Stories
LISC’s CEO Talks Affordable Housing, Affirmative Action and Committing to a Green Future
In a Q+A with ImpactAlpha, Michael T. Pugh delves into the ways community development finance must operate in the wake of new affirmative action legislation, and what the big-ticket items on LISC’s 2024 investment list are, including small business support and green jobs and homes.
Local LISC Leadership Gets the Spotlight
A recent spate of articles about LISC local office leaders shine a bright light onto the commitment, expertise and hard work our executive directors bring to the complex and demanding job of investing in communities that have been marginalized. Check out these conversations with Hampton Roads, Virginia's Jay Grant, New York's Valerie White, and Jacksonville's Dr. Irvin Cohen.
Op-ed: Congress Can Help Make Housing Affordable — It Just Has to Act
The country needs a renewed commitment to affordable housing production programs, including expansion of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit and enactment of the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, argue LISC board chair Robert E. Rubin and former U.S. senator Rob Portman in a joint op-ed in The Hill. "Fixing the chronic shortage of affordable and available housing for low-income renters and first-time homebuyers requires immediate intervention and long-term commitment,” they stress.
What Happens When Equity Is the Goal of Transportation Planning
In an article in GovTech magazine, Madeline Frasier Cook, LISC’s vice president for community building and resilient solutions, discusses how community members must be part of public transit planning, and all facets of community life taken into account. Policy makers and local leaders promoting transit-oriented development should be “very explicit about investment in affordable housing, and calling out that [there has to be] access for everyone. They can’t be displacing people.”
Single-family Zoning as a Tool of Segregation: The Case of San Diego and What Can Be Done
LISC San Diego executive director Ricardo Flores is featured in a deep dive by the city's public broadcasting station on how, beginning in the early 20th century, single-family zoning worked to racially and economically segregate San Diego—and keep it that way. Flores describes LISC's and other collective efforts to dismantle the status quo in the effort to create diverse, affordable neighborhoods.
How the LIFT Act Can Make Homeownership, and Strong Communities, a Reality for More Americans
In an op-ed for The Virginian-Pilot, LISC Virginia executive director Jane Ferrara lays out the ways the proposed LIFT Act could make homeownership, at 20-year, fixed rate mortgages, accessible to first-time, first-generation buyers—the very people who are often edged out of the American Dream. The legislation, in partnership with home-buying programs like the ones LISC leads, Ferrara writes, can help "bridge the racial wealth gap as well as the gap between dreams and reality for the next generation of aspiring homeowners."