About NOAH

The Neighborhood of Affordable Housing (NOAH) is now in its thirty-fifth year as an award-winning multi-service non-profit community development corporation (CDC). NOAH was organized as a 501 (c) 3 non-profit, and began serving East Boston in 1987 as a two-person organization operating from the basement of Our Savior’s Lutheran Church. The early faith-based founders were members of the East Boston Ecumenical Council. NOAH now serves the Greater Boston region. Our organizational capacity has grown, and NOAH has 22 full-time and fourteen part-time staff members governed by a multi-cultural eleven-member Board of Directors. While our business lines and initiatives have multiplied, our original goals remain the nucleus of our work: creating and preserving affordable housing opportunities and building safe and healthy neighborhoods for those most in need and others challenged by today’s housing market.

NOAH’s 30th anniversary video, October 2018 at the Harborside Hyatt

 

Our Impact

THANK YOU to all our generous funders, donors and supporters, and to our hard-working volunteers, partners and staff. Together, we have been able to achieve the following:

  • By the end of March 2023, NOAH had created investments of over $618 million in the Greater Boston regional economy
  • NOAH has been able to serve over 1,400 housing and 1,100 neighborhood programming client/households each year; assisting 3,500+ individuals per year; in 2020, that number was over 4,500, due to increased pandemic-related demand.
  • Since 2008, NOAH staff has helped 3,000 families work to retain their homes in the face of a potential foreclosure, with over an 80% long-term-case success ratio.
  • Since its inception, NOAH has provided  free programming to over 4,000 households to help them find or retain rental housing and avoid homelessness. Each year, NOAH works with 300 or more low-income families through five free bilingual service lines for renters funded largely by the City of Boston.
  • NOAH has helped over 1,888 families purchase their first homes since 1994.
  • Annually, NOAH performs over 300 safety repairs for over 50 low-income senior/disabled Boston homeowners; and helps save the homes of another 10 or more seniors through moderate rehab projects and new heating system replacements; with over 11,350 repairs made over the years.
  • Each year, NOAH educates over 150 ESOL students, and offers three US citizenship training classes, as well as Tech Goes Home classes.
  • NOAH has created an East Boston youth soccer initiative that works with 65+ children each year, an ongoing seven-week Summer Schoolyard program that serves 90-200 disadvantaged elementary schoolchildren each summer, and a yearlong youth leadership program for disadvantaged East Boston teens.
  • NOAH’s Youth Leadership Development program trains 8-12 area youth ages 14-18 each year. The Youth EJ projects have addressed community issues such as Climate Change Preparedness; Community Tree Canopy Expansion; Littering and Spilled Trash Mitigation; Waterfront Access; Greenspace Access; Local Food Production; Walkability; Air and Water Pollution; Bike Access on the MBTA; and more. In most years, the Youth engage some 800+ residents in community activities
  • We have helped in development of seven attractively redeveloped school yards, a four-and-a-half-acre waterfront “Urban Wild” park, and a youth-run community garden; and through our environmental work, including salt marsh restoration; oil spill mitigation; Brownfields “clean up” projects; and air, land and water pollution remediation.
  • NOAH's Climate Resilience and Engagement programing continues help East Boston and its residents become resilient in the face of climate change.
  • NOAH's Real Estate team has either rehabilitated or developed 494 units within 80 buildings in East Boston, Everett, Beverly, Holliston, North Andover, Carlisle, Webster, and Middleborough; with three additional developments in its pipeline.
  • NOAH continues to manage and grow its real estate development pipeline throughout Greater Boston and eastern Mass. In 2019, NOAH completed Coppersmith Village, a 71-unit, mixed-income, mixed-use $43 million development in East Boston; began development of Aileron in East Boston in 2020; and has three more active projects pending.
  • Today, NOAH serves 96+ Greater Boston municipalities through its bilingual housing-related programming
  • Each year, approximately 65% of NOAH's clientele represented an ethnic minority (50% new-immigrant, first-generation Hispanic families). All client-serving staff members are bilingual.
  • Over seventy percent of NOAH's clients earn 79% or less of AMI (Average Median Income); and between 50% of NOAH's clients earn less than 50% AMI.
  • NOAH continues to be rated as 'Exemplary' by NeighborWorks America.