Issue #130, July/August 2003

Industry News

People

 The Fannie Mae Foundation announces its annual James A. Johnson Community Fellows. Recipients for 2003 are Mike Anderson, East Side Neighborhood Development, Inc., St. Paul, MN; Clanton Beamon, Delta Housing Development, Indianola, MS; Jerry Brant, Northern Cambria Community Development Corp., Northern Cambria, PA; Aaron Gornstein, Citizens’ Housing and Planning Association, Boston; Brad Lander, Fifth Avenue Committee, Brooklyn, NY; and Joan Ling, Community Corporation of Santa Monica in California.

Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development (PICCED) announced James A. Johnson Community Fellow Brad Lander as its new executive director. Lander was Fifth Avenue Committee’s executive director for ten years, working to advance social and economic justice in South Brooklyn through an innovative mix of community development services and organizing. He follows Ron Shiffman, who will retire from PICCED this year.

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation has appointed Herman Brewer as director of its Chicago Working Group. In this newly created position, Brewer is responsible for coordinating and integrating grantmaking strategies in the Foundation’s Program on Human and Community Development. Brewer came from the Center for New Horizons, where he served as the chief operations officer.

G. Allan Kingston was named the new chairman of the National Housing Conference (NHC), the public policy and housing advocacy organization. Prior to becoming chairman, Kingston served as first vice president of NHC and is currently on the boards of the National Association of Affordable Housing Lenders, the National Housing Development Corporation, the Center for Housing Policy, Shelter Partnership of Los Angeles and Housing California. He is also chairman of the California Housing Consortium.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture presented Art Collings with an award recognizing his commitment to improving rural housing for the lowest-income Americans. Collings is currently the senior housing specialist at the Housing Assistance Council (HAC). He has been with HAC for over 25 years and before that served more than 30 years at the USDA’s Farmers Home Administration.
Organizations & Initiatives

CitiFinancial and the National Training and Information Center (NTIC) have embarked on a joint venture intended to meet the lending needs of communities and promote stable home ownership. By doing so, the two will set industry-leading standards for sensible lending. The organizations will review the progress of CitiFinancial’s Real Estate Lending Initiatives and work to promote the acceptance of comparable practices by other lenders. They will continue to focus on a multi-stage foreclosure review process, develop and promote affordable mortgage product solutions for customers and implement a review/repair process for loans submitted by borrowers from NTIC-served cities. www.ntic-us.org.

The Center for Young Women’s Development (CYWD) is a grassroots organization that promotes economic self-sufficiency, community safety and youth advocacy. Lateefah Simon, the executive director of CYWD, is a recipient of the Ford Foundation’s Leadership for a Changing World Award. Simon and her team have developed one of the nation’s first peer-run education, employment and community reintegration programs for post-adjudicated and incarcerated girls. CYWD is currently developing an action campaign to protect the civil rights of lesbian, bisexual and transgendered youth detainees. In October, Simon will be honored by ESSENCE magazine as one of 50 black women who are going to change the world. www.cywd.org.

The Annie E. Casey Foundation, in conjunction with Johns Hopkins Medical Center and East Baltimore Development, Inc., is helping to revitalize a 30-block area of Baltimore’s East Side. The project is estimated to create nearly 12,000 jobs, 1,000 units of new and renovated housing, parks and recreational space, and new and refurnished retail establishments. Though the revitalization effort will force the relocation of 800 families, the Foundation and Hopkins are working to assure that those relocated will not suffer hardships. In addition to supplementing federal relocation allowances, the collaboration will create a resource center that will offer relocating families counseling and advocacy to meet their financial, housing and legal needs. www.aecf.org.

Ohio CDCs achieved a major state policy victory. The state legislature approved a doubling of the real-estate recording fee, which will generate an estimated $90 million over the next two years for the Ohio Housing Trust Fund, one of the three largest in the nation. Funding for Emergency Shelters, Transitional Housing and the CDC Grant Program will move from the state’s general budget and be included in the Housing Trust. www.odod.state.oh.us/cdd/htf.

Enterprise Corporation of the Delta (ECD) has joined forces with a community development credit union to create a hybrid CDFI. ECD formed an alliance with Hope Community Credit Union of Jackson, MS, with 2,500 members and $2.4 million in assets. They are working to establish a branch in New Orleans and to offer services throughout the mid-South. www.ecd.org.

New School University’s Robert J. Milano Graduate School of Management and Urban Policy has designed a new Web site to provide information about building high-performance community-based organizations. Living Cities Milano Management Information Exchange is at www.lcmmix.org. The site offers free management resources, sample documents, online tools, helpful tips, articles and reports. The Milano Graduate School, in New York, specializes in nonprofit management and community development.

 Back to July/August 2003 index.