Building Healthier, More Equitable Communities (BHEC) Newark, 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, and hospital systems and established new partnerships with urban, small, and disadvantaged farmers. Deeper cross-sector relationships fostered among the BHEC team members led to new capacities for some participating organizations, attracted new resources, reinvigorated the engagement and empowerment of residents, and infused the approach to the work with a health equity lens.

How Newark Prioritized the Fairmount Heights Neighborhood.  Newark is experiencing a severe housing affordability crisis. Median home prices have risen sharply over many years. More than half of Newark renters and almost half of its homeowners are severely cost-burdened – paying more than 50% of their incomes on housing and related expenses.  At the same time, institutional investors are exacerbating the housing affordability crisis by buying up Newark’s housing stock and bidding up prices. The Fairmount neighborhood was the central focus on the BHEC community development effort in Newark. The neighborhood is comprised of approximately 50 city blocks between Central Avenue and South Orange Avenue next to the Fairmount Cemetery.  About 75% of the households are renters.

Local Leaders Working Together.  ULEC assembled a team of partners engaged in Fairmount Heights and surrounding areas that included University Hospital, the City of Newark, New Community Corporation (NCC), LISC New Jersey, the Victoria Foundation, Fairmount Heights Neighborhood Association, and L+M Development Partners and Type A Projects.  As the initiative evolved, ULEC brought in new partners, including MEND, to advance the BHEC related work in the food security and healthy food access space.  Throughout the initiative, ULEC, New Community Corporation, and University Hospital remained consistently engaged with one another; starting partnerships to bring in community health workers, sharing resources on development projects, working together on various healthy lifestyle efforts, and coordinating on policy initiatives at the city level.  The initiative provided the connection that encouraged improved communication across collaborators, even when working on distinct projects. There was a deeper awareness of coordinated activities.

Making Local Impact.  Arguably one of the most important impacts of the BHEC initiative was that it incentivized ULEC to revisit its Neighborhood Revitalization Tax Credit (NRTC) plan for the Fairmount neighborhood and organize it with a social determinants of health lens. The new approach deepened ULEC’s conviction to frame the team’s efforts as providing safe, stable affordable housing, advancing healthy living programming and access to healthy food, building social capital through space for the community to gather and increasing resident engagement and empowerment. Over the course of the effort, BHEC team members completed several built environment projects.

• Building Homeownership. ULEC and NCC each finished single-family homeownership developments that included pre-development financial resources from the BHEC initiative. The ULEC development team completed the Fairmount Phase II homeownership project that has 10 duplexes, or 20 homes.  Fairmount Phase II was complex: It involved an innovative use of New Markets Tax Credits, State of New Jersey Affordable Housing Trust Fund, and City of Newark HOME resources, as well as a BHEC program-related investment from the Reinvestment Fund.  Its 10 income-eligible homebuyers benefited from pre-purchase homeownership counseling from ULEC and qualified for mortgages using the expected income from the rental units incorporated in their homes.
• Healthy Fresh Food. With its hiring of a BHEC coordinator, ULEC greatly expanded its existing efforts to provide food security and healthy food access to its Fairmount neighbors.  It expanded its reach through many new partnerships with organizations like Branch Brook Park Greenhouse, MEND, and the Food and Health Equity Coalition of Essex County to advance policy and practice.  Its array of programming grew to include fresh produce at its weekly food pantry, an expanded urban gardening effort, cooking demonstrations, culinary courses, and monthly healthy lifestyles events.
• Community Space. Along with partners from LISC, Victoria Foundation, and the City of Newark, ULEC was able to cut the ribbon on the redevelopment of a former KABOOM! site into the new Fairmount Heights playground for kids.  ULEC also used BHEC resources to upgrade the appliances for a commercial kitchen and established a Healthy Lifestyle Center as the hub for healthy lifestyle activities.

The Opportunities Ahead.  ULEC has been expanding its capacities and amassing a very strong development pipeline.  ULEC partner RPM has broken ground on Fairmount Commons, a 70-unit Low-Income Housing Tax Credit-funded affordable housing project on South Orange Avenue, that will include 9,000 square feet of community space on the ground floor that will become a ULEC-managed literacy center to help neighborhood kids improve their reading scores.  On adjacent land, ULEC will lead the development of Fairmount Commons Homes – 28 newly built affordable homes for sale to income-eligible homebuyers.  ULEC will move forward with its plans to develop a 4-acre site (3 acres of which were acquired from Public Service Enterprise Group Inc (PSEG) as settlement to a dispute related to the utility’s siting of a switching station nearby).  The vision for the site is to create a community with homes, retail, and new office space for ULEC.

Crowning the expected delivery of these transformational built environment projects near Fairmount is the Reservoir Homes revitalization. As a recognition of their demonstrated capacities to lead community development projects, ULEC was selected by HUD and the City of Newark to serve as the receiver for this distressed Section 8 development.  In 2024, ULEC managed the successful relocation of the existing residents at the property.  With predevelopment support from the RWJF, ULEC is now planning the revitalization project with aspirations to promote upward mobility for its future residents of an 80-unit, mixed-income, multi-generational community serving very low-income renters and low-income homeowners.  The vision includes incorporating models that provide residents with wealth-building paths of shared equity and housing choice voucher homeownership models, and the ability to generate sweat equity and garnering construction trades skills by working on the development.  ULEC also has ambitions to make Reservoir homes an education-anchored community with a strong connection to the Michelle Obama Elementary School next door and programs to enrich the success of the students and their families.  This programming will likely include literacy programs for adults, after-school tutoring, and family wellness services.  And, all of this work will be driven with a motivation to address the social determinants of health toward the ultimate goals of better life outcomes for the families and the creation of intergenerational wealth.  To learn more about how to partner with the Urban League of Essex County or to invest in their work, call 973-624-9535 or email info@ulec.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 Jennifer Fassbender, Jacob Kraybill, and Sara Vernon Sterman; and in humble gratitude to our city team partners from Newark for their contributions and collaboration, primarily Vivian Fraser and Dr. Michelle Scott. Learn more about the BHEC initiative HERE and its evaluation reports HERE.