Few people are more connected to neighborhoods than the clergy who serve in them. That’s why Enterprise’s Washington, D.C., office has joined the Johnson Memorial Baptist Church/East of the River Clergy Police Community Partnership, Inc. (JMBC/ERCPCP) and Georgetown University to encourage and train faith-based groups to build affordable housing, special-needs housing and community facilities in the national capital region.
Recent trainings have drawn more than 50 different clergy and other staff from faith-based organizations to learn more about housing and community development in their neighborhoods. The initiative also drew front-page coverage in the Washington Post this spring.
To date, Enterprise has helped local faith-based groups develop more than 200 units of affordable and/or special-needs housing.
The Rev. Donald Isaac, JMBC/ERCPCP’s board president, is one of many ministers in the D.C. area anxious to create more affordable housing in neighborhoods near his church. “We need to tap the talent, energy and resources that exist in our faith-based community,” said Isaac. “We have much to offer, and Enterprise has been and will be a great resource for us in terms of financing and training.”
Additional trainings resume this fall. A recent joint training session featured Pastor Anthony Minter of First Rock Baptist Church, which recently completed a senior housing development; Robert Pohlman of the Coalition for Non-Profit Housing and Economic Development; Robert Boulter of FaithWorks, Inc., an organization that has teamed with Georgetown University to collect data on East-of-the-River properties owned by faith-based institutions; and Enterprise Network Advisory Board Member Dominic Moulden of ONE DC, a nonprofit community development organization helping residents purchase their apartment buildings.
Training-session topics to date have included visioning, the development process, financing, accessing public and private capital, and tax credits.
In addition to training, Enterprise is offering faith-based organizations grants up to $10,000 to help start development projects. The grants, which require a 25 percent match, may be used to hire development consultants, architects or attorneys.
For more information about the faith-based development initiative, contact Deborah Stevenson, 202.842.9190, ext. 11.
Last December, the District of Columbia City Council passed the D.C. Green Building Act of 2006. The green requirements for affordable housing construction in this landmark legislation are based on Enterprise’s Green Communities Criteria. Prior to passage, the D.C. Housing Authority had included elements of Enterprise’s criteria in its public housing modernization program.
Enterprise has worked closely with the D.C.-based nonprofit GreenHOME to encourage these District actions. Passage of the Green Building Act established Washington as a national leader in the green building movement – and the first major city to apply rigorous green criteria to private buildings. The legislation requires most major commercial construction projects and affordable housing to meet comprehensive health, environmental and energy standards over the next few years.
Since 2005, Enterprise has awarded $265,000 in grants and $8.4 million in loans and tax credit equity to support nine Green Communities housing developments and 590 homes in the D.C. area, including the Galen Terrace Apartments, featured below.
Galen Terrace and its residents made headlines in the Washington Post and the on local airwaves this summer when they marked the re-opening of Enterprise’s first green affordable housing development in Washington, D.C., on June 21. The Green Communities Criteria resulted in features that help make the building healthier, more cost effective and better for the environment.
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A Galen Terrace resident is full of smiles during the green grand re-opening celebration. Photo: Lloyd Wolf. |
Enterprise provided more than $4.6 million in equity and grants to support the residents’ goals to purchase the building. The residents selected the National Housing Trust-Enterprise Preservation Corporation and Somerset Development Company as development partners in their effort to acquire, rehabilitate and preserve the property’s affordability. Improvements included renovated interiors and exteriors, new community space, access to resident services, landscaping and on-site property management.
Galen Terrace’s green features include special paints, sealants, woods and carpet designed to reduce health risks. Said Rob Richardson, senior project manager at NHT-Enterprise: “Now I see that you can do this without adding too much cost. And in time, the features pay for themselves in energy savings alone.”
Enterprise and GreenHOME have embarked on the D.C. Green Communities Initiative. The mission of this unique collaboration is to make affordable housing and the neighborhoods in which it is developed healthier and more sustainable. The collaboration will prepare the development community and regulators to produce and oversee the development of green projects in an economically sustainable manner.
Enterprise is grateful to the Cafritz Foundation for supporting the new initiative with a $50,000 challenge grant. Together with the Community Development Support Collaborative, Cafritz also co-hosted a green briefing for the philanthropic community.
A three-part initiative, D.C. Green Communities aims to:
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Support the market transformation of the development sector to ensure the availability of materials, technical expertise and oversight necessary for developing green communities and buildings.
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Guide public decision-making that incorporates the specific environmental needs of the region and its communities.
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Support the creation of a job training, employment and business infrastructure that enhances local D.C. capacity to build green buildings and neighborhoods.
Enterprise and GreenHOME provide training, technical assistance grant packages, capital grants and policy work. These services are designed to ensure effective implementation of the D.C. Green Building Act’s affordable housing provisions in the District, and implementation of green building requirements in surrounding areas.
This spring, Enterprise and GreenHOME co-sponsored their third green building training with the Coalition for Non-profit Housing and Economic Development. More than 60 affordable housing professionals and government officials discussed lessons learned with green development team members from NHT-Enterprise, Housing Initiative Partnership and Hord Coplan Macht, a Baltimore-based architectural firm.
Additional support for D.C. Green Communities has come from PNC and Countrywide. And the D.C. Department of Housing and Community Development recently agreed to provide matching grants to help nonprofits convene a Green Communities Charrette, toward establishing an integrated design approach. The department’s fall 2007 RFP requires the charrette.
For more information on the D.C. Green Communities Initiative, contact David Bowers,
202.842.9190, ext 25.
Residents of the Colorado in Northwest D.C. know that they live in a gem of a building: a 36-unit Art-Deco structure in the increasingly attractive Brightwood Park neighborhood. Still, when they received the news that the owner planned to sell the building to a private developer planning to convert the building to expensive condominiums, they couldn’t imagine being able to come up with the $2.8 million price tag.
Because leaving their home was even more unimaginable, the residents pulled together and in less than a year, the building’s mostly Latino immigrants were on their way to becoming apartment owners. Then, late this summer, they received bad news: The city had given them a loan commitment but couldn’t meet the residents’ deadline to purchase. That meant the owner would be free to sell to the private developer.
Working with the D.C. nonprofit Mi Casa, the determined residents quickly submitted an application to the Enterprise Preservation Loan Fund. With the help of a short-term (bridge loan) from Enterprise, plus round-the-clock staff support, the deal closed in time and the residents successfully purchased their building.
Traditionally home mainly to working-class, African-American residents, Brightwood Park is in the midst of a socio-economic resurgence. As development along transit corridors intensifies and demand to live in the area increases, many garden-style apartments in the area are rapidly converting to luxury condominiums. With one-bedroom units selling for an average of $295,000, they are out of reach to low- and moderate-income families living in the area.
“As a result of their perseverance, the residents of the Colorado will be able to keep their homes,” said David Bowers, director of Enterprise’s Washington, D.C. office. “We’re glad we were able to play a role in helping them realize their vision.”
Two more resident groups recently purchased their buildings with support from Enterprise. The Northeast Tenants Association worked with Housing Initiative Partnership to purchase their Capitol Hill apartment building with the help of a $1 million bridge loan from the Enterprise Preservation Loan Fund. And in Southeast, the Copeland Manor Cooperative worked with the National Housing Trust-Enterprise to purchase their building with a $3 million loan from Enterprise. One in four of Copeland Manor’s residents are elderly. And 20 percent have lived in the 61-unit building for more than 20 years. Younger residents have become active in the cooperative, advocating for the right of long-term residents to remain in their homes.
Enterprise also provided pre-purchase grants to Mi-Casa, HIP and NHT-Enterprise for each of these preservation transactions.
Since 2002, the Washington Legal Clinic's Affordable Housing Initiative (AHI) has focused on improving the quality, and preserving and expanding the supply, of affordable and subsidized housing opportunities for the District of Columbia's lowest income residents.
An Enterprise capacity-building grantee, AHI provides legal assistance to low-income residents and resident associations in the District of Columbia. Its mission is to stabilize properties and tenancies at risk of market-rate conversion through loss of subsidy, sale or condo conversion.
AHI is the "first line of defense," offering the litigation and other representation necessary to preserve a property’s affordability and/or support resident purchase. The initiative supports tenant organizers and helps to assemble a development team, including development counsel, to take the property through the necessary steps to preserve its affordability – all vital services in today’s challenging market. |
