In 1991, Living Cities (formerly the National Community Development Initiative) was founded on a simple but powerful idea—that by working together, visionary foundations and financial institutions could genuinely transform the trajectory of American cities. In our first 15 years, our unique collaborative achieved tremendous success in terms of helping to bring the community development industry to scale.
By 2006, we had invested more than $540 million in 23 cities to build or renovate over 140,000 homes and other community facilities. Working with our core partners at the time, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) and Enterprise Community Partners, we leveraged the resources of our member institutions 29:1. But, in terms of ensuring equitable access to opportunity, this work was necessary but not sufficient.
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