Through lending, financial literacy, and housing counseling services, Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City, Inc. (NHSNYC) empowers disadvantaged low and moderate-income New Yorkers to purchase and preserve affordable housing opportunities.
Our ultimate goal is to support the realization of the best quality of life possible for each New Yorker, starting with a stable home.
Our History & Impact
Incorporated in 1982, Neighborhood Housing Services of New York City (NHSNYC) was founded to help bankable low- and moderate-income homeowners living in red-lined neighborhoods improve their homes and communities through rehabilitation. These loans enabled homeowners to make critical repairs, that if not carried out, could very well render their homes uninhabitable.
For fifteen years during the 1990s and 2000s, NHSNYC’s housing development department redeveloped abandoned homes and mixed-use properties across the five boroughs of New York City with subsidy through programs like Hope VI (U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD]), HomeWorks and StoreWorks (NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development [NYC HPD]). In 1994 NHSNYC’s Citywide Lending program was launched to support gut renovation loans to allow clients to purchase larger dwellings (5-20 units) and to support clients who inherited homes that needed substantial improvements to keep equity in the family. In 1995, the NHSNYC Homeownership Center was established to provide all the services needed to help clients become first-time homeowners. Around 1998, NHSNYC launches a landlord training (five to 20 units) for those doing purchase rehabs/gut renovations through the Citywide Lending program.
As a Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) and nonprofit community revitalization organization, NHSNYC’s mission remains to increase investment in underserved neighborhoods and to strengthen our communities through sustainable homeownership. To that end, NHSNYC has created a rehab and debt consolidation product to preserve affordable housing, countering the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on underserved communities of color. With increased focus on lending, specifically to the co-op owners with limited access to traditional bank capital, NHSNYC is striving to be the go-to lender for co-op units to support the underserved communities of NYC.
NHSNYC is part of the NeighborWorks America® Network, coordinated under an umbrella organization formerly known as the Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation (NRC). NRC was established in 1978 by an act of Congress to promote reinvestment in urban communities throughout the United States. You can read more about our history in the graphic below.