Learning from the Past; Enhancing the Present to Shape the Future

NID Housing grew out of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB) and in particular the leadership of Mr. Ray Carlisle Sr., a prominent member of the Democratic Party, and Mr. Thom Holmes, a prominent member of the Republican Party. NAREB, founded in 1947 to foster full, fair, and equitable inclusion of African Americans in all aspects of the real estate industry, was a major advocate organization for the Brown v. Board USSC Decision of 1954, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. These collective major legislative achievements and politically based policy developments helped inform and shape the advocacy motivations and philosophy of NID.

NID embarked on several policy developments at its founding. The first was the Tax Reform Act of 1986. This very complicated reform of the U. S. Tax Codes had numerous negative implications for urban areas and African American families and businesses. NID worked with several D.C. parties to improve the fairness of the implementation of this reform. Where we could find business and urban community sensitive common ground agreements we promoted them; where we could not, we opposed them.

From 1987-89 NID entered into a novel Urban Economic Development partnership with HUD and the U. S. Department of Commerce. NID worked with Fannie Mae and the then GE Capital Mortgage Insurance Company (GECMI) on several initiatives from 1987 to 1994 to establish a national model homebuyer consumer education and counseling program to support the viability of conventional 3% down payment home loan mortgages. The Fannie Mae/GECMI/NID Community Homebuyers Program was the first national private sector housing counseling program in the nation. In the first two years of operation NID helped counsel more than 200,000 potential homebuyers and help more than 50,000 become homeowners, with 3% downpayment, conventional mortgages.

The Fannie Mae/GECMI/NID Community Homebuyers program was the predecessor to the 1995 HUD National Intermediary Housing Counseling Program. NID consulted with HUD on the operations and successes of the private sector program and was invited to join the new HUD National Intermediary grant program.

From 1995 to the present NID has expanded its network of local branch offices from 5 to 60 with the capacity to manage 120 branch offices providing quality housing counseling and urban area residential and commercial real estate development consulting services. NID has consulted 20 local governments, 35 churches and 25 community based non-profit housing developers on the development of affordable housing in eight states at no cost to these government and non-profit clients since 2001.

In 2009 NID became a grantee of the National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling program managed by NeighborWorks America and regulated by the U. S. Treasury Department’s Troubled Asset Relief Program to address the effects on homeowners with sub-prime loans and the resulting financial crisis of 2007-10. NID is the largest minority grantee participant in the program, one of the top 3 in the number of clients it serves of the 32 national intermediary grantees under the program and the leading agency in providing face to face direct client services to our majority base of Black and Brown clients facing foreclosure on their homes.

NID has completed its transition from predominantly foreclosure prevention counseling back to homebuyer, HECM, and community development education and counseling services. NID will continue our work in providing foreclosure prevention, rental and homeless counseling services throughout our expanding network of branch offices.

NID, with the assistance of our new Washington DC Bureau of Policy and Advocacy, will continue to increase our work with Congress, HUD, and the White House administration. We will always be guided by our energetic desire to re-build Black and Brown family wealth, and to contribute to the social and economic well-being of the urban and rural area communities we have traditionally, and continue to serve.

Enjoy an historic NID article by clicking here. Learn more about NID by clicking here.

Our trifold brochure remains in use at Community Days and First Time Homebuyer events.

In an era where self-promoting groups and individuals seek to use history as a wedge to separate, divide, and deprive, NID’s history shapes our present commitment toward equity, inclusion, and fair access to minority family and business wealth through homeownership. 

— Thom Holmes, Co-Founder, NID Housing