Executive Summary

The Neighbor Project (TNP) is a place-based, non-profit organization focussed on equipping residents through financial & homeowner education to become a driving force of revitalizing neighborhoods and building generational and community wealth. TNP primarily serves Illinois’ second largest city (Aurora, population 200,000). Aurora is a city that works, but its economic potential remains hidden by debt, increasing housing costs and a lack of financial literacy and tools to build wealth. Despite steady employment, many families still struggle to convert their income into assets like a house, savings accounts and small businesses that help stabilize their families and the larger community. But rather than treating low-to-moderate income families as part of the problem, our diverse, predominantly bilingual and representative staff treat these neighbors as an indispensable part of the solution using our asset-based approach. We do this by operating a housing social enterprise with a unique savings model that directs rent dollars already being spent by lower-income families back into their hands, eliminating the largest barrier to generational wealth-building: savings. Our programs have a demonstrated track record of turning permanent renters into permanent homeowners through a Financial Empowerment and Homeownership Center offering financial coaching and access to credit building, homeownership & savings tools. At The Neighbor Project, clients always do the work to change their own financial situation. But that work is leveraged, powerfully, through innovative savings programs that help clients reach their goals more quickly and effectively than they ever would alone. Volunteers, churches and donors multiply their neighbors’ efforts - opening the path to true financial freedom and centering historically excluded residents as the central players of a growth solution that benefits the entire community.

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