Over a dozen years, LIFT – which stands for Let's Invest for Tomorrow – has helped more than 25,000 people in 81 communities buy homes of their own by providing down payment assistance to

A cohort of a dozen NeighborWorks network organizations is assessing the benefits of community health workers. Since September of 2021, the organizations have learned from one another, all while innovating and exploring the way community health workers fit in with their community and their goals. 

A cohort of a dozen NeighborWorks network organizations is assessing the benefits of community health workers. Since September of 2021, the organizations have learned from one another, all while innovating and exploring the way community health workers fit in with their community and their goals. 

There were already obstacles when it came to building homes on the Navajo Nation. Accessing water and electricity, for instance. Or the ability for would-be homeowners to find a mortgage. Native Partnership for Housing (NPH), a NeighborWorks network organization working to create a path to affordable homeownership, had an additional obstacle: Finding the right construction crew to do the job.

In 1999, Ron and Karen Maldonado were the first. "We were the first mortgage for what was then Navajo Partnership for Housing," Ron Maldonado explains. The couple had moved from Tucson, Arizona, where they lived and worked, to Karen's homesite on the Navajo reservation where she grew up. 

The Navajo Nation encompasses 27,000 miles in New Mexico, Arizona and Utah. On the reservation, steeped in history and customs, there are also challenges when it comes to housing, to supplies and lumber, to hookups to clean running water. Add in a national pandemic and the challenges grow exponentially. So does determination to meet them.

"Alianza" means "alliance" in Spanish and it’s the name for a group of Latinx leaders and future leaders in the NeighborWorks network who meet to discuss issues that are important to all of them. They talk about challenges, says coordinator Maria Garciaz, CEO of NeighborWorks Salt Lake. And they talk about solutions.
 

Prestamos CDFI, a division of NeighborWorks network nonprofit Chicanos Por La Causa, has funded billions of dollars in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans during the pandemic, with more than three fourths of those loans going to minority-owned businesses. By the end of June, the Community Development Financial Institution funded $7.6 billion in loans, supporting hairstylists, artists, custodians and more.

As the pandemic began, The Primavera Foundation, Inc., in Tucson, Arizona, worked with the city and Pima County to set aside hotel rooms for people experiencing homelessness who needed to quarantine because of exposure to COVID-19 or because they had symptoms. In recent months, staff partnered with Pima County Health Department and El Rio Federally Qualified Health Care Centers to reach out to residents, people living in shelters, and those awaiting housing.