Industry News

By Shelterforce

Organizations

JP Morgan Chase Bank NA is giving a team of students from Washington University in St. Louis and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology seed money to embark on a $2.1-million renovation of the Franz Building, a turn-of-the-century storefront in New Orleans’ Orthea Castle Haley corridor. The money is being awarded as the first-ever community development competition in New Orleans. The building will house and support the activities of the Good Work Network, a nonprofit incubator. The restoration of the building fulfills the goal of the Unified New Orleans Plan to establish a mixed-use arts and cultural corridor, one of four Main Street Projects. Second place went to the Volunteers of America of Greater New Orleans’ Renaissance Neighborhood Development Corp. for a project by the Milano New School for Management and Urban Policy outlining a mixed-income, mixed-use, LEED-certified development in the Lower Garden District. Third place went to Tulane University students for a plan to build senior housing in the Gentilly Woods-Pontchartain Park area. Fourth place went to the Pontilly Disaster Collaborative.

The Assets for Independence (AFI) program has awarded more than $4 million in grants to 16 organizations helping low-income families build wealth and achieve financial independence through Individual Development Accounts (IDAs). Each dollar deposited into an IDA is matched between $1 and $8 by AFI. The grantees are the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority; the Iowa Credit Union Foundation; Penquis Community Action Program; the Residential Care Consortium; Citizens for Citizens, Inc.; Beyond Housing; Montana Credit Unions for Community Development; New Mexico Association of Community Action Agencies; Community and Shelter Assistance Corporation; Lake MicroBusiness; United Way of Lancaster Cowunty; Northeast South Dakota Community Action Program; Church Koinonia Federal Credit Union; Foundation Communities; Community Action Program, Inc. of Taylor County; and the Central Vermont Community Action Council, Inc.

The University at Buffalo East Side Neighborhood Transformation Partnership (ESNTP), a 2-year-old, university-assisted approach to the regeneration of Buffalo’s Fruit Belt and Martin Luther King Jr., Park communities, has received the 2008 Outstanding Program Award from the international Community Development Society. Members of the winning team—all from the Center for Urban Studies in the Department of Urban and Regional Planning in the School of Architecture and Planning—are Henry L. Taylor, center director and professor; Robert Silverman, associate professor; Kelly Patterson, assistant professor; Jacqueline Hall, ESNTP project administrative officer; Jeff Kujawa, assistant director; and Frida Ferrer, program coordinator.

In May, NeighborWorks America unveiled a partnership with the Federal Reserve aimed at assisting local communities across the country in assessing area housing conditions. The agreement will help local governments and nonprofit organizations evaluate strategies and -tailor responses to the rise in foreclosures and real-estate owned properties (REO).

People

Enterprise Community Partners has launched the Bart Harvey Enterprise Fellowship, a two-year program providing awardees with an opportunity to explore commu-nity development. The fellowship is named after Bart Harvey, the Enterprise chairman and executive who retired in March after a 23-year tenure. The selected candidate will work on projects under Doris W. Koo, president and CEO of Enterprise Community Partners, as well as board chairs and other senior management staff.

Actor, director, producer, and Enterprise Community Partners board trustee Edward Norton testified in May before the U.S. House of Representatives Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming. Norton called on Congress to make a national commitment to bring home the benefits of green building practices to low-income families, as a part of comprehensive efforts to fight global warming. His testimony was based on the results of the Enterprise Green Communities initiative, the nation’s largest effort to create green affordable homes, with more than $570 million invested to support 250 developments with more than 11,000 green affordable units complete or underway.

James Upchurch, president and CEO of the Interfaith Housing Alliance, has announced his retirement after 15 years of working to provide affordable housing for needy families and senior citizens in and around Frederick County, Md. During Upchurch’s tenure, Interfaith Housing has produced more than 1,000 affordable houses in Pennsylvania and Maryland.

Matthew O. Franklin has been named president of Mid-Peninsula Housing Coalition, a nonprofit affordable- housing developer in Northern California. Franklin served as executive director of the San Francisco Mayor’s Office of Housing since 2004. He previously was director of California’s Department of Housing and Community Development. He succeeds Fran Wagstaff, who retires July 1.

Published by the National Housing Institute