In this newsletter, we are spotlighting Legacy Community Development Corporation (Legacy CDC) and their Executive Director, Vivian Ballou.
About Legacy CDC
Based in Port Arthur, Texas, Legacy CDC is a nonprofit that develops affordable housing and provides financial counseling for low- to moderate-income families in Southeast Texas.
The organization has development contracts with several cities; owns an affordable rental complex in Vidor, Texas; and has been overseeing a downtown revitalization program in Port Arthur, Texas.
Spotlight Interview with Vivian Ballou
We recently published an interview we conducted with Legacy CDC's Executive Director, Vivian Ballou, in our
On the House blog. You can read the complete interview
here, and below are a couple of highlights.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you started working in the affordable housing industry.
My background is actually based on 25 years of municipal service. I started at the City of Port Arthur, where I was the Housing Administrator there for 14 years before moving to the Beaumont Housing Authority for 3 years. I then worked for the City of Irving as their Executive Director for their Housing and Human Services Department for 6 years. After all that, I retired from government work in 2010 and began my life as a non-profit executive director.
How did Legacy CDC get started?
Legacy CDC was founded in 2006 as a church group, which included myself, that volunteered with at-risk kids. As we started working with these children, we realized that the problems they were having in school and in life were actually rooted in the housing instability experienced by their families. So when I retired in 2010, our group decided to create a fully-functioning organization that would be able to help solve the housing issues that so many kids are dealing with.
Legacy CDC's name is actually based on the legacy of my mother, who founded a homeless shelter, soup kitchen, and food bank in Port Arthur. Legacy is my opportunity to complete her dream; to help people move not just out of homelessness and into temporary housing, but to be able to help solve the problem by moving them to permanent housing.
Legacy CDC's Downtown Port Arthur Revitalization
A big component of Legacy CDC's current work is to create more homeownership opportunities for low- to moderate-income families in downtown Port Arthur. It's part of a broader initiative to revitalize the area and attract new residents, businesses and visitors.
The City of Port Arthur and Legacy CDC
announced a partnership in 2016 to accomplish this. Under the agreement, Legacy CDC is building about 10 homes a year for low- to moderate-income households, and the City is providing $30,000 in down payment assistance to each home buyer. An interior of a finished home is pictured to the right.
In 2017, TSAHC awarded Legacy CDC a line of credit to construct homes in Jefferson County for households at or below 80% of median family income. We recently renewed another line of credit with Legacy CDC to create more homeownership opportunities.
