Affordable Housing
A safe, affordable home is one of the basic requisites of life—a key to individual health and well-being, and the foundation for sustainable, economically vibrant and diverse neighborhoods.
LISC invests in all kinds of affordable housing. We help develop new multi-family rentals, and preserve existing ones that could be lost to market forces or deterioration. We finance sustainable, “green” construction and rehabilitation, which makes for lower operating costs and has been proven to boost health outcomes for occupants and entire neighborhoods. And we lead foreclosure interventions that help people keep their homes, or that reinvigorate communities where foreclosure has decimated block after block.
Michigan LISC helps make quality, affordable housing available to low-income and vulnerable residents—from seniors to veterans to the formerly homeless—in underserved communities. To make this all happen, we provides grants, loans and equity for nearly every aspect of development, from planning and acquisition to construction and renovation. We do this through LISC Housing and our affiliate, the National Equity Fund. We offer technical assistance, data and mapping tools to community-based organizations working to improve the supply and condition of affordable housing in their neighborhoods. And we advocate for good housing policy at all levels of government.
Additionally, due to deep cuts to key affordable housing programs at the federal, state and local levels; the economic and demographic indicators of homelessness remain high. LISC continues the long-standing management of the Kalamazoo County Continuum of Care (CoC) collaborative body. The CoC is a collaboration of 30 nonprofit, business, governmental, education, health, human service, advocacy entities and constituent groups that are creating a comprehensive and integrated approach to ending homelessness and working to insure permanent housing for low-income people.