Forging resilient communities of opportunity and serving the DC metro area since 1982.
2024: A Year in Review LISC WASHINGTON, DC ANNUAL REPORT
We publish our annual reports yearly, but the cycle of change requires commitment that extends far beyond the 12-month calendar.”
Message from Leadership
Ramon Jacobson LISC DC Executive Director
Sitting in the audience last summer, watching the ribbon being cut on the sparkling Ward 8 gem that is Terrace Manor apartments, I reflected on how special it is to see a community development project come full circle after a seven year journey. We visited when the apartments were uninhabitable, and now a new, modern complex stands to provide dignity for those original hardy tenants and add more apartments for Washingtonians with modest incomes. We publish our annual reports yearly, but the cycle of change requires commitment that extends far beyond the 12-month calendar. In this annual report, we highlight just a few of the projects, partners, and initiatives that our funders and supporters enabled us to support in 2024. Know that your support gives us the resources and fuel to carry forth our legacy of impact into 2025 and beyond.
As the ribbon was cut, I realized my tie to Terrace Manor ran deeper. One of the residents noted that she and I shared more. Her granddaughter and my daughter were not just both seniors, at the same high school, studying voice. It went beyond that. The two seniors had starred in the school’s opera, playing mother and daughter. It is a blessing to play a small part in the quest for a more just, kind, and renewed community – OUR community.
By The Numbers
Impact is the heartbeat of a Community Development Financial Institution. It’s how we turn capital into opportunity and hope into progress. Here is a snapshot of our impact since 1982:
$596M
invested
$3B
leveraged
15,948
affordable homes and apartments
3.7M
square feet of commercial and community space
What does this impact look like on the ground?
Our Impact Stories
In 2024, LISC DC returned to the roots of community development, setting out on a bold mission to achieve 100 in-person engagements by year end. We connected with partners in laundry rooms, on rooftops, and through neighborhood walking tours. We deepened existing relationships, cultivated new ones, and continued our regional expansion efforts.
Terrace Manor: From Preservation to Rebirth
Seven years ago, residents of Terrace Manor apartments in Washington DC’s Ward 8 had endured years of neglect, were being displaced as the building decayed around them, and were facing a negligent landlord who was mired in bankruptcy proceedings. WC Smith Companies, along with legal advocates, joined 13 households to fight back.
In 2017, LISC stepped up to deliver a $6.9M acquisition loan and begin not just the preservation of Terrace Manor, but its rebirth. LISC drew on its DHCD Preservation Fund capital, a joint effort between LISC and DHCD, to ensure that we retain existing affordable homes and the people who live in them in a changing Washington, D.C.
In 2024, that promise was delivered. LISC DC joined WC Smith and partners to cut the ribbon on Terrace Manor’s new renaissance which unveiled a state-of-the-art 130 unit building with high quality and energy efficient affordable housing, replacing 70 dilapidated apartments and repudiating the prior neglect. Seven are permanent supportive housing units. As the original residents return, they have earned the dignity of these beautiful homes that sit just uphill from THEARC’s vibrant nonprofit cultural hub.
Hazel Hardware
Retail activity is foundational to neighborhood health; without retail, a neighborhood cannot provide what people need to fully thrive, and a community cannot recapture its growing economic dynamism. That’s why LISC invested $425,000 in Hazel Hardware, a new store in the heart of the Walter Reed Campus.
Created on 110 acres in 1908, the historic Walter Reed campus closed in the early 2000s and was transferred to the DC Government. Over the past 8 years, LISC has invested over $25 million in bilingual education, veterans and senior housing, supportive homeless housing, cooperatives, and other projects within and near the Walter Reed Campus.
Walter Reed MF Partners is redeveloping a historic building, which housed nurses and junior officers from 1911 to 1952, into 16,000 feet of retail and office space using New Market Tax Credits. The True Value store will be named Hazel’s Hardware in honor of General Hazel Johnson-Brown, the first African American woman general in the history of the U.S. Military. A cafe and office space will complete the project. LISC’s Broadstreet affiliate administered NMTC allocation for the project.
Project 100: Sights, Sites, and Insights
Whether the goal emerged from the caffeine or the camaraderie, our 2024 Coffee Break Kick Off fueled our team to take on an ambitious goal: 100 in-person engagements. After years of virtual meetings, webinars, and messaging, we committed to reconnect with our partners in person, face to face -- to see the sights, tour their project sites, and gain their insights. By the end of 2024, we can report, mission accomplished: Project 100, we surpassed the target!
