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Organizations By Shelterforce

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NeighborWorks America has received a $425,000 grant from Citi Foundation to enhance the professional capabilities of housing counselors. The grant will be used by the NeighborWorks Center for Homeownership Education and Counseling (NCHEC) which provides homeownership counselors with access to quality tools, materials, best practices and uniform standards designed to help low- to moderate-income clients make informed homeownership decisions. NCHEC will use the grant to provide training and certification to more than 400 housing counseling practitioners who will reach as many as 40,000 low- to moderate-income individuals with pre- and post-purchase homeownership education and foreclosure intervention counseling.

The National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development (National CAPACD) has selected the Guam Communications Network, the South Market Action Network, the Asian Economic Development Association, Little Tokyo Service Center, the Council for Native Hawaiian Advancement, and the Asian Pacific American Legal Resource Center as the six lead organizations to participate in their ACTION Technical Assistance program, National CAPACD’s peer-to-peer technical assistance model.

Seedco Financial Services, Inc., the economic and social development financial services organization, and SeedCo President Lesia Bates Moss, won a Stevie Award for Women in Business for “Best Overall Company of the Year” in the Service Business category. Seedco Financial was also a finalist in the “Best Executive” category. The award is an international competition recognizing the accomplishments of outstanding women executives, business owners and the organizations they run.

In October, the Community Development Financial Institutions Fund (CDFI Fund) announced $5 billion in New Markets Tax Credits awards, including $1.5 billion made possible through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, for 99 community development entities (CDEs) around the country. For a complete listing of NMTC allocatees, go to: www.nhi.org/go/nmtc

The Center for Community Change’s 2009 Community Change Champions Awards, an annual recognition honoring “inspiring individuals and organizations making a positive impact in communities across the country,” went to: Patricia Bauman, president of the The Bauman Family Foundation; CASA de Maryland; U.S. Rep. Luis V. Gutierrez (D-Ill.); Joseph Hansen, international president of United Food and Commercial Workers; Dr. Julianne Malveaux, president of Bennett College for Women; and the Virginia Organizing Project. Winners were honored at an awards ceremony in November.

The Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group announced in December that it will make a $61 million investment in the New York Equity Fund, a joint venture between the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), Enterprise Community Investment, Inc. (Enterprise) and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) to support the preservation of more than 500 affordable rental homes for low-income New Yorkers.

People

Jeremy Liu, executive director of the Boston-based Asian Community Development Corporation (ACDC), will step down after over 10 years with the organization. Liu will be returning to his home state of California as the new Executive Director of East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation (EBALDC) in Oakland, Calif.

Paul Weech was named senior vice president for policy in a joint hiring by the Housing Partnership Network and the Stewards for Affordable Housing for the Future. Weech is a housing expert who has worked in housing, community development, and financial services. His joint hiring represents a new partnership for the two organizations, which have pooled their resources to create the position of a Washington-based policy director

Shelterforce remembers Franklyn Hutchins, a community organizer and a staunch defender of tenant rights in Newark, NJ (including a leader in the city’s famed rent strike in the 1970s), who died in November after a battle with cancer. He was 75. A member of the Shelterforce Collective (a network of tenant organizers and community activists living in and around Newark in the mid- to late-70s), Hutchins came to Newark in the 1960s during a time of civil unrest and worked as a tenant and community organizer. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania, Temple, and Rutgers, Hutchins advocated for poor and elderly tenants in Newark, informing them of their legal rights and helping them to stand up to landlords and politicians. “His insights about his work in Newark informed us, helped us in making our choices of issues to write about, and helped us in our analysis,” said Patrick Morrissy, NHI board secretary, and member of the Shelterforce Collective.

Published by the National Housing Institute