Celebrating 40 Years of Community Driven Development

Dear Friends, Neighbors and Partners,

At New Kensington Community Development Corporation (NKCDC), we believe community development can and should benefit all residents. Guided by this belief, we continue to carry out 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.

NKCDC was founded 40 years ago by local leaders of a neighborhood association to address housing needs in their community. Our first ten years focused on rehabilitating vacant homes and providing utility assistance, foreclosure prevention, first-time homebuyer support, and other housing services. In 1995, residents identified other quality-of-life issues impacting the area and accepted the challenge to address them. As a result, the organization became the first in the region to use vacant land management as a strategy to address blight and promote neighborhood revitalization. The City replicated this model, and it has since served as a successful and scalable approach to vacant land management.

Innovation in vacant land management is just one example, among many during NKCDC’s 40 years of service to neighbors of Fishtown, Port Richmond, and Kensington, of how we have adapted and responded to the changing needs of the communities we serve while remaining steadfast in our commitment to stabilize housing and promote neighborhood revitalization. In the ’90s and 2000s, Fishtown and East Kensington experienced development at astonishing paces as real estate speculation and rising home costs spurred gentrification and displacement. Today, the portion of Kensington north of Lehigh Avenue faces similar threats. Continuing our tradition of adapting to the changing needs of the communities we serve, in 2018 — in direct response to the challenges facing long-time residents in our service area north of Lehigh Avenue — NKCDC completed a planned move from our offices in East Kensington to become the anchor of the newly renovated affordable housing at Orinoka Mills, located a block south from the Market-Frankford Somerset Station.

The last five years have presented unprecedented challenges to the communities we serve, including the COVID-19 pandemic and a national racial reckoning. These challenges have been compounded by ongoing federal attacks on cities that disproportionately impact our most vulnerable citizens. Just as we did in our first 35 years, we have spent the last five years successfully building on our strengths to respond with solutions, leading to NKCDC not only surviving, but thriving as an organization. Our commitment to community-driven, trauma-informed, and equity-focused strategies allows us to adapt and respond to the changing priorities of the communities we serve. While new challenges arise, they present opportunities to deepen our engagement with our neighbors and work towards building a more equitable and people-first Philadelphia.

Serving one of the largest and most diverse service areas of any community development corporation in Philadelphia, we continue to meet a variety of deepening needs. Under the continued governance of our dedicated Board of Directors, comprised entirely of residents from our service area, our operating budget and staff have nearly doubled in size over the last five years. We have committed targeting resources toward catalytic, strategic physical development while cultivating community engagement and growing direct services to address the complexity of challenges that rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods like ours face. We have broadened our services from primarily housing and economic development supports to include programs that address the social determinants of health. Today, NKCDC’s work, in response to stated community priorities, now includes violence intervention, urban agriculture, nutrition education, and community health work, in addition to housing services and economic development.

While we may look different as an organization, we have maintained our commitment to addressing the ever-changing needs of our community through a comprehensive, upstream approach to solving problems. NKCDC sees the strengths and vision of the communities that we serve and continues to align available resources and expertise to meet the urgency of the moment and the responsibility for providing sustainable solutions. At the same time, we expand and support an engaged and participatory civil society. Looking ahead, we will execute our mission through our latest strategic plan, which focuses on achieving four interconnected goals over the next three years: strengthen internal infrastructure, expand access to opportunity, revitalize physical spaces, and center community voice – to ensure neighbors can live in, and actively shape, their neighborhoods of choice.

This 40-Year Anniversary Report serves as both an introduction to NKCDC for those who may not know our work and a reintroduction to the organization for those who may not be familiar with many of our new and exciting initiatives. We have always been stronger with your assistance. Whether as an active resident, volunteer, partner organization, or donor, there are opportunities for each of us to participate in the future of our communities. If you have collaborated with us in the past, we are better for it. If you have yet to connect with us, we welcome your participation; there is space for everyone where we are going. We thank you all for your support over our first four decades and look forward to continuing to build an equitable, participatory, and people-first community during our next four decades.

Dr. Bill McKinney
Executive Director
NKCDC