Building Healthier, More Equitable Communities (BHEC) Asbury Park, New Jersey

A Single-State Approach with Collective Action.  Led and managed by the Reinvestment Fund, a Philadelphia-based Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), BHEC was designed to address the social determinants of health through cross-sector collaborations in four New Jersey communities – Asbury Park, Camden, Newark, and Paterson.  BHEC’s goal was to build healthier communities by improving the social, economic, and environmental conditions that enable all residents, especially low-income residents and residents of color, to improve their well-being. Overall, the final evaluation found that BHEC was successful in: a) advancing numerous built environment projects in all four cities – including affordable housing, mixed-use developments, and new community spaces; b) strengthening the food security and healthy food access ecosystems at the neighborhood, city, county, and state levels; and c) bolstering local community development systems more holistically.

The BHEC city teams advanced 19 built environment projects during the initiative – 11 of which benefitted from direct BHEC assistance.  The BHEC projects attracted $103.0 million in total investments – nearly $4.7 million from BHEC resources and $98.0 million from public, private, and philanthropic sources for an impressive leverage ratio just short of 20:1.  Through the healthy food access work, city teams grew their networks to include new relationships with food pantries, corner bodegas, senior housing developments, farmers’ markets, hospital systems, and other community spaces; and established new partnerships with growers including urban, small, and disadvantaged farmers. Deeper cross-sector relationships fostered by the BHEC teams demonstrably led to new capacities for some participating organizations, attracted new resources, infused a health equity lens into the work, and reinvigorated the engagement and empowerment of residents.

Prioritizing the West Side Neighborhood. The seaside city of Asbury Park, New Jersey has a population of just over 15,000 people.  Predictably, the Asbury Park neighborhoods closer to the city’s signature beach and boardwalk, like many other coastal areas, continue to attract investments as desirable cultural and tourist destinations. At the same time, previously thriving neighborhoods like the city’s West Side – faced decades of disinvestment, with limited access to healthcare, substandard and unaffordable housing, and inadequate access to fresh, healthy food, leading to poor health outcomes underpinned by poverty. But the opportunity, driven by local nonprofits and resident leaders, was clear that Asbury Park was a place poised to flourish for all residents, inclusive of the West Side.

Local Leaders Doing Developing Better.  Interfaith Neighbors has been engaged as a community developer and service provider in the city for more than three decades.  Its work, and those of its partners on the BHEC team, has had a particular focus on the revitalization of the West Side community and the Springwood Avenue corridor that runs through the neighborhood. Serving as the lead organization for Asbury Park’s BHEC team, Interfaith Neighbors organized a cross-sector coalition with the City of Asbury Park, Westside Citizens United, New Jersey Natural Gas, Hackensack Meridian Health System, Boys & Girls Club of Monmouth County, Asbury Fresh, Asbury Park Housing Authority, and Rutgers University Sustainability Practicum. Many of these partners had coordinated in community development and engagement with Interfaith Neighbors in the years prior to BHEC and were part of planning that served as the basis of successful applications to the State of New Jersey’s Neighborhood Revitalization Tax Credit program.

Making Community Impact.  All of Interfaith Neighbors program activities – centered on food security and healthy eating, development and rehabilitation of safe affordable housing, and workforce and career development – have served to address the social determinants of health, in line with the BHEC initiative’s goal to infuse a health equity framework for this ongoing work and provide resources that helped to elevate its efforts and expand its impacts. The completion of several of Interfaith Neighbors’ development projects was a result.

