New Community Corp.
Msgr. William Linder
233 W. Market St.
Newark, N.J. 07103
(201) 623-2800

When a crew of Irish Catholic priests built towering St. Joseph Church from old ballast stones more than a century ago, they could never have dreamed that it would someday shed its religious purpose in favor of an outstanding non-profit organization serving Newark’s inner city with model low-cost housing programs, day-care facilities, services for the homeless ... and a well-equipped health club and gourmet restaurant!

Although the church closed years ago when much of its congregation moved to the suburbs, it now houses New Community Corp., a community organization that formed spontaneously, in the aftermath of Newark’s 1967 riots, when residents and neighbors said, "Enough!"

Looking over blocks of burnt-out homes and acres of slum territory, the group’s founders, including neighbors, parishioners of Queen of the Angels parish and their pastor, Father Linder, concluded that housing, followed in short order by job generation and training, was the community’s most acute need.

The effort was frustrating at first, but over the ensuing two decades, by leveraging long-term financing from the state Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency and the N.J. Economic Development Authority and N.J. Department of Commerce, NCC eventually collected more than $130 million, which has gone into the development of 10 housing complexes with more than 2,500 apartments for 6,000 residents in Newark’s Central Ward. These are not blighted inner-city mass housing but solid housing, with clean, well-kept buildings demonstrating the residents’ obvious pride. Indeed, the NCC housing is so successful that it has formed a "buffer area," facilitating the private development and gentrification of much adjoining real estate. Officials estimate that the NCC developments have created more than 4,000 construction jobs, added $30 million in wages to Newark’s economy, and restored $2.3 million in annual tax revenue to the city treasury.

Such numbers alone would mark a model program, but New Community has done much more.

In one of its most notable successes, the organization successfuly persuaded Pathmark Corp. to open a full-size supermarket in the community, which had been without one since 1967. It took fully 10 years for NCC to assemble the real estate and negotiate a deal with Pathmark in which NCC became developer and landlord for the $16 million complex, which also includes a fast-food restaurant and serves as a source of jobs and training for neighbors.

NCC also operates an active employment center, a no-fee employment counseling and job-placement agency that has found jobs for an average of more than 1,000 people a year; a local federal credit union; a network of NCC/Babyland centers, bright, affordable day-care centers where parenting training and counseling for teen-age parents is also provided; an extended-care facility for ill elderly; and, in the old church, totally renovated with a $3 million HUD grant, a commercial health spa and fine restaurant creates jobs, income and much-needed community services.

It doesn’t stop with this. Father Linder went to Detroit in 1990 to visit and share ideas with Focus: HOPE, another of the nation’s outstanding grass-roots organizations. A 1991 winner of a MacArthur "Genius" Award, it’s safe to assume that he, and NCC, won’t rest on past accomplishments.

All the feature stories on @GRASS-ROOTS.ORG's pages are reported and written by Robin Garr, a prize-winning journalist who has visited more than 500 innovative grassroots programs in all 50 states since 1990.

Browse his book, Reinvesting In America, at Amazon.com.

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