History
Twenty-one years after starting as a pioneer in developing quality, affordable housing from blighted properties, Brand New Day has emerged as a cutting edge community revitalization organization having a holistic approach to empowering communities. In addition to housing development, Brand New Day provides access to low-cost home improvement loans; offers free financial literacy, homeownership education, credit counseling, post-purchase counseling; and a career development program. All this, along with property and asset management, is done with a volunteer Board of Directors and ten full-time staff. Brand New Day’s activities demonstrate its commitment to its constituency. It is about to break ground on a 9-unit affordable homeownership project and over the next five years will develop 66 additional units of affordable rental housing; two commercial spaces, including a Homeownership Center; and, 12 affordable homeownership units in our Target Service Area. Brand New Day offers free Youth Financial Literacy & Entrepreneurship Training, Adult Financial Literacy Education, Homebuyer & Post Purchase Education, Foreclosure Prevention, a Homebuyers’ Club entitled: Mentoring & Progressing Toward Homeownership, Credit Counseling, referral services for the Union County IDA Program (a savings-match program that BND helped create for income eligible Union County residents), Lead Prevention Education, Leadership Development & Community Involvement, and Young Adult Entrepreneurship Training. In October 2006 BND became a US Housing and Urban Development certified credit counseling agency. Brand New Day’s mission is “to revitalize and enhance the quality of life in Elizabethport and surrounding communities for low and moderate income families through the development, management and preservation of affordable housing, expanding wealth creation opportunities through home ownership and neighborhood-based economic development and advocate for social stability.”
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Long before Elizabethport’s current revitalization efforts, Brand New Day led the charge in creating a climate of reinvestment the community now enjoys. Brand New Day, a 501(c)(3) not-profit community development corporation, was incorporated in 1985 by diverse members of the community and the Board and Executive Director of the Elizabethport Presbyterian Center to provide affordable housing for low to moderate-income residents in the Elizabethport. Since then, Brand New Day developed 98 rental units for low and moderate-income families, completed a substantial rehabilitation to preserve 12 units of affordable housing, completed a 7-unit townhouse development sold to first-time low-income homebuyers, built 7 commercial spaces including a childcare facility, restored a community park, and built a two-family home that was sold to first time homebuyers for $100,000 below the market price.