Latest News
Delta Towns Receive $2.2 Million in Funding for Blight Elimination
The HOPE Community Partnership, currently working with small towns across Mississippi, played a role in helping four Delta communities receive $2.2 million in funding from the Mississippi Home Corporation’s Blight Elimination Program. The funding, awarded in June, will cover expenses related to projects in Moorhead, Shaw, Drew and Yazoo City. The HOPE Community Partnership provided support through catalyst funds to pay for project management from partner Delta Design Build Workshop. Blight elimination is one of the first steps in revitalization projects. The blighted properties within communities pose safety and health risks, and also financially impact the communities through lowered property values. Learn more about the HOPE Community Partnership.
Project Completed: New Mural Installed in Downtown Itta Bena
Four murals, painted by Mississippi Valley State University Art Department students, have been installed in an Itta Bena, Miss., downtown building that formerly served as City Hall. 
The project, funded through the HOPE Community Partnership, gives a facelift to four historical and artistic windows located on the east side of the building that has been designated to the historical registrar. Volunteers from the city, university and community assisted with the installation, which improves the imagery of the blighted downtown area.
HOPE Spearheads Resource Kit to Better Understand the Need for Housing in the Miss. Delta
Like most rural towns in the Deep South, throughout the Mississippi Delta, housing stock is extremely limited, aging and inefficient. A report was developed based on community engagement and field mapping, identifying the demand for housing, family size and economic indicators for one Delta community. 
HOPE, in partnership with Delta Design Build Workshop, developed Rural Housing Context and Potential as a resource kit and the first step toward the development of a multi-disciplinary, affordable housing strategy focused, first, on sharing knowledge among key partners in housing and, second, the construction of new and in-fill housing in the Mississippi Delta’s small towns. Read more.
HOPE Community Partnership, Delta Design Build Collaboration Highlighted in Blog on Strategies to Address Poverty
Hope Enterprise Corporation (HOPE), a nonprofit Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI), is mobilizing financing and related technical assistance to address the range of challenges that people and places with low economic-mobility face in Mississippi.
Using data, expertise, and relationships, they are elevating the needs and challenges related to affordable housing in rural areas through a recently released resource kit: Rural Housing Context and Potential. This document will serve as a foundation for creating a strategy for building strong communities beginning with healthy homes. Read more.
HOPE Releases HBCU-CDFI Economic Mobility Strategy Guide
The HBCU-CDFI Economic Mobility Strategy Guide is a project of the HOPE Community Partnership. The guide includes findings of the first-of-its-kind collaboration between historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and community development financial institutions (CDFIs) in the Deep South. 
The HBCU-CDFI Economic Mobility Guide outlines key outcomes from the collaboration to address conditions associated with persistent and concentrated poverty in both rural and urban areas. The project’s findings will inform future efforts for HBCU-CDFI partnerships across the nation. “This partnership offered a unique opportunity for HOPE and two HBCUs, each with established track records of economic advancement among people of color, to join forces with local residents and stakeholders to address conditions associated with persistent and concentrated poverty,” said HOPE CEO Bill Bynum. “We see it as a promising model for creating mobility pathways for people and places where there is both great need and great potential.” Read the guide.
Eastmoor: A HOPE Community Partnership Success Story
The houses that dot the circular Eastmoor subdivision are quality homes after HOPE and several partners invested funding, sweat equity and other resources to rehabilitate the structures that were woefully substandard in their original forms. 
Eastmoor was originally developed in 1969 just outside of the city limits of Moorhead, MS a community of 2500 residents in the Delta region of Sunflower County. Being outside of the City limits meant that new residents were not allowed to vote in municipal elections. All of the 68 newly built homes were rental units, none were available for ownership to the residents. HOPE was introduced to the story of Eastmoor in 2015, after informing Moorhead’s Mayor of plans to convert the local bank into a community development credit union. The Mayor drove HOPE’s CEO to the subdivision to ask for help to redevelop the housing community. Read more.
