Back in 2000, visionary local funders, beginning with the Baltimore Community Foundation, Goldseker Foundation, and Abell Foundation, recognized that many strong Baltimore neighborhoods were losing ground because home ownership was down, property values weren't increasing, and houses in need of repair weren't being fixed. Because these weren't the worst-off neighborhoods, they were being ignored by traditional public sector programs.

These funders created Healthy Neighborhoods, an initiative with a mission to help strong but undervalued neighborhoods improve properties, attract homeownership, forge strong bonds between neighbors, and successfully market their communities.  Additional funders include Bank of America, M & T Bank, PNC Bank, Provident Bank, SunTrust Bank, Wachovia Bank, France-Merrick Foundation, Joseph & Harvey Meyerhoff Family Charitable Funds and the Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation.

"At the time this was started, there was no investment strategy in the city for neighborhoods 'on the cusp,' and we worked with a strong coalition of neighborhood funders, banks, the city, the state, and national funders to raise all the early resources," says Cheryl Casciani, director of community investment at the Baltimore Community Foundation. The goal was to take the strongest blocks, make them look like picture postcards, and attract the strongest buyers.

Thanks to these efforts, the program has helped build the capacity of 15 organizations in 35 neighborhoods to work block by block on neighborhood and home improvement, while offering incentives for rehab and purchase. In the past seven years, Healthy Neighborhoods has yielded impressive gains in increased housing values, reduced number of days homes stay on the market, and higher numbers of rehab permits.

Healthy Neighborhoods is evaluated every year to document how well it achieves its goals, and its success has enabled the initiative to raise $38 million in loan commitments from 10 Baltimore banks.

But money tells only part of the story.

The role of local funders and lenders "is not necessarily just about money but about using leadership and convening power to see a problem and actually address it," notes Casciani. "Some set of people had to be willing to invest early when it was really just an idea, and stay in there."