From Distressed Neighborhoods,
Building Healthy Communities

Kate Grossman Sutliff ’91
Director of Housing, LISC New York

Jennie Bartlett ’00
Assistant Program Officer, Office of the Chief Operating Officer, LISC Washington, D.C.

Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) has generated $7.1 billion in community building investments, which in turn leveraged $16.7 billion in total development. These funds have helped build or rehabilitate 196,000 affordable homes and nearly 27 million square feet of retail, community and education space across the country.

In New York, Kate works with LISC where the concept was born

After the nation viewed the 1977 devastation and arson in the South Bronx, the need to regenerate the country’s poorest urban neighborhoods was brought into urgent focus. To support the resident-led community groups on the frontlines combating the increasing blight, the Ford Foundation helped found a new type of organization in 1979: the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, more commonly known as LISC.

While LISC began as a very targeted effort to help combat the major abandonment, arson, crime and disinvestment that was plaguing the South Bronx in the 1960s and ’70s, it has since grown into a national leader in community development, working in both urban and rural locations around the country. Today, LISC brings a holistic view to community development, helping transform distressed neighborhoods into healthy communities where people have access to affordable homes, jobs, reliable places to shop, and high-quality schools.

Kate Grossman Sutliff ’91 is the director of housing at LISC’s New York City office, which works with community development corporations (CDCs) in low-income neighborhoods primarily in Brooklyn, Harlem and the South Bronx. “CDCs typically begin as local, grass-roots, nonprofit organizations,” says Kate, “that were willing to step up and take responsibility for advocating for local residents and rebuilding their neighborhoods.”

New York City CDCs have faced a remarkable shift in the development landscape over the years, according to Kate. In the 1980s, the city had a huge inventory of tax-foreclosed properties, which they decided to sell to community developers for one dollar, and in exchange, the developer built affordable homes and apartments. Due to the huge success of the program, this low-cost inventory is now nearly depleted, and new challenges abound. “It’s hard enough to develop affordable housing with today’s rising construction costs; imagine adding New York City’s high acquisition prices to the cost of development,” Kate says.

“In today’s environment, CDCs have to be extremely entrepreneurial,” explains Kate. “The Fifth Avenue Committee, a Brooklyn CDC we work with, recently launched an initiative to build affordable housing in the underutilized space on top of public libraries. This innovative approach solves two problems at once. Outdated and deteriorating libraries are modernized and rejuvenated, and much-needed affordable housing is brought to a neighborhood where space for new housing is at a premium. Putting a project like this together requires a whole new approach to doing business; CDCs are redefining as they adapt to this changing environment.”

Kate started at LISC as a community development officer (CDO), responsible for a broad portfolio of CDCs, working on whatever deals her CDCs were developing. “You build a broader array of skills working with multiple partners on a wide variety of projects—an approach that also helps keep you interested and challenged day-to-day. This structure also benefits the CDCs; with a single point person, a group gets a true advocate for its organization.”

Currently, as director of housing, Kate oversees the CDOs and her primary focus has shifted to management: training, troubleshooting, supervising, as well as spending time outside the office making sure the work CDCs are doing is visible.

Kate’s path to LISC led her through several different states and disciplines. After she graduated from Amherst College, she moved to San Francisco and began work at the Federal Reserve Bank. She then earned her MBA at Wharton, which was “a great complement to my liberal arts education,” Kate says. “I’ve always been committed to public interest work, but believe that nonprofits should function just as entrepreneurially, creatively, and efficiently as for-profit companies, with the same level of accountability to their stakeholders.”

After graduating, Kate moved to New York to continue work she had started with Edison Schools during the previous summer—helping open a charter school on the South Side of Chicago, and leading Edison’s national principal-recruitment efforts. From Edison, Kate joined LISC, where she has been for the past five and a half years. She continues her commitment to bringing quality education to low-income communities by serving on the board of trustees of the Harlem Link Charter School.

