In Aurora, too many households – 1 in 6 – have zero net-worth, says Rick Guzman, CEO of The Neighbor Project (TNP), a NeighborWorks network organization. His nonprofit formed in 2018 to do something about it, with a focus on helping low- to moderate-income individuals build financial health and wealth. Much of this takes place through the newly formed Aurora Financial Empowerment Center. Now in its second year of operation, the center has already served 672 families. 

When a crisis strikes, NeighborWorks network organizations have tools to help. During the pandemic, one of the most visible tools was financial counseling, reports Michael Rayder, associate director of development with Maine's Avesta Housing. Individuals in Avesta's apartment rental homes lost jobs, hours and wages. "They needed to re-evaluate how they managed their budgets," Rayder says. "Financial capability was the way for us to provide services for people who were suddenly in crisis mode."

At REACH Community Development, a NeighborWorks network organization in Portland, Oregon, residents began the pandemic by controlling what they could. They wore masks and kept a proper social distance. They worked and when they couldn't, they filed for unemployment. 

Trees surround the four-story project at 16th and F Streets in Sacramento, California. On that corner, in what's known as the City of Trees, NeighborWorks network organization Mutual Housing is overseeing the construction of its first affordable, LGBTQIA+-welcoming senior housing project. The project is believed to be the first of its kind in the central valley, but leaders hope it won't be the last. 

Jennifer Sun's parents had strong opinions about what her career path should be. Her mom wanted her to be a teacher. Her father wanted her to have a corporate job. They'd fled Communist China for Taiwan and left Taiwan for the United States, and security, financially and otherwise, was paramount to them.
 

"It's about people," says Wayne Meyer, chief executive officer of New Jersey Community Capital. That's one reason he serves as mentor for the Puerto Rico Nonprofit Leadership Development Initiative.

On a typical weekday, Rollin Wood, executive director for the Native Partnership for Housing (NPH) might be on a Zoom conference call, where you'd expect to find an executive director in 2020 – or he might be driving down Interstate 40, with a load of construction materials for a home being built on or near the Navajo reservation in New Mexico.

The need to address racial justice is in the spotlight in America, more now than it's been in decades, says Susan M. Ifill, NeighborWorks America's chief operating officer. She highlighted other hallmarks of this time, such as the pandemic contributing to an economic decline that is "touching more industries, people and local municipalities, simultaneously than ever before. The impact on communities of color is almost immeasurable."