Enterprise Community Development (ECD) celebrated the opening of Highland Terrace Apartments, a 66-unit affordable housing property in Richmond, Virginia, last October.
Aimed at families earning between 40% and 60% of the area median income, the new four-story community is built on the site of the former Mizpah Presbyterian Church and Nehemiah House Community Center. Its design honors the site’s history by incorporating a section of the church’s original brick into the modern building.
Across the street, ECD broke ground on Green Park Apartments that will bring 43 more affordable apartments to the community. It is one of 14 developments that the organization has under construction, with several more projects slated to close on their financing this year.
ECD is one of the largest nonprofit affordable housing developers in the Mid-Atlantic, and it is continuing to expand its footprint in Maryland and Virginia.
The nonprofit is No. 33 on the AHF 50 owners list this year, with approximately 13,000 units owned as of Jan. 1.
ECD is an affiliate of Enterprise Community Partners, a national housing organization that’s led by Shaun Donovan, former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. In 2024, Enterprise Community Partners celebrated 1 million homes created or preserved, a milestone that includes units developed by ECD as well as properties that Enterprise has helped finance since 1982.
Last year also brought new leadership to ECD, with affordable housing veteran Janine Lind joining the development organization as president.
“I came to Enterprise because I was drawn by [founder] Jim Rouse’s vision,” Lind says. “He understood first and foremost that housing is not just a basic need. It’s the foundation where people can build better futures on.”
She previously served as chief operating officer of MidPen Housing Corp., a nonprofit in Northern California. Lind also founded the Permanent Supportive Housing Coalition, a Bay Area group of eight nonprofits focused on driving systems and policy change.
“Affordable housing is where my heart is,” says Lind, who grew up in Asia, seeing people struggle with housing in Indonesia and Hong Kong.
She also points to her Dutch heritage and the low rate of homelessness in the Netherlands. “In 2023, in the Netherlands, there was just 0.17% of homelessness,” Lind says. “Part of that is subsidized housing in that country is not as stigmatized as it is here in the U.S. I think that’s why there is so much support to continue to build and grow the affordable housing supply.”
In her first year at ECD, she’s worked on refining the internal alignment of the nonprofit and encouraging more collaboration across the different teams throughout the Enterprise organization. “We’re closer with our capital team on coming up with innovative financing solutions, and we’re working with our solutions and policy team to provide them with actual practitioner experience and talking about how policy gets implemented on the ground and what it looks like for our residents,” Lind says.
In other moves, ECD has launched a “development milestone process” to gain better understanding of the life cycle of its projects.
It is also expanding a water-savings initiative that’s touched about 21 properties so far. The effort, which includes installing upgraded plumbing fixtures and leak detection technology, has resulted in about $1.5 million in annual savings.
The firm is also bringing its clean-energy work to more than 20 properties in Maryland, where ECD will install solar panels and, for the first time, provide battery storage to support community centers during a power outage.
“A focus for this year is to have 19 properties under construction, so it is a priority to get the remainder of our closings completed this year,” Lind says. “Launching our phase three solar program is also important. And, we’re highly focused on our resident services. We’re developing a strategic plan that makes sure the resident voice is an integral part of that. We recently conducted a survey of our residents, the first time we’ve done a full survey, that identifies their needs so we can deliver more intentional programming to them.”
As Lind heads into her second year at Enterprise, she says she remains guided by the organization’s mission, which helps shape strategy and ensures that safe and affordable homes and resident-centered services are a central focus. She adds that she’s committed to advancing public-private collaboration to broaden access to capital stacks and create innovative financing solutions in order to provide more homes for more people.
