On March 23-25, 2011, LISC will be officially celebrating our 30th year, with a Symposium and Gala event in Washington, DC. Our overarching goal when we made our first loan back in 1980 was to help residents and community based organizations rebuild blighted neighborhoods so they could improve their quality of life. We knew then it would be a long-term proposition, one that required nurturing and commitment as well as financing. All of that is still true today.

Back then, we were largely testing the theory that locally-drive redevelopment could succeed where large-scale, top-down government programs had failed. In thirty years, we have invested more than $11 billion in grants, loans, and equity into low-income communities, we have helped produce more than 277,000 affordable homes and apartments and 44 million square feet of retail and community space.

Over the years, something else became clear: investing in affordable housing and other physical redevelopment was not enough to ensure sustainable change. We needed to do more to improve the quality of life. That was the genesis of our Building Sustainable Communities strategy. Launched in 2007, it is today our overarching approach to community development. It accepts the challenge to not just tackle affordable housing, but also education, economic development and jobs, family wealth building, and living in a healthier environment and lifestyle. It reaches into every corner of a community’s life with a comprehensive approach that can help change the trajectory of disadvantaged neighborhoods.

Join us in Washington and online in March as we celebrate three decades of building sustainable communities. We will have special presentations on the great work that is being done in the Bay Area, Chicago, Rhode Island, Houston, Indianapolis, Duluth, Rural Pennsylvania, San Diego, Twin Cities and Phoenix. And we will have plenary panels of experts and leaders including Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Dept. of Health and Human Services; Gene Sperling, Director the National Economic Council; Mayor Tom Menino of Boston, Former Governor of Pennsylvania Ed Rendell; Mayor Kevin Johnson of Sacramento; Michelle Rhee, Founder of StudentsFirst, and many others. See agenda.