New Hanover Community Endowment shares affordable housing strategy at public meeting

WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) - The New Hanover Community Endowment Board broke down what it plans to do with the $19 million it recently announced will go towards affordable housing.

One leader in the organization said it’s one of their top priorities for the year ahead.

“Nationwide, we are really seeing an affordable housing crisis and we are seeing that also in our local community,” Terri Burhans, network officer for the New Hanover Community Endowment said at the endowment’s public meeting Wednesday night. “Housing is so many things, it affects the whole person. So our health and happiness really starts with housing. It was important for us to look at that closely and invest in that.”

In the Endowment’s 2023 grant cycle, they didn’t allocate any funding toward affordable housing nonprofits. Executive Vice President of Programs and Operations Lakesha McDay said they realized there was a need for it, though.

“In 2023, we had $330 million worth of requests through grant applications, about $50 million of that was for housing,” McDay said.

McDay said the reason they skipped out on funding those nonprofits was because the affordable housing strategic initiative was already in the works. She said they worked with many of those nonprofits to learn what they wanted to see out of the initiative before announcing it.

The initiative and funding will focus on three key areas.

• Capital -- would see the creation of a group of experts on affordable housing to guide the community
• Production -- would see funding go towards groups who build new units or rehabilitate old housing
• Stabilization -- would fund affordable housing nonprofits so they can keep up operations.

“The strategy is really about stabilizing. Stabilizing the work that’s happening,” Burhans said. “Helping to support and prop up the people doing the work as it relates to what it takes to keep their doors open.”

Leaders with the Endowment also took questions from the community in a listening session. This was the first public meeting the Endowment has held since a string of staff and board resignations. Most notably, former CEO William Buster stepped down from his role in February.

Many of the questions had to do with the Endowment’s transparency on both the grant process and the hiring process to fill the CEO position. McDay told the public the Endowment is always looking for new ways to improve its communication with the public.

“Anytime that we get feedback, it gives us the opportunity to reflect. And that’s what we want to do, we want to be good listeners, we want to reflect on the ways in which we’ve done things,” McDay said. “It’s really important they hold us accountable to the things we’ve outlined in our mission and our values.”

The Endowment board also announced a grant at Wednesday’s meeting of $8.7 million that will go towards New Hanover County Schools. The funds will be given to the district over the next three years.

The money is to be used for the specific purpose of hiring 26 “literacy facilitators” who will be at each elementary school and pre-K center. The goal is to increase the number of students reading at or above grade level by 3rd grade. The board approved the grant at its June 20 meeting. The New Hanover County School Board will consider the grant for a vote at its July meeting.

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