The funding encompasses mortgage and home improvement loans for multifamily and single-family residences, community development loans, technical assistance, and grants, targeted to low- and moderate-income census tracts here. The bank, which has dual headquarters here and in Pittsburgh, launched this initiative in April 2003. At that time, Citizens committed more than $50 million in residential mortgage and home improvement loans along with $26 million in community development loans for real estate construction projects and $25 million in small business loans as part of Mayor John Street's Neighborhood Transformation Initiative for a five-year period.

The Citizens' program represented the largest private financial commitment ever dedicated to Philadelphia's neighborhoods. "We believed it would take us the full five years to meet our goal," says Stephen D. Steinour, Citizens' chairman and CEO. Within 18 months, the initial funding was completed.

Street launched NTI in 2001 to address the decline and abandonment of the City's neighborhoods. Under NTI, the City is investing more than $275 million in bond funds, $250 million in federal block grand funds, and $50 million in general operating dollars. As a result, 10,000 market-rate and affordable housing units have been constructed or reclaimed and another 4,000 units are planned or under way.

In addition, more than 31,000 vacant lots have been cleaned