“I am wired to seek out challenges in my work, and this work is certainly challenging,” Kate notes. “A job like this feeds all parts of me. I love numbers, and I get to spend a lot of time on financial modeling and underwriting. Relationship building is another critical facet of each day, and I enjoy the strong team environment here at LISC. Finally, I’m constantly energized by being part of the citywide effort to strengthen New York City’s most vulnerable families and communities.”

Cathleen Everett


In Washington, Jennie concentrates on LISC’s strategic direction

Over its 25-year history, LISC has opened 32 offices in cities across the country. At its national center in Washington, D.C., Jennie Bartlett ’00 focuses on the broad organizational view of this community development corporation.

“For the last two and a half years my work has involved supporting and strengthening our local offices,” Jennie explains, “which includes brokering partnerships, working with them on developing their program plans, and managing internal processes to facilitate an efficient and fluid relationship between local operations and national oversight.”

During her senior year at Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut)—where she designed a major in international urban studies with a minor in architecture—Jennie took a community organizing class, through which she discovered LISC. She was drawn to the organization’s mission and its work in Hartford on homeownership and community development. Working with LISC as an intern, she focused her senior thesis on measuring the impact of homeownership on the revitalization of two Hartford neighborhoods. After graduation, she stayed with LISC at the national level.

Since 2005, Jennie has worked at a corporate-wide strategic plan. “Assessing the history of the company over its 25 years of existence—determining what’s still relevant, how the environment has changed, how to add more value—has been an incredible experience,” she says. LISC’s internal committee began with big questions: Can we achieve something locally when economic forces are increasingly regional, national and international? Can community development corporations (CDCs) accomplish something significant enough to affect the fundamentals of local life?

The metrics of success (noted at the start of this article) measure the organization’s success. “We saw how far we’d come, but we needed to address whether we could sustain a lasting impact, rather than just injecting short-term support,” Jennie says. “We found that we can achieve a lasting impact, but the question remains, ‘How do we know these benefits will continue to grow?’”

From these discussions emerged five program objectives that, taken together, contribute to comprehensive community health and sustainability: expanding capital investment in housing and other real estate; increasing family income and wealth; stimulating economic activity—connecting to regional economy; improving access to quality education; and supporting healthy environments and lifestyles.

“We began as an affordable housing company, so we don’t want to move too far from our core competency, but we don’t want to limit ourselves either,” Jennie explains. “You need more than affordable housing to build and sustain a thriving community. You need to develop the entire neighborhood—environmental and child-care development, business and education.” An example of this comprehensive development is in LISC’s affiliation with the National Football League Grassroots Program, which has donated $2.5 million so that 16 cities around the country—from Seattle, Washington, to Jacksonville, Florida, to Brookline, Massachusetts—can build or improve upon existing commu-nity football fields.

“LISC is best at organizing and building partnerships at the local level,” Jennie says, “and we bring to the table our ability to provide national loan capital to help fund local initiatives. Choosing 11 pilot sites for the new sustainable plan was complicated, but we worked hard to choose the local offices that were already engaged in comprehensive community development and could successfully achieve the sustainable communities goals in five years. One of the greatest challenges of initiating the strategic plan is communicating its message and its vision, both nationally and locally. I am excited to be a part of this ongoing process.”

Jennie’s path to LISC started with Milton. “I left Milton with the idea that I was charged with being an active, contributing member of society. Milton really instilled a sense of obligation in me, as well as a sense of capability.

“Our work at LISC demands fluency in a range of components—real estate, community development, finance, partnership building, strategic management. I love that this work combines so many fields of study and areas of interest. LISC has extremely high intellectual capital; similar to my experience at Milton, the company brings together smart, diverse, socially aware people who are dedicated to a mission. Addressing, on a daily basis, the economic and social dilemma of distressed urban and rural communities has been a profoundly grounding and educational experience.”

Erin Hoodlet

 

Back to Magazine