Bringing New Hope to Neighborhoods

For decades, Spartanburg’s Northside community and Charlotte’s Boulevard Homes neighborhood grappled with the same problems.

They endured high poverty and crime rates, poor educational outcomes and substandard housing. They gained reputations as magnets for inner-city blight.

Thankfully, they now share a more hopeful distinction. They’re part of the Purpose-Built Communities network, a national redevelopment model that targets troubled neighborhoods with a holistic array of social services. The idea is to break the cycle of intergenerational poverty by mounting sustained, systematically coordinated interventions in neighborhoods where poverty’s roots sink most deeply.

The Duke Endowment is supporting the Northside Initiative and the Renaissance West Community Initiative, which is redeveloping the Boulevard Homes property into a new neighborhood called the Renaissance. Support for these place-based community initiatives forms a significant part of the Endowment’s new organization-wide strategic emphasis on early childhood issues.

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