NeighborWorks America has its foundation in resident leadership, the idea that those living and working in a community know best how to make their community stronger – and how to lead others in the effort. Each year, NeighborWorks honors some of those leaders with the Dorothy Richardson Award for Resident Leadership while also bringing attention to the work of resident leaders everywhere.

An initiative led by Neighborhood Housing Services of South Florida (NHSSF) will empower Black and Latina women to create and grow their businesses – and own them. The education and financial initiative, which encourages women to form cooperatives, will focus on the care industry. 

Over her 15 years as a homebuyer education teacher, credit boot camp instructor and counselor at Urban Edge, Gercide Luc has talked with people of many backgrounds. She's listened to questions. She's noticed trends. One of those trends included an increase in the number of Haitian clients seeking to talk to her about foreclosure.

The new year is a time when people often look ahead. They talk about their hopes, their resolutions, the things they want to achieve in the coming 365 days. On the cusp of the new year, we asked NeighborWorks America's senior vice presidents to share some of their hopes and wishes for 2022. 

"Every community can be a place of opportunity," shares Steve Barbier, senior relationship manager for the Western Region at NeighborWorks America. The tenet underscores NeighborWorks' decision several years ago to better understand how to be of service to Native communities.
 

There were already obstacles when it came to building homes on the Navajo Nation. Accessing water and electricity, for instance. Or the ability for would-be homeowners to find a mortgage. Native Partnership for Housing (NPH), a NeighborWorks network organization working to create a path to affordable homeownership, had an additional obstacle: Finding the right construction crew to do the job.

In 1999, Ron and Karen Maldonado were the first. "We were the first mortgage for what was then Navajo Partnership for Housing," Ron Maldonado explains. The couple had moved from Tucson, Arizona, where they lived and worked, to Karen's homesite on the Navajo reservation where she grew up. 

The Navajo Nation encompasses 27,000 miles in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. On the reservation, steeped in history and customs, there are also challenges when it comes to housing, to supplies and lumber, to hookups to clean running water. Add in a national pandemic and the challenges grow exponentially. So does determination to meet them.

For 25 years, Memphis, Tennessee's United Housing, Inc., has built and renovated hundreds of homes, while helping individuals with everything from repair loans to down payment assistance.