by Max Marbut
Staff Writer
It’s one thing to throw money up against the wall and hope it sticks. It’s another thing entirely to carefully apply money to the wall and then do everything possible to make sure it sticks.
The latter concept is the one implemented by Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Jacksonville.
LISC is part of a national network started in 1980 with a $10 million grant from the Ford Foundation and other major donors and lenders. Two years later the organization established its first “areas of concentration” in South Bronx, Boston and Chicago based on matching contributions from the private sector. Today, LISC operates in 33 urban areas and rural areas in 37 states.
Its mission is to build sustainable neighborhoods in areas that were previously considered distressed communities. LISC does that by engaging local nonprofit Community Development Corporations (CDC) that have a vested, and often financial, interest in seeing a neighborhood develop and succeed.
Since 1980, LISC has invested $8.6 billion, which has leveraged $25.3 billion in total development.
LISC opened in Jacksonville 10 years ago and has since invested $27.6 million in grants and loans. The first local supporters were The Jessie Ball duPont Fund, Bank of America, the Edna Sproull Williams Foundation, The Community Foundation, the Jacksonville jaguars Foundation, the Wachovia Foundation, Sun Trust Bank of North Florida and J.F. Bryan IV. The City of Jacksonville joined the effort four years ago, contributing $500,000 matched by LISC to create a fund to stimulate development.
“We provide training, technical assistance and financing to help neighbors build communities,” said Joni Foster, executive director of LISC Jacksonville.
She said since 1999, LISC has helped CDCs build or rehabilitate 191 single-family homes that went on the market and has also invested in 500 rental units developed by CDCs. It’s not just about construction and real estate, however.
“It’s not about housing, it’s about developing communities,” said Foster. “It’s about bringing new assets into the community and getting a neighborhood’s economic engine going. Neighborhood engagement is just as important as real estate development.”
Case study:
low-income housing
Ability Housing, a CDC that works in neighborhoods all over Jacksonville, grew out of Grove House in February 2007 and partnered with LISC six months later. While the mission of Grove House was to serve the needs of disabled people in group home settings, Ability Housing works to provide housing to meet the budgets of those who earn 50 percent of the median income ($49,175 in 2007 according to the U.S. Census Bureau).
When asked about the impact LISC has had on Ability Housing, Executive Director Shannon Nazworth doesn’t ponder the question very long.
“If LISC hadn’t been there for us we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing. There’s a good chance Ability would not exist today because when we started the program it lost money. They gave us an Organizational Development Grant and that allowed us to not be solely concerned with fundraising,” she said.
The help from LISC also came in the form of human capital. LISC sent Ability Housing an Americorps volunteer who researched Jacksonville’s housing market for appropriate investment opportunities. That led to getting a lot of property under development in a short period of time.
“The partnership has led to a 750 percent increase in what we’re able to do. When we started with LISC we had 15 single-family homes,” said Nazworth. “Today we have 29 single-family homes and 83 apartments, We’re also in predevelopment on 48 apartments and we’re looking at a foreclosed property that we could develop into 52 units.”
One of Ability’s properties has become a resource and a way to assist part of Jacksonville’s homeless population. MayFair Village on Beach Boulevard counts among its tenants people and families who were previously residing at the Sulzbacher Center. MayFair gives them an opportunity be take the first step back into a conventional lifestyle.
“We’re tackling the homeless issue head-on. We’re also able to help prevent a family from becoming homeless in this economy by being able to offer housing for $200-$400 a month.
“Another impact we’re able to have through our success with LISC is that we create jobs for every building trade when we renovate a property. We’re hiring carpenters, plumbers, electricians, painters – you name it,” said Nazworth.
Case study:
commercial development
Ability Housing focuses its work on developing low-cost housing an all areas. The partnership between LISC and Springfield Preservation and Restoration (SPAR) is completely different. SPAR and LISC have partnered to concentrate on commercial development in two corridors of the historic neighborhood north of the Downtown Central Business District: Main Street and 8th Street.
SPAR’s Executive Director Louise DeSpain said LISC had an immediate positive impact on the project to revitalize the commercial corridors.
“LISC even went as far as to prepare us to go into the partnership,” said DeSpain. “They showed us how to develop a strategic plan and how to recruit strong board members.”
The first step in the project was to conduct a “Metro Edge Study” to analyze the retail potential of the Main Street corridor which was funded by LISC. That was the ammunition SPAR needed to pull the trigger in terms of selling Springfield.
“That study gave us the stats and clout to start marketing the neighborhood. We know where to put businesses and what types of businesses to put there,” said DeSpain, who added that “Three Layers” making the decision to set up a coffee shop in Springfield was a direct result of the partnership with LISC.
LISC also pays the salary for an urban planner SPAR recruited from Maryland and assigned an Americorps volunteer that DeSpain described as “our Community Organizer” who inventories buildings and created a database of properties and even hands out flyers when SPAR is having a special event.
DeSpain also said the ongoing element of the partnership has also proven to be valuable. SPAR staff and a LISC staff person meet at least twice a month for project updates and to share ideas.
“LISC knew we were different from the organizations that build or rehabilitate houses. We’re grateful for what LISC has done for the neighborhood,” said DeSpain. “Springfield is years ahead of where it would be had we not partnered with LISC.”
How it all started
LISC opened its office in Jacksonville in 1999 but the process to make that happen actually began several years earlier.
Sherry McGill is executive director of the Jessie Ball duPont Fund, a national foundation based in Jacksonville that makes grants to organizations defined by the estate of the late Jessie Ball duPont. McGill first learned of LISC in 1991 through working with an organization in Richmond, Va.
The next chapter began in 1994 when the Jaguars Foundation grew out of Jacksonville’s brand-new NFL team. The foundation’s first executive director, Greg Gross, was familiar with LISC’s work in Boston, his home before moving to Jacksonville and the Jaguars Foundation.
Three years later, the City gained an interest in revitalizing the urban core through former Mayor John Delaney’s “Intensive Care Neighborhoods” program. That led to a meeting with McGill and Gross and a discussion of LISC and what it might add to the equation. In 1998 Delaney invited LISC to conduct a feasibility study which led to Delaney forming a coalition of community and corporate leaders who would lead the campaign.
One of the people in the group was Kitty Phillips, an attorney and trustee of the duPont Foundation. Now retired from the practice of law, Phillips remains a foundation trustee and also serves on LISC Jacksonville’s board of directors. She recalled the philanthropy decided LISC was needed in Jacksonville before the City came to the same conclusion.
“We determined LISC was needed here a long time before it happened,” said Phillips who went on to explain, “A community must invite LISC to come. We had an education process with the mayor and local nonprofits.”
The LISC model was working in other municipalities in 1999 and it has proven over the last 10 years to work in Jacksonville, she added.
“The whole idea of LISC is it provides on-the-ground support in the neighborhoods for organizations and CDCs. They need guidance and they need to be able to take advantage of LISC’s experience.
“That leads to building neighborhoods, which leads to stable and more importantly, safe neighborhoods. Retail follows rooftops but only in safe stable neighborhoods. I see LISC as an economic development tool,” said Phillips.
Foster said while the way LISC does what it does can be a complex concept since every project has its own unique elements, the concept behind what LISC does is easier to grasp.
“It’s about reinvesting in neighborhoods and connecting capital with ideas and the ways to get things done in terms of community development,” she said.
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