Sustainable communities are places that offer the resources and environment all residents need in order to participate in their neighborhoods, live safely and in health, learn, build assets and take part in the mainstream economy. It's our strategy, a comprehensive approach that takes in the needs of the whole community. Together with our partners we invest in affordable housing, economic development, education, health, safety and financial stability in select neighborhoods across the country. That is Building Sustainable Communities.
How does it play out in practice? People walk safely down once crumbling streets. Children attend effective schools and play in refurbished neighborhood parks. Families live in quality housing, where reasonable rents leave them with more disposable income. They can shop for healthy foods at local markets and buy goods at renewed retail corridors. And they have access to range of health care, child care, financial counseling and employment services to help them stabilize the household budget and build assets for the future.
When LISC started out more than 35 years ago, our main focus was the development and preservation of affordable housing. But we began to understand that underserved places need investment on multiple fronts. In the last two decades, LISC has been supporting programs that reach beyond housing into other facets of community life--improving retail areas, making neighborhoods safer, helping people get jobs. Then, in 2007, we expanded and sharpened this work with the Building Sustainable Communities (BSC) initiative. By bringing together our many types of programs and carrying them out, simultaneously, in targeted neighborhoods with significant, ongoing investment, we have seen how historically disinvested places can change in profound ways.
We bring key local stakeholders together to find common ground and create a vision for their communities. We then help marshall the resources necessary to make that vision a reality.
BSC invests in these elements:
Since we launched Building Sustainable Communities, we have:
Building Sustainable Communities offers neighborhoods a way forward, a means to developing stability and promoting growth. It helps transform streets blighted by chronic poverty and stagnation into good places to live, work, do business and raise families.
An evaluation of our Building Sustainable Communities work