$500-Million Pledged for Urban Development

A collaborative program made up of foundations, financial institutions, and the federal government has pledged $500-million over the next 10 years to help improve inner-city housing, revitalize commercial strips, and support neighborhood centers.

The commitment by the group, called Living Cities, represents a doubling of the financial involvement it made to healing urban ills during the past decade. Founded in 1991 as the National Community Development Initiative, Living Cities distributes money to 23 cities in the United States for use by community-development corporations. Much of the money goes toward building homes for low- and moderate-income families and creation of commercial space in poor neighborhoods.

The increased commitment comes at a time when many city centers have twice the poverty rates of suburbs, according to U.S. Census Bureau figures.

“Even as many benefited from the economic boom of the 1990s, the bottom 20 percent of the population actually lost ground,” says Hodding Carter III, president of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, in Miami. Mr. Carter is also a member of Living Cities’ executive committee. “The overall picture tells us that, while there have been specific instances of real improvement, there is a continuing need for funding these efforts.”

$104-Million Awarded

Much of Living Cities’ first wave of contributions — $104-million in grants and low-interest loans during the next three years — will go to supporting the two largest nonprofit groups that work in community development: the Enterprise Foundation, in Columbia, Md., and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, in New York.

In addition to the Knight Foundation, the foundations making contributions to Living Cities include: the Annie E. Casey Foundation, in Baltimore; the Fannie Mae Foundation, in Washington; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in Princeton, N.J.; and the Rockefeller Foundation, in New York. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of Community Services are also members of the collaborative group, which includes several major private lenders.

More information is available from Living Cities, 330 West 108th Street, New York, N.Y. 10025; (212) 663-2078, http://www.livingcities.org.