A national housing counseling program designed and administered by NeighborWorks America is working to make an impact. The Housing Stability Counseling Program (HSCP) was designed to support families and individuals who are facing foreclosure, eviction or homelessness as a result of pandemic-related economic fallout. NeighborWorks America was charged with implementing the $100 million program as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. 

A national housing counseling program designed and administered by NeighborWorks America is working to make an impact. The Housing Stability Counseling Program (HSCP) was designed to support families and individuals who are facing foreclosure, eviction or homelessness as a result of pandemic-related economic fallout. NeighborWorks America was charged with implementing the $100 million program as part of the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. 

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.

NeighborWorks network organizations across the country celebrated NeighborWorks Week with paint, plants, trash pickups, cards, signs, hammers, nails, food, and all of the other trappings you’d expect in a community celebration. Held each year the first full week in June, NeighborWorks Week highlights the collective impact of NeighborWorks America’s nearly 250 network nonprofits. The week, celebrated nationally since 1983, also celebrates the resiliency and strength of communities.

When Billy Palmer received the Dorothy Richardson Award for Resident Leadership in 2015, he was a board member for NeighborWorks Salt Lake and chairman of the organization’s YouthWorks committee. Palmer had been involved with the program since he was 16, when he went to court for noncompliance.

Maria Garciaz came to NeighborWorks Salt Lake as a volunteer. She’d been working in juvenile court as a probation officer, sometimes with gang members, and the organization asked her to offer advice on a youth program to help teens build life skills. “I fell in love with the work,” she says. When YouthWorks finally came into being, she submitted an application to head the program. That was her path to community organizing.
 

For a learning cohort process supported by NeighborWorks America, community development organizations worked hand in hand with arts organizations as they re-imagined the future of their neighborhoods. What they found was often unexpected and revealed ways that the milestones found on the journey are just as important as the final destination. 

Isileli Tausinga says people often wonder: Why leave a beautiful island to come to the desert in Utah? His answer? Education, religion and opportunity.