Industry News

By Shelterforce

Organizations

The Housing Assistance Council (HAC) is providing more than $7.4 million to 36 organizations that are creating homeownership opportunities for low-income families. The funds, largely obtained through the federal Self-Help Homeownership Opportunity Program, will help cover the costs of pre-construction activities such as buying land and extending utility lines. The organizations can spend up to $15,000 per home, and when certain loan requirements are met, as much as 80 percent of the loan converts to a grant. In other news, HAC has partnered with the National Alliance to End Homelessness to launch the Rural Homelessness Capacity Building program, a three-year collaborative that will provide technical assistance, web training, and financial and other resources to community organizations serving the homeless in rural areas.

The Jamaica Plain Neighborhood Development Corporation (JPNDC) is the recipient of $200,000 in unrestricted funds from the Bank of America Charitable Foundation’s Neighborhood Excellence Initiative. JPNDC can use the funds to continue its community-organizing work as well as its support programs for small business owners, which have been hard to fund. JPNDC is also involved with the Coalition to Mobilize, Educate, and Vote and regularly lends support to tenant-organizing and affordable-housing campaigns.

More than 400,000 individuals and families facing foreclosure will benefit from the $130 million recently awarded through NeighborWorks America to more than 130 organizations, ranging from grass-roots Tierra del Sol Housing Corporation in New Mexico to NCRC in Washington, D.C. These funds will not only be used to provide counseling but will also train foreclosure prevention counselors and administer programs.

In addition to this $130 million, another $37.8 million has been set-aside for various initiatives including reaching previously underserved areas. www.nw.org

People

Chantel L. Walker has been appointed vice president of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, a national organization that helps build economically secure communities by promoting community economic-development strategies such as industry-focused workforce development, and individual and community asset-building. Walker has devoted years to the community development field as a grant maker, policy advocate, and program officer for such organizations as the Marguerite Casey Foundation, Marin Community Foundation, and the Haas Fund.

NeighborWorks America named Deborah Visser as senior program manager of its Success Measures project, a participatory evaluation approach designed by community-development practitioners. Previously, Visser served as a consultant to philanthropies and community economic development organizations. She is a member of the National Housing Institute’s board of directors.

Geoffrey Anderson has been appointed president and CEO of Smart Growth America. He succeeds founding executive director Don Chen, who resigned in the fall to become a program officer for the Ford Foundation. Anderson previously served for 13 years with the smart-growth program of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where he made efforts to link environmental protection with quality of life and the growth and development of communities.

Seedco Financial board member Robert Espaillat has joined the organization as executive vice president and COO. Espaillat previously served as CEO of Accion New York, director of operations at Consumer Credit Counseling Service of New York, and most recently as president of New York National Bank, a community bank in the Bronx.

Sandra Abramson has been named vice president for Field Resources and Learning by Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC). Abramson has been a fixture in the community-development field for the past 30 years, most recently holding the position of COO for SFDS Development Corp. in East Harlem. Prior to that, she was a community-development consultant throughout the greater New York and New Jersey area.

Published by the National Housing Institute