“Our communities need to be resilient and well prepared. That goal is always at the heart of our mission.”

- Maurice A. Jones, LISC President & CEO

If there’s anything the outset of 2020 has taught us, it’s that America needs strong communities and strong organizations to flourish and progress, and to weather the profound challenges that life serves up—which is exactly where we find ourselves now, in the midst of the global Covid-19 crisis. We are grateful to report that 2019 was an extraordinary year for LISC’s work supporting people and places to achieve stability and resiliency—the very attributes everyone, and every community, requires.  

Financially, it was our best year ever: we invested $1.8 billion to catalyze opportunity in hundreds of historically underserved rural and urban communities. This success has positioned us to be able to pivot and offer immediate relief to the people, enterprises and communities—particularly communities of color—that we have long supported and that are bearing the brunt of the pandemic's fallout.

That investment also resulted last year in real transformation for people all across America, including the construction or preservation of 20,000 affordable homes, the creation of nearly 19,000 quality jobs from our real estate investments, and nearly 50,000 more residents served by new community facilities such as community or childcare centers, health facilities and recreation space. Moreover, as a result of our projects, nearly $225 million in additional tax revenue invigorated local and regional economies, which in turn sparked more economic development, better services and greater quality of life for residents.   

We also have expanded on many fronts, programmatically and organizationally. We’ve extended our footprint into the Southern U.S., and deeper into rural America, to help meet economic challenges there; we’ve launched new programs in the interconnected arenas of health, sports and rec, education and community leadership; and we’ve developed our own staff and internal systems to better respond to the profound and growing demand for opportunity and equity in our country’s underinvested communities.

And that’s just the beginning. Read on to hear about all that transpired in 2019—at LISC, with our 2,500 local partners who make the work happen, and in the communities we care about.