When Michelle Neugebauer came onboard in 1983 as the first full-time employee at the Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation<\/a> (CHLDC), it was an entirely different time in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n Residents \u2014 mostly white and middle class \u2014 were fleeing the city\u2019s rapidly integrating neighborhoods. Landlords were abandoning properties, leaving tenants to scramble for ways to maintain residency in neglected, often structurally unsound buildings.<\/p>\n The city was also investing taxpayer dollars in organizing tenants, homeowners and communities in some of the most neglected neighborhoods. The NYC Commission on Human Rights had something called the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (other agencies have since had different programs with the same name). By 1978<\/a>, some of the numbers were already impressive. In Flatbush, Brooklyn, the program formed 57 tenant organizations just that year; in Southeast Queens, 79 block associations; in northeast Bronx, 14 tenant associations and 13 block associations.<\/p>\n \u201cThey would organize tenant and block groups, local development organizations and community development corporations, so that people would own and take back the neighborhood,\u201d Neugebauer recalls. In 1983, the program formed CHLDC.<\/p>\n Today, as residents flock back into NYC and developers scramble for every bit of property they can get their hands on, some of those same community-based organizations, including CHLDC, now struggle for visibility and relevance.<\/p>\n \u201cThese groups became less sexy over the years,\u201d says Steve Flax, who leads M&T Bank\u2019s community reinvestment work in the NYC region. Flax is also chair of the Change Capital Fund, a consortium of 16 community development funders in the region. The consortium is now halfway through a four-year commitment of $1 million each to five community-development organizations, including CHLDC.<\/p>\n Consortium members, including banks, foundations, CDFIs and one city agency, have been working together as far back as 1996 for some members. Many of those directly involved with the consortium formerly worked at some of the current and former consortium grantees. In the 1990s, Flax worked at the Fifth Avenue Committee, one of the other current grantees.<\/p>\n As a consortium, they\u2019ve historically encouraged grantees to explore next logical steps in serving their communities.<\/p>\n CHLDC, for example, has already developed over 400 units of affordable housing since 1983, but never in a building of more than 27 units. With funding from the consortium, they hired a project manager to develop one project with 60 units and a supermarket on the ground floor, and another project with 54 units of senior housing. CHLDC has also worked more than 15 years revitalizing the main commercial corridor in the area, improving storefronts and getting entrepreneurs of color, almost all of them residents of the area, set up along the corridor.<\/p>\n![\"Screen_Shot_2016-06-01_at_3.36.02_PM_920_597\"](\"http:\/\/changecapitalfund.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/Screen_Shot_2016-06-01_at_3.36.02_PM_920_597.png\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"nyc_consortium2\"](\"http:\/\/changecapitalfund.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/nyc_consortium2.png\")
\u201cThey\u2019re a group of true believers in community development,\u201d Neugebauer says. Because of that, they\u2019ve mostly stayed consistent as a group over the years, even using peer pressure among themselves to stay committed. \u201cThe consortium model allowed us to have political will internally at our own institutions to say we have to do this,\u201d Flax says.<\/p>\n