• Wealth and Homeownership. Interfaith Neighbors built ten new homes facing Springwood Avenue making homeownership opportunities affordable for low- and moderate-income families by including separate rental units with each home that provide the purchaser with additional income.
• Workforce Development. Interfaith also cut the ribbons on a new Launch Center to house its workforce development and job training programs.
• Early Childhood Education. The spectacularly colorful Dr. Lorenzo Harris Jr. Early Childhood Learning Center for kids aged from 3 months to 5 years old opened in 2023.
• Healthy, Fresh Food. Interfaith also made progress on an expansion of its Kula Farm facilities which already included an urban garden and a state-of-the-art hydroponic greenhouse that serves as a social enterprise selling herbs and vegetables to local restaurants and provides residents of the neighborhood with access to the gardens and the produce grown there.
• Community Space. BHEC had a direct impact on the built environment efforts by providing pre-development resources and a low-interest loan for the planned Marmora Center on Springwood Avenue, a 30,000 square foot mixed-use facility that will include affordable housing, new offices, and community spaces – including a fitness center and an Asbury Park museum.

Addressing the Broader Food Ecosystem.  BHEC also had a significant impact on Interfaith Neighbors’ presence in the food security and healthy food access space.  Operating resources from BHEC allowed Interfaith to hire a BHEC coordinator whose accomplishments were extraordinary.  She organized local food pantries and unique community spaces into the Community Food Connection which began with 10 sites in 2021 and grew to 35 sites by the end of 2024.  This coalition then led various initiatives to bring healthy produce to low-income residents in Asbury Park and across Monmouth County including working with Asbury Fresh to help farmers’ markets get authorized and set up to accept SNAP Benefits and purchasing produce from two local farmers — Fernwood Farm and Heidaway Farm – that was delivered to the pantry sites.  The BHEC coordinator also developed a relationship with the Rutgers Sustainability Practicum that organized students to study the food ecosystem in Monmouth County and did additional research on Food Policy Council models. The students’ research has led to the formation of a Monmouth county-level Food System and Access Working Group that aspires to improve program coordination and policy development for healthy food access and food security in the county.

And, by bringing a health equity lens to Asbury Park, the BHEC coordinator secured an Interfaith Neighbors leadership role on the Mayor’s Wellness Committee that has advanced physical activity and healthy food programming and secured the grant funds to launch a city-wide Blue Bishops Living Well physical and mental health initiative.  The initiative was modeled after Blue Zones, which are places where people tend to live longer and healthier lives on average.

The Opportunities Ahead.  While the statewide BHEC program coordination has wound down, the work it advanced will continue in Asbury Park.  Interfaith’s Marmora Center is expected to break ground in the fall of 2025, with construction completed by the end of 2026.  And, with the creation of new office space in this facility, Interfaith Neighbors will relocate from its current headquarters on 810 Main Street in Asbury Park and begin the replacement of those buildings into a new affordable housing development, the first of its kind on the East Side of the city.

As of September 2025, Interfaith Neighbors is nearing the completion of its Kula Farm Expansion project.  With new funding from the RWJF, the vision is to brand the newly upgraded facility as the Center for Food Security and Health Equity.  Interfaith Neighbors plans to make the Center a place for increased resident engagement through the provision of as many as 120 related educational and community building programs throughout the year.

The Center for Food Security and Health Equity will serve as a physical hub within the West Side community of Asbury Park that will further increase interest and participation of the community – a priority area for Interfaith Neighbor’s continued work toward better life outcomes for all of Asbury Park’s residents. To learn more about how to partner with Interfaith Neighbors or to invest in their exciting work, call 732-775-0525 or email info@interfaithneighbors.org.

Acknowledgements
A very special thanks to Marco Navarro and Maryam Khojasteh from the RWJF for their funding support and thought partnership of BHEC; Alyssa Saunders and colleagues at Mt. Auburn Associates for evaluation and learning partnership; our many New Jersey state-level advisors; our colleagues at Reinvestment Fund, specifically Leah Rusenko, Jacob Kraybill, and Sara Vernon Sterman; and in humble gratitude to our city team partners from Asbury Park for their contributions and collaboration, including, but not limited to – Paul McEvily, Chip Craig, and Karyn Moskowitz. Learn more about the BHEC initiative HERE and its evaluation reports HERE.