These engagements encompassed the full umbrella of community development. You may have seen us at galas, groundbreakings, and ribbon cuttings, but most of the engagements happened off-camera. Our staff met with residents in their laundry rooms and apartments, and we huddled with developers on vacant lots and on rooftops. We walked the streets at night with cops and community members. We convened funders and partners on neighborhood walking tours to see the change that is transforming the region and what needs to be done. We watched the eclipse with builders and beekeepers, and shared meals in the unheralded small restaurants.
Bringing together business owners, community development leaders, residents and experts to share lessons learned and visions for the future is at the heart of LISC's work as a convener in DC and now Prince George's County.”
JUDY ESTEY LISC SENIOR PROGRAM OFFICER
Building Community Capacity in the Blue Line Corridor
At LISC, convening and capacity-building are twin secret ingredients to our proprietary recipe for collaborative community development. Since our expansion into Prince George’s County in 2021, we have built relationships with community-based organizations (CBO), political and philanthropic leaders, and residents who’ve helped us understand local opportunities and challenges.
In 2024, we leveraged public and private dollars and time to broaden our capacity building work to support new and existing initiatives. Two critical partners are The Capital Market (TCM)—a community-based organization championing food access and community development priorities founded by Prince George’s County natives with roots going back six generations —and Mission of Love Charities (MOLC), a 30-year-old human services organization serving the Corridor.
With LISC funding, TCM, in partnership with the Greater Capitol Heights Improvement Corporation, piloted the Blue Line Corridor Civic Leadership Institute (CLI) in the winter of 2024.
In a seven-week program engaging residents and community leaders around civic processes, advocacy, organizing, and relationship building, the CLI gathered 34 residents across 5 different localities. A historic goal of local municipalities working together re-emerged and, after 15 months of collaborative planning with municipal leaders, the 20743 Coalition was born. Today, the Town of Capitol Heights, the Town of Fairmount Heights, and the City of Seat Pleasant are pursuing shared goals in place-keeping, storytelling, and advocacy.
LISC also supports the MOLC in the visioning of their new 25,000 headquarters with funds to hire a development consultant. One part of their vision is a commercial kitchen incubator to support local entrepreneurs and support healthy food access in the corridor. Capacity building gives these community entrepreneurs the resources to not just to conceive their “recipes,” but ultimately to cook them.
It takes partners on the ground to make real, lasting change in a community. Local organizations know their neighborhoods the best--sustainable solutions emerge from the ground up. ”
Our Funders
2024 Private Sector Support
AMCREF Community Capital LLC
Bank of America
Diane and Norman Bernstein Foundation
The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation
Naomi & Nehemiah Cohen Foundation
England Family Foundation
Forbright Bank
Greater Washington Community Foundation
Matt Josephs
JPMorganChase
Kaiser Permanente National Community Development Fund of the East Bay Community Foundation
Morgan Stanley
PNC Foundation
Share Fund
Richard Snowdon
Peter Tatian
TD Bank
The Coalition (formerly CNHED)
Truist Financial Corp.
Verizon
Wells Fargo
Woodforest National Bank
2024 Public Sector Support
District of Columbia: Department of Housing and Community Development
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Thank you to our generous funders for making our work and impact possible!
Our Team
Our LAC plays a vital role in guiding the organization, connecting LISC DC with funding opportunities, and providing industry expertise for our team.”
Local Advisory Committee (LAC)
Victor Burrola Wells Fargo
Donna F. Grigsby TD Bank
Nicolette Harris PNC Bank
Jimmie Jones Truist
Ellen McCarthy McCarthy Urban Associates
Alison McWilliams Naomi and Nehemiah Cohen Foundation
Gregory J. Melanson ZRG Partners
Eartha Morris Forbright Bank
Samuel Parker Community Development Consultant
Robert Peck Gensler
Patty Rose Perry School Community Services
Mike Schwartz The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation
Peter Tatian Urban Institute
LISC DC Staff
Ramon Jacobson Executive Director
Bryan Franklin Deputy Director
Melanie Stern Director of Lending and Investment
Judy Estey Senior Program Officer
Rylan Collins Program Officer
Ashley Rosado Program Officer
Maurcus Robinson Assistant Program Officer
