Community development, at its core, helps residents create their own shared future. This concept of self-determination – also known as community ownership – is fundamental to LISC’s work, as we recognize that both our own investments and others from the public and private sector need to be directed by local voices. This Spotlight for the Institute for Community Power highlights contemporary efforts to advance community ownership by bringing residents together to elevate their voices and decision-making abilities. In it, we look at three programs designed and implemented by LISC and local partners: Training for Trainers (T4T) in Houston; the Newark Resident Leadership Academy (NRLA); and Community Connectors in Philadelphia.
On Wall Street and downtowns around the country, declining in-person work is driving near-record office vacancies, with implications for nearby businesses, the urban tax base, and public services. But on main streets across the country, LISC is addressing some of the same technological and economic changes behind downtown vacancies, to support entrepreneurs of color facing displacement.
LGBTQ+ people have a powerful history of organizing and cooperation to support. Yet there is little focus within community development on development without displacement by and for queer and trans communities, and the challenges and opportunities they face in scaling this work. As extremist groups and policies increasingly target LGBTQ+ people, strategies to build queer and trans community and economic power for systems change are urgently needed. This LISC Institute for Community Power Spotlight focuses on the intersections between LGBTQ+ liberation and community development.
Institutional investor ownership of housing is a major driver of rising housing costs and deteriorating housing quality across a wide range of contexts and housing types, from rural manufactured housing to single family homes in the Midwest and Sun Belt to multifamily apartment buildings in hot markets like the Bay Area and New York City. This LISC Institute for Community Power Spotlight gives an overview of the rise of investor ownership and its impacts on communities, and strategies tenants and their community partners are using to reclaim their homes.
The U.S. saw a significant expansion of government assistance during the pandemic that provided a lifeline for families and dramatically reduced child poverty rates. While temporary, these expanded benefits, together with historic mobilizations for racial justice, brought renewed attention to longstanding efforts to expand the social safety net, including through proposals for an income guarantee. This LISC Institute for Community Power Spotlight gives an overview of guaranteed income proposals, policies, and lessons learned from rapidly-expanding pilots nationwide, and how guaranteed income can advance racial, economic, and gender justice.
Drawing on a long history of environmental justice organizing led by BIPOC, immigrant, and low-income communities, and an even longer history of Indigenous land stewardship practices grounded in relationships and reciprocity, the climate justice movement is repairing inequities and cultivating community-led solutions to the climate crisis. This LISC Institute Spotlight highlights climate justice resources for community development practitioners.
This LISC Institute Spotlight highlights resources and tools on social housing, with a focus on successful examples of shared equity housing from across the LISC network.