LISC, Enterprise Community Partners and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have published What's Possible: Investing NOW for Prosperous, Sustainable Neighborhoods. With contributions from LISC green and financing experts, the volume is a timely and crucial guidebook to equitable green investing and community development and especially timely on the heels of the historic $20 billion in federal investment to expand access to clean energy and climate solutions.

By Madeline del Carmen Fraser Cook, Senior Vice President, Community Building and Resilient Solutions

In her chapter from What’s Possible: Investing NOW for Prosperous, Sustainable Neighborhoods, LISC’s Madeline del Carmen Fraser Cook, who also co-edited the book, explores the imperative of authentic community engagement in the work of supporting historically underinvested places to become more energy efficient and climate resilient. It’s a process that demands insight, bona fide listening and what she describes as “working at the speed of trust.”

Next month, LISC and Enterprise Community Partners will release “What’s Possible: Investing NOW for Prosperous, Sustainable Neighborhoods,” an urgent collection of essays on the intersection of community development and climate resilience.

Amidst record-high rental rates and limited affordable housing opportunities, some New York City residents are finding hope in the Affordable Neighborhood Co-op Program (ANCP). LISC New York helped the nonprofit Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE) secure $9.6 million in construction financing to renovate three downtown Manhattan buildings and convert them to affordable for-sale housing. Following two years of renovation, existing tenants at East 12th Street are  preparing to purchase shares in their future cooperative building.

Delta Diamond Ag stores and handles grains, a critical service for helping farmers bring their crops successfully to market. With a $500,000 loan from LISC’s Black Economic Development Fund, this rare African-American-owned facility is poised to change agriculture in the Delta. In recognition of Black History Month, we’re sharing this conversation with CEO Leigh Allen about how the company can serve area growers and the larger community, the importance of African-American representation in the agricultural supply chain, and his own deep affection for Delta farming.

In recognition of Black History Month, we’d like you to meet four organizations that, through support from LISC and the Black Economic Development Fund, are creating housing, employment and other economic opportunities in the neighborhoods that need them the most.