At NKCDC, we believe that community development can and should benefit the entire community.
Our Intersecting Values
Community Driven
NKCDC believes community development can and should benefit all residents. We draw our inspiration and goals—and our staff and board—from the communities we serve.
Trauma Informed
The stress of poverty, violence, racism, disinvestment, and the opioid epidemic traumatizes individuals and neighborhoods. NKCDC calls on community strengths to face our shared problems. We build networks to bring healing to clients, community members, and staff.
Equity Focused
At NKCDC, racial equity is not a fashion statement—it is a deeply held value and a tool to create lasting change. Equity means we focus on the areas of greatest need and opportunity. Equity means the people impacted by our work lead it.
OUR MISSION
NKCDC advances social equity and economic empowerment by nurturing and creating opportunities for neighbors to live in, and actively shape, their neighborhoods of choice.
Strategic Priorities
NKCDC fosters equitable, healthy, and thriving communities. As a trusted convener, collaborator, and service provider, we use a strategic combination of real estate development, community engagement, and people-centered direct services to ensure all of our neighbors can remain, and thrive, where they choose to live. Whether we are building affordable housing or helping residents build their wealth, we pledge to promote equity, stability, and safety in all we do, with a sharp focus on those most at risk of being displaced
Creating communities of choice
NKCDC strengthens and invests in the skills and leadership of the communities we serve to drive long-lasting and creative solutions to our most complex problems. We organize and assist business associations and civic groups. We collaborate with organizations. We focus on the assets of the community to build upon the strengths and resilience of the neighborhood.
Foster physical development that fights displacement
In rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods, real estate and economic development strategies can stabilize key corridors, provide direct services to residents, and promote economic opportunities so residents and businesses can remain and thrive where they choose to live. We integrate housing services with a community-driven and resident-led real estate development strategy. We build and rehab deeply affordable apartments, single-family homes, mixed-use buildings, commercial storefronts, greenspaces, and more.
Connect people to critical resources and programs
Social determinants of health—factors like housing, safety, environment, social connection, education, employment, income—have a profound effect on individual and community health. Through housing services, nutrition education and community gardening, community health workers, economic development, violence prevention, and more, NKCDC improves community health outcomes.
NKCDC is a NeighborWorks member organization. NeighborWorks America is a nonpartisan nonprofit chartered by the U.S. Congress in 1978. NeighborWorks builds the skills, supplements the funding, and amplifies the reach of organizations like NKCDC so we can leverage additional resources to achieve our mission.
Annual Report
At New Kensington Community Development Corporation, we believe community development can and should benefit all residents. For 40 years, that belief has guided our mission to advance social equity and economic empowerment by nurturing and creating opportunities for neighbors to live in, and actively shape, their neighborhoods of choice.
Community Survey
Every three years NKCDC takes a survey of Kensington Philadelphia to learn how residents are thinking and feeling about their neighborhood.
NKCDC in the news
National and local news stories, blogs, audio and video mentioning NKCDC.
We use a strategic combination of real estate development, community engagement, and people-centered direct services to ensure all of our neighbors can remain—and thrive—where they choose to live.
Whether we are building affordable housing or helping residents build their wealth, we pledge to promote equity, stability, and safety in all we do, with a sharp focus on those most at risk of being displaced.
Strategic Plan
We believe neighborhood development can and should benefit all our neighbors.
Our 2025-2028 strategic plan outlines our vision of healthy, equitable, and sustainable neighborhoods where all community members can access opportunities and participate in decision making to share future community building.
Partners & Funders
We couldn’t do half our work without the support of a whole community of partners and funders.
Staff & Board
With more than 30 full-time and 15 part-time employees, NKCDC staff bring resources to local businesses and residents—and provide housing services across Philadelphia.
Our History
Fishtown was once Kensington, and Kensington was once “the workshop of the world.” NKCDC has worked in the community since 1985. We are a proud member of NeighborWorks America, a congressionally chartered national network.