Publication Date
September 2014Author(s)
Janneke Ratcliffe, Kevin A. Park, Jennifer TausigClient/Funder
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban DevelopmentOverview
Habitat for Humanity International, in partnership with seven Habitat affiliates, received a Neighborhood Stabilization Program 2 (NSP2) grant in 2010 from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Habitat used the funding to provide owner-occupied housing for low-income families in neighborhoods across the country, from Miami to Los Angeles, in an effort to meet the program’s goal of stabilizing communities suffering from high rates of foreclosures and abandonment.
Habitat’s use of NSP2 funds is noteworthy because of its concentrated focus in targeted neighborhoods, its use of the Habitat model as a core element in community stabilization, and the diversity of locations where this work took place, resulting in unique approaches by each affiliate.
Habitat asked the UNC Center for Community Capital at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to study the extent to which NSP2 activities undertaken by the seven affiliates have affected the communities in which this work took place. To date, the center has developed a framework for the research project and taken baseline measures. Once complete, this multi-year study intends to answer the question of whether neighborhoods where NSP2 funds were invested demonstrated greater stability and revitalization than similar neighborhoods.
More broadly, the study’s findings have the potential to improve the understanding of how place-based neighborhood initiatives, such as the Neighborhood Stabilization Program and Habitat’s Neighborhood Revitalization efforts, can benefit communities in observable ways.