Jeanne Cola, Senior Executive Director, LISC Rhode Island

In a sharp editorial for the Boston Globe, LISC Rhode Island senior executive director Jeanne Cola celebrates a $120M housing bond that will go before voters this fall, but warns that the figure is not nearly enough to close the state’s enormous affordability gap. Citing a range of creative solutions, Cola argues that only an all-hands-on-deck approach, with corporate citizens, non-profits and all levels of government collaborating, can make good housing for all a reality.

State Farm has committed a new $2 million, one-year grant to support affordable housing, small business, income and wealth building, and healthy food access. With the new grant, State Farm’s support for LISC now totals $155 million since 2000! We celebrate this renewed commitment by reflecting on our impact together over more than two decades.

A $2.1 million predevelopment loan from LISC helped Gragg Cardona Partners build The Residences at Kenilworth Park, an affordable housing complex adjacent to a wetlands preserve in Northeast D.C. offering supportive services for Medicaid-eligible and other qualified elderly residents 60 and older. The development meets high-quality accessibility standards and provides on-site certified nurses and aides, access to nature, community and nutritious food, among many other keys to well-being.

In this economy, it takes creativity, collaboration, and patience to make affordable homeownership a reality. Those are precisely the qualities driving Core City, a LISC Toledo program that acquires, renovates, and sells vacant and blighted properties for homeownership. Learn how we’ve teamed up with Owens Corning to bring homeownership within reach for more Toledo residents.

In a wide-ranging interview with Denver Fredericks, host of the Business of Giving podcast, LISC CEO Michael T. Pugh describes the pillars of LISC's work investing in communities and what's on the horizon for the CDFI under his leadership. "[We] can be a real catalyst for economic development in communities," says Pugh. "And frankly the best is yet to come."

By Jacqueline Waggoner, Enterprise Community Partners and Tahirih Ziegler, LISC

California’s recently formed Foreclosure Intervention Housing Preservation Program (FIHPP) is poised to fund nonprofit housing groups to buy rental properties in or at risk of foreclosure and quickly convert them to long-term affordable housing. Now, FIHPP is hanging in the legislative balance. LISC’s Tahirih Zigler and Enterprise Community Partners’ Jacqueline Waggoner weigh in on the imperative of safeguarding the program to help spare many Californians from the preventable tragedies of displacement and homelessness.