Early Childhood Education

Urban League Head Start Center

September 28, 2010 by

Research indicates that early intervention in the lives of disadvantaged children provides the best way to break the cycle of poverty and hopelessness. New Orleans’ historically meager social safety net was further eroded in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and a key goal for post-Katrina recovery involves providing access to childcare and early enrichment for the city’s poor.

Since 1998, the Urban League of Greater New Orleans had operated an Early Head Start program to provide both low-income families with young children and pregnant women the opportunity to benefit from quality pre-natal care and child development assistance. Parents as well as children were served by the program.

The construction of a new Veterans Administration Hospital in New Orleans required that the Urban League move its program elsewhere. A new location was found in the impoverished 9^th Ward of New Orleans, adjacent to the HOPE VI Abundance Square development.

Crescent Growth Capital assisted the Urban League in integrating a complex array of financial sources, including City of New Orleans CDBG funding, a federal Health and Human Services Grant, and a traditional bank loan. This money was leveraged to generate a New Markets Tax Credit subsidy sufficient to plug the funding gap and ensure the construction of a state-of-the-art, environmentally responsible $7 million facility. The Urban League Head Start Center will be completed and placed into service by the end of 2011.

Ursuline Academy – Early Childhood Learning Center

January 11, 2010 by

Funded by a $5.7 million New Markets Tax Credit qualified equity investment structured by Crescent Growth Capital, the Ursuline Academy Early Childhood Learning Center is the first component to be realized of Ursuline Academy’s ambitious post-Hurricane Katrina recovery plan, simultaneously striking a blow on behalf of the oldest operating Catholic School in the United States (established in 1727), providing needed early childhood education capacity to New Orleans and disseminating best practices to partnering public facilities. Located within a highly distressed census tract struggling with a 25% poverty rate, the Early Childhood Learning Center would not have happened without the New Markets Tax Credit subsidy.

Neighborhood Centers, Inc.

November 24, 2008 by

When Neighborhood Centers, Inc., the largest non-profit provider of social services in Houston, launched an initiative to radically reshape the model for metro-wide social service provision, Crescent Growth Capital was enlisted to enable its first manifestation.

CGC structured an $11 million New Markets Tax Credit qualified equity investment to fund the Gulfton/Sharpstown Neighborhood Campus. The campus built upon Neighborhood Center’s pre-existing Head Start program by adding a charter elementary school, a comprehensive family education center, and an economic development incubator.

Considered Houston’s Ellis Island – due to the hyper-dense population of immigrants who occupy the neighborhood’s enormous oil boom-era multi-family apartment complexes – the Gulfton/Sharpstown neighborhood exhibits unquestioned dynamism alongside troubling poverty. Approximately 40% of families with young children in the community live below the poverty line, and nearly half of all households earn incomes below $25,000. With fundraising for the new campus having stalled, CGC leveraged existing pledge dollars to enable this beneficial addition to a challenged neighborhood.

Early Childhood Education

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