Enterprise Community Partners, Inc Celebrating 40 Years In The Business
Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. (Enterprise) is a nonprofit corporation celebrating 40 years in the business of addressing the housing needs of residents of America’s communities that are inadequately met by the nation’s private sector housing market. The average income earned by the residents of these communities and the accompanying economic infrastructure lacks the ability to attract the private investment required to build housing in these communities.
Enterprise works with these communities to overcome the obstacles preventing the flow of private sector investments needed to develop housing and to improve the overall quality of life for the residents living in these communities. The Enterprise method for improving these communities includes listening to the residents, designing and testing solutions, implementing innovations to attract financial markets, and deploying the best practice in the housing industry.
The Enterprise method of developing communities was derived and made possible by philanthropic contributions and the housing industry experiences of James Rouse. The Rouse Company is credited with developing the shopping mall, planned communities, and festival marketplaces, which successfully attracted the private investment needed to revitalize numerous downtown districts of cities and rural communities throughout the nation.
The success of the Rouse Company in attracting private investment is primarily due to the intrinsic need for housing and places to meet and gather for social, cultural, and economic purposes by all communities. Enterprise used the same innovative Rouse Company techniques, methods, and financial resources to help attract private investments to meet the same intrinsic needs of underserved communities.
During the past 40 years, Enterprise’s effort included over $70 billion invested, 873,000 homes, 576,000 patient visits annually, 16,200 school seats, and millions of lives changed for communities unable to attract private investment. These efforts created places where community residences can meet and work toward upward mobility.
Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) are in communities unable to attract private sector investment for housing and economic development. These communities possess economic and demographic characteristics that fall below the performance of the communities capable of attracting private investment for housing and business development.
Despite these deficiencies, HBCUs do extremely well in fulfilling their primary mission of providing places for developing the minds of the students whose ancestors were deprived, for whatever reasons, of the opportunity to acquire the essential skills and knowledge required to survive in a free market democratic society. In their role as leading institutions within these communities, HBCUs are likely candidates to form a partnership with Enterprise, which require community-based leadership before attempting to implement a housing or community development project.
The combination of an HBCU, local community leadership, and the technical expertise and resources of Enterprise may successfully result in the transformation of HBCUs and their surrounding communities into homes and community places that foster upward economic mobility and or are capable of attracting future generations of HBCU students.
The HBCU Community Development Corporation is here to help your HBCU start the process of becoming a partner in a community development project.
If your HBCU needs assistance getting started, contact us at www.hbcucdc.com.
https://www.enterprisecommunity.org/
