Welcome to Northside Initiative
Residents, congregations, and business owners on Birmingham's Northside already know what these blocks should look like. We put capital, partners, and staff behind that plan — in Norwood, Druid Hills, Fountain Heights, Evergreen, North Birmingham and Collegeville, six adjacent neighborhoods north of downtown.
Northside Initiative exists to move capital, partners, and political attention onto six adjacent neighborhoods — Norwood, Druid Hills, Fountain Heights, Evergreen, North Birmingham and Collegeville — and to keep them there long enough to matter. Our measure is plain: children who can walk somewhere safe, families in houses that do not leak, adults in work that pays, and storefronts with the lights on — on the same blocks, in the same decade.
Learn MoreNew and rehabbed housing across the income range, with affordability locked in by deed restriction rather than by promise — so the families here now are still here in twenty years.
Learn MoreOne unbroken line from an infant classroom to a paycheck — early learning, a partner school, early college credit, and a credential that employers actually hire on.
Learn MoreFood access, clinics, green space, and lighting — chosen block by block by the people who live there, because what Collegeville needs is not what Evergreen needs.
Learn MoreTrade apprenticeships, employers who commit to interviewing locally, and support for the businesses already operating here. Wages first, wealth second.
Learn MoreWhere we work
Northside Initiative works in a defined footprint on Birmingham's Northside — Norwood, Druid Hills, Fountain Heights, Evergreen, North Birmingham and Collegeville. Concentrating on six adjacent neighborhoods, rather than spreading thin across the city, is what makes neighborhood-level change measurable.
One of Birmingham's oldest residential neighborhoods, laid out along a landscaped boulevard just north of downtown and listed as a National Register historic district.
A close-in neighborhood immediately north of downtown, bordering Norwood and the Finley Avenue corridor.
One of the city's earliest neighborhoods, sitting just northwest of the central business district, with a housing stock that predates most of Birmingham and a congregation on nearly every other corner.
A small neighborhood north of downtown shaped by the rail yards and shops that once employed most of the people living in it.
Built as an industrial town in its own right before Birmingham annexed it, North Birmingham still carries both the assets and the burdens of that history — including a long fight over environmental cleanup.
Home to Bethel Baptist Church, a National Historic Landmark and a headquarters of the Birmingham civil rights movement, surrounded by the brick bungalows that families have held for generations.
Concentrated poverty on the Northside was engineered — by redlining, by the interstate, by plant closures. It can be un-engineered the same way: deliberately.
Donate NowCome work a Saturday. Homeowner repair crews, vacant lot clean-ups, and tutoring all run on volunteer hours.
Volunteer TodayRevitalization is only revitalization if the people who held the neighborhood together get to stay in it. That single sentence shapes almost everything we do — how we underwrite a development, how we set an income mix, and who we call first when a legacy homeowner's roof fails.
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