Ivy City

Background: The Ivy City Housing Initiative is a multi-year multi partner effort to help stabilize the neighborhood.  Ivy City has one of the highest concentrations of vacant property and foreclosures in the city.  This initiative will replace 37 vacant and abandoned properties with 58 units of single family and condominium affordable homeownership housing.

The Initiative came about in 2002, through the former Home Again program run by the DC Department of Housing and Community Development.  At the time, the City began acquiring 37 vacant, dilapidated parcels in Ivy City with the intent to offer them for redevelopment.  In January of 2006, the City issued a RFP for the redevelopment of the 37 parcels.   In partnership with residents and stakeholders in the neighborhood, the City selected four developers to rebuild this community -  DC Habitat for Humanity, Mi Casa, Manna and MissionFirst Development.  

Construction began and continues today, with 29 of the 58 units complete.  In 2010 Mi Casa celebrated the completion of the LISC- financed  Greenview Condominiums and in 2011 DC Habitat completed construction on 8 of their units, welcoming 8 new families to the neighborhood. In early 2012 Mi Casa completed their final 7 single family, new construction units.  Six of Manna's units, the Bexhill Condominiums are complete with another 14 units under construction.  DC Habitat, working in partnership with MissionFirst, has agreed to redevelop the properties initially awarded to MissionFirst.               

Click on the slideshow to see the redevelopment firsthand.  

 LISC  Investment and Support

LISC has been working in the Ivy City neighborhood since 2009 as a key partner in the Ivy City Initiative.  Acting as a convener, investor, funder and broker, LISC is providing resources to each of the nonprofit developers Manna, Mi Casa and  DC Habitat for Humanity. Specific investments include:

• Provided technical assistance and funding  for a community based marketing firm to help develop a strategy and website to attract prospective buyers.  

• Provided an $872,000 construction loan to Mi Casa for the redevelopment of  the vacant dilapidated property at 1302 and 1304 Galludet Street NW.  Now complete and called the Greenview Condominiums, we also provided a $25,000 grant  to help them incorporate green features, including a green roof community space.

• Provided DC Habitat for Humanity a $75,000 low cost loan and a $25,000 grant to incorporate green features meeting Earthcraft standards into their first phase of 12 Ivy City properties.

• Created an ongoing stakeholders forum, where all parties involved in this initiative debrief and keep one another informed of progress.

Our investment in Ivy City is not only helping to revitalize the physical housing stock and put vacant land back into productive use, it is helping to provide deeply affordable, healthy homes to over 50 first time homebuyers who will have a permanent stake in the neighborhood.