Integration Initiative will be awarding a combined $80 million in grants, loans, and program-related investments to Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, the Twin Cities, and Newark, N.J., all of which are urban regions that are exploring new ways to coordinate improved access to education, housing, health care, transit and jobs for their residents.

Investors for Sustainable Communities, a Living Cities-sponsored working group of major philanthropic and financial institutions, announced in October an effort to coordinate up to $150 million in investments “to build stronger communities grounded in more resilient, regional economies that provide opportunity to all residents and that firmly embrace environmental stewardship.” The group includes national philanthropies such as the Ford, Surdna, and Rockefeller foundations, regional funders such as the McKnight Foundation, and financial institutions such as Citi and Morgan Stanley.

The nonprofit lender Boston Community Capital has received $5.5 million to expand its Stabilizing Urban Neighborhoods initiative. SUN funds the purchase of foreclosed homes with homeowners who have not yet been evicted at discounted prices; they are then sold back to the original homeowners. The award includes a $5 million low-cost loan and a $500,000 grant from the Wachovia Wells Fargo Foundation and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) has been awarded $5 million from the Treasury Department’s first-ever Capital Magnet Fund Awards, a new $80 million program focused on creative financing tools for affordable housing and community facilities and administered by the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. LISC was one of 23 CMF awardees. It will use the $5 million to leverage private debt and launch the LISC Neighborhood Revitalization Loan Fund, which is expected to finance at least $100 million in affordable rental housing in communities with high housing needs, as well as related economic development and community facilities. Some of the other award winners are Low Income Investment Fund in California, Habitat for Humanity International, Massachusetts Housing Partnership, Enterprise Corporation of the Delta, New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, and The Reinvestment Fund in Pennsylvania. For more about these and the rest of the awardees, see www.nhi.org/go/award.

State Farm Insurance and Enterprise Community Loan Fund announced in November a $10 million dollar fund to finance the creation and preservation of affordable housing and community facilities, including charter school and health care facilities in targeted urban areas. The State Farm Neighborhood Partners Fund, administered by Enterprise, is a 10-year revolving loan facility that will assist nonprofit and mission-aligned developers.

People

Kevin Boes has been named president and CEO of the LISC New Markets Support Corporation, the New Markets Tax Credit investment arm of LISC, which is managed by the National Equity Fund. Boes, who assumes the post on January 1, takes over the position from acting CEO Joe Hagan, NEF’s president. In a related move, NEF has named Alex Denja as its new CFO, also effective January 1. Denja currently serves as NEF vice president and assistant CFO.

Andrew J. Mooney, former executive director of LISC’s Chicago office, was named interim head of Chicago’s new Department of Housing and Economic Development, which was formed through the consolidation of the city’s departments of community development and zoning and land use planning. Mooney is also the managing director of the National Institute for Comprehensive Community Development.

Paul Williams, senior vice president at LISC, has been appointed deputy mayor of St. Paul, Minn., by Mayor Chris Coleman. A native of St. Paul, Williams has led efforts to revitalize the Twin Cities’ neighborhoods at LISC and in other organizations.

Alyssa Katz, the author and journalist and former City Limits editor whose book Our Lot: How Real Estate Came to Own Us offered a look at the confluence of politics and money that caused the housing bubble and subsequent crisis, has been appointed as New York City’s Hunter College’s Jack Newfield Professor this spring. She will offer a journalism course titled “Who Owns Public Housing?” that will “employ first-person interviews, intensive document research, and an extensive use of old-fashioned shoe leather to take stock of the public housing system as it weathers the severest challenges it has ever faced.”

In October, Enterprise Community Partners, Inc., announced Andrew Geer as director of relationship management for its Chicago office. Since 1996, Geer has served as executive director of Heartland Housing, Inc., a Chicago-based affordable housing organization.