Erich Nakano, executive director of Little Tokyo Service Center (LTSC), says his journey to housing and community development began with three events. An activist whose parents sought to amplify stories about Japanese internment in the United States, Nakano says friends, family and fellow college students all shined lights on a path to working with the community he loved.

The 1970s

A pòh poh dons a jacket in a flowery print that screams springtime. A gùng gung wears a fedora and a butterfly tie. The smiling faces of residents of San Francisco's Chinatown and Chinatowns across the United States and in Canada grace the pages of "Chinatown Pretty: Fashion and Wisdom from Chinatown's Most Stylish Seniors," a book by Portrait Photographer Andria Lo and Writer Valerie Luu. 

Veronica Lopez will always remember March 16, 2020. It’s the day that Los Angeles County ordered the closure of businesses and banned large public gatherings of any kind to contain the COVID-19 virus. Almost immediately, the constant phone calls from businesses seeking assistance began and didn’t start to slow down until several months later in June.

Creative placemaking, or placekeeping, is essentially a resiliency tool. Normally in discussions of placemaking or placekeeping, the stress or disturbance communities face have to do with economic factors, like displacement due to shifting development, or sometimes even environmental factors. In 2020, placekeeping projects designed by organizations in the NeighborWorks cohort faced an unanticipated outlier: the COVID-19 pandemic. 

It's Financial Capability Month, a time to highlight the importance of financial education and financial literacy.

The Tableau Fellows, a cohort chosen from among NeighborWorks America's network organizations, work to tell new stories about their nonprofits through the information they collect, with the help of mentors, using Tableau, which helps organi

For a learning cohort process supported by NeighborWorks America, community development organizations worked hand in hand with arts organizations as they re-imagined the future of their neighborhoods. What they found was often unexpected and revealed ways that the milestones found on the journey are just as important as the final destination. 

Don Gilmore, CEO of Community Housing Development Corp. (CHDC), is keeping his community green. In California, where the environment is first on a lot of people's minds, his NeighborWorks organization is putting energy into green buildings and a transportation assistance program that helps low-income individuals buy or lease "clean" cars.

Rose Espinoza grew up in the Corona Camp neighborhood of La Habra in Orange County, California. When NeighborWorks Housing Services constructed new houses on her old street in the early 1990s, she bought one. Her purchase was built, in part, on the good memories of her childhood, like her mother sewing costumes for participants of the Our Lady of Guadalupe Parade.  "I wanted my son to have those same memories," she says. "But when we purchased our home, things had changed."

"If there's a silver lining to the pandemic," says Daniela Ogden, Eden Housing's vice president of communications, advocacy and fund development, "it's this: Affordable housing works. Even as residents lose hours and jobs, those who live in Low-Income Housing, Tax Credit housing, or receive Section 8 or 202 housing vouchers, have remained stably housed. The programs, coupled with rent relief provided by Eden's Tenant Relief Fund, have given low-income residents one less thing to worry about."