CURE Awards Racial Equity Service Grants to Housing and Community Development Organizations in St. Louis, Brooklyn and Baltimore

The Center for Urban and Racial Equity is pleased to announce the award of Racial Equity Organizational Change (EOC) Service Grants to three housing and community development organizations. Through a competitive application process, CURE selected RiseBoro Community Partnership (Brooklyn, NY), Green and Healthy Homes Initiative (Baltimore, MD), and Dutchtown South Community Corporation (St. Louis, MO) as recipients of our first racial equity organizational change service grant opportunity.

Through CURE’s comprehensive EOC process, grantees will undergo an intensive anti-racist training and knowledge-building process, engage their staff and stakeholders in an assessment to identify areas for improvement, and develop an action plan to operationalize racial equity by aligning internal and external practices to address systemic inequities experienced by people of color employed within their organizations and in housing properties and/or communities in which grantees operate. 

“Housing and community development organizations are in a unique position as many primarily serve black and brown communities experiencing various forms of systemic racism including gentrification, employment discrimination, food desserts and police violence” said Dr. Judy Lubin, CURE’s president. “We’re excited to partner with our new grantees to build their racial equity lens and implement practices that address these inequities and build power in collaboration with residents to create safe, healthy and just communities and housing options.”

Selected grantees include: 

• Dutchtown South Community Corporation advances neighborhood vitality through community empowerment, housing stabilization and real estate development in the South St. Louis neighborhoods of Dutchtown, Gravois Park, Marine Villa, and Mt. Pleasant. Amanda Colón-Smith, Dutchtown South Community Corporation Executive Director said, “Five years after the killing of Michael Brown, St. Louis is reminded that we still have much work to do in St. Louis. We as housing and community development practitioners are looking to deepen the skills needed to lead our organizations in promoting the opportunity to thrive for all neighborhoods in our region.” 

• Green and Healthy Homes Initiative, a national 501(c)3 nonprofit organization that creates, implements and promotes programs and policies to eradicate childhood lead poisoning, reduce asthma episodes and increase the stock of healthy, safe and energy efficient homes. Ruth Ann Norton, Green and Healthy Homes Initiative President and CEO said, “The technical assistance provided by CURE will help GHHI deepen its commitment to advancing racial equity through our work to address the structural racism embedded in decades of U.S. housing by strengthening our internal and external competencies and actions for racial equity.” 

• RiseBoro Community Partnership is one of New York City’s largest non-profit social service providers with over thirty years of developing neighborhood assets, such as affordable housing, to create the foundation for a more vibrant and diverse community. RiseBoro’s Chief Executive Officer Scott Short said, “RiseBoro Community Partnership recognizes the role that racism plays in suppressing the capacity of communities of color everywhere. In order to achieve our mission of unleashing the potential of communities to thrive, no matter the odds, we must confront racism head on and develop an intentional response to combating its effects. I am excited to partner with CURE to assess the presence of racism within our organization and our work, and to develop a roadmap to end its impact.

Thanks to financial support from Borealis Philanthropy’s Racial Equity Accelerating Change (REACH) Fund, CURE is able to provide its racial equity organizational change services at no cost to grantees. The Borealis REACH Fund provides funding to practitioners to provide racial equity consultation services to nonprofit organizations and support cross-sharing, learning and innovation among practitioners to lift up promising practices, case studies, strategies, frameworks and tools that facilitate nonprofits capacity to have greater impact on addressing racial inequities, internally in their organizations and externally in program and service delivery.