Louisiana mortgage broker license

Neighborhood revitalization is tedious and difficult, but it's the right thing to do-- economically as well as morally.

So says John Noland, chairman of the advisory committee for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation Baton Rouge. The purpose of the LISC program--part of a national organization founded by the Ford Foundation in 1979 and headquartered in New York City--is to help provide technical and financial support to grassroots neighborhood revitalization groups called community development corporations.

CDCs--hundreds of which are at work around the country--serve to improve and stabilize neighborhoods in trouble. Building new homes, refurbishing old ones, improving rental opportunities and helping more families move from home rental to home ownership are the goals. Since its inception, LISC has raised more than $3 billion nationwide from investors, lenders and donors, leveraging that money into an additional $3.5 billion in private and public sector funds. The organization operates local programs in 38 cities and 66 rural areas.

Baton Rouge, one of seven Southern cities involved in the LISC program, has no shortage of neighborhoods needing physical--and perhaps psychological--repair. But solutions aren't coming fast enough for Noland, the owner of Noland Investments, who signed on in 1994 as the primary fund-raiser for the Baton Rouge program. Initial progress has been "painfully slow," he admitted, while the dilemma of distressed neighborhoods has proved extremely difficult to solve for a variety of reasons.

When LISC representatives first visited Baton Rouge in the early '90s to do a feasibility assessment, Noland said, they identified several potential CDCs that were widely distributed among inner-city neighborhoods. Of those, many have entered what he terms a "maintenance mode." Noland said his board is looking at ways to shore up these less active CDCs; one possibility is to recommend hiring shadow developers" until the groups themselves become more viable.

"We at LISC are learning that this development site work is tedious. ...We're trying to get (CDCs) to become developers, and many of them don't know how to balance their own checkbook. We may have been unrealistic in our hopes of how quickly these CDCs would become strong. We've had to adjust our thinking."

Keeping the faith

Despite the slow start, LISC Baton Rouge has helped create 176 housing units since its start here. Meanwhile, some of the original CDCs have blossomed into dedicated and effective operations. By far the most successful is the Caleb Community Development Corp., whose chief executive officer is Byron Turner. In 1996, Turner, at the urging of a local minister, abandoned a budding career in the U.S. Army (he'd just been promoted to captain) to help set up the organization.

"It's one of those calls of your life," he said. "I felt that this is where God wanted me."

Caleb CDC, a faith-based, nonprofit development corporation, officially began operation in January 1997. Its first project, the 72-unit Edgewood Place Apartments, was completed in August 1998 on Plank Road north of Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport. Portions of the $3.9 million complex are designated for the handicapped or elderly. The last brick on Caleb's next project, the 40-unit Family Manor Apartments in Baker, was laid in December 1999. Both complexes cater to low- and moderate-income families, and feature computer-equipped learning centers where residents can search for jobs, create resumes or perform other computer-related tasks.

The Caleb CDC next turned its attention to single-family housing, building and selling five free-standing homes in 2000. Turner received his broker's license, and the organization's project director became a licensed contractor, enabling it to handle more business internally. The CDC recently finished its first "hands-on" house, with a buyer already waiting to move in.

Today Caleb is doing preliminary work on its University Place redevelopment project just north of Southern University, where the CDC has acquired 12 lots in an area known as the Avenues. Dilapidated houses have already been demolished, and plans call for construction of new houses and "fix-up" projects on existing homes in the neighborhood. The fix-ups help low-income or elderly households to increase their property values, while the new homes will be earmarked for first-time home buyers. The work should span the next two years, Turner said.

Caleb CDC is also planning its first subdivision, the 44-lot Hooper Ridge, to be located on Hooper Road. Thirty-two of the houses will be rentals, which after 15 years will be made available for sale to the, occupants "at a much reduced rate," Turner explained. The subdivision will also feature corporate office and community center space.

In addition, Caleb is involved in a partnership with Baton Rouge's Melrose East CDC to rehabilitate more than 200 distressed units, 82 of them in the neighborhood's Melrose Place apartment complex. Caleb's property management subsidiary was hired by Melrose East to manage the apartments once complete, and by the Capitol Park CDC to manage its recently completed Capitol Park Court: 27 affordable single-family units near North 22nd and Fuqua streets (plus another four new houses nearby).

Turner emphasized that anti-loitering rules and curfews are enforced at all the rental properties the CDC manages.

"The three-strike rule is in effect," he said. "We have no problem with evicting individuals. People appreciate the rules that we do have around here."

Caleb has found other ways to help people--computer literacy classes, youth summer camps and a program called the Individual Development Account, which is designed to help aspiring home buyers save enough money for a down payment. Caleb matches two-to-one every dollar a program enrollee manages to save.

LISC, once Caleb's sole supporter, now provides just its operational costs. Though it receives support from other quarters, the organization has a "dire need" for additional resources, Turner said.

As for the CDC's accomplishments--getting better housing on the market, creating more homeowners and generally improving the quality of neighborhoods--Turner said the key outcome is making people "interested in coming out and meeting their neighbors again." Turner noted that both he and the organization have progressed since his first day on the job five years ago, when he sat in front of a computer screen and wondered "what do I do next?"

"Sometimes it gets a little overwhelming," he added, "but I'm grateful for a good staff--if you're going to write anything make sure you note that."

Another approach

In May 2000, Caleb merged its home buyer counseling program with that of the Mid City Redevelopment Alliance, forming East Baton Rouge Parish's Home Ownership Center. Though not supported by LISC and technically not a CDC, the group works "hand-in-glove" with those organizations in an effort to revitalize Baton Rouge's forgotten neighborhoods, said Perry Franklin, executive director of the redevelopment alliance.

MCRA is, itself, the product of a redevelopment initiative that grew out of General Health System's role in the Mid City area. By the late 1 980s, General Health was facing a pivotal decision: whether to move Baton Rouge General hospital from its longtime home at the corner of Florida Boulevard and Acadian Thruway. Mid City was in serious decline: Crime was laying claim, businesses were evacuating and General Health's consultants were urging it to leave, too.

But the company opted to try to fix the neighborhood rather than flee it, and in 1991 it created the Mid City Redevelopment Alliance. To date the company has sunk approximately $3 million into Mid City.

During its first two years, the alliance organized residents and set up neighborhood litter abatement programs. After communities began to maintain themselves, the group launched "FIXUP! Mid City," in which corporate sponsors repaired and repainted the exteriors of nearly 200 homes of elderly or low-income residents.

MCRA then moved to actual redevelopment with its Park Hills project,

acquiring lots and building 15 houses in an area just north of Florida Boulevard and across from the hospital. They were the first new homes built in the area in 40 years, Franklin noted. Those houses are occupied with buyers now, a fact, he said, that proves several key points about revitalization: 1) Mid City can sustain new development; 2) "pocket developments" work; and 3) an untapped market for affordable housing exists in inner-city neighborhoods.

Franklin said the organization's fundamental theory is that a community can't thrive without a sufficient number of stakeholders (homeowners) living in it.