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.

Michael T. Pugh, LISC’s president and CEO, touched base with Next City about the path that brought him to LISC, the critical need for affordable housing creation, and the potentials of AI in creating economic mobility, especially for unbanked Americans.

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.

LISC has named Jorge Cruz as executive director of LISC Greater Newark, a decades-long community investment program that has delivered more than $169 million to New Jersey neighborhoods, businesses and community organizations to support economic opportunity and growth.

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.”