Mission

With community residents leading the way, the mission of Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation is to build a strong, sustainable Cypress Hills/East New York, where youth and adults achieve educational and economic success, secure healthy and affordable housing, and develop leadership skills to transform their lives and community.

What We Do

We're dedicated to serving residents of Cypress Hills, a diverse, low- to moderate- income neighborhood in northeast Brooklyn where many families are recent immigrants from around the world. With community residents leading the way, our mission is to build a strong, sustainable Cypress Hills/East New York, where youth and adults achieve educational and economic success, secure affordable housing and develop leadership skills to transform their lives and community. Each year, we serve approximately 8,000 people.

Our services are wide-ranging to meet our community's needs. They include: college and career counseling, afterschool programs in 5 schools, GED and ESL classes for adults, small business development, first-time homebuyer counseling, foreclosure prevention counseling, affordable housing development, food justice work, environmental sustainability projects, and much more.

Community residents and business owners founded Cypress Hills Local Development Corporation in 1983 to revitalize their struggling community. For most of our history, we have been a small, grassroots organization. In the last few years, however, we have experienced tremendous growth and begun to attract national attention for our work. We recently completed a five-year strategic plan to help make sure we can continue to grow and serve Cypress Hills. There's a lot on the horizon for us: we're finishing construction on new affordable apartments, launching a program to help get ninth graders on the road to college, expanding our employment counseling work, and, with the help of a pro bono professional through Catchafire, creating a website that reflects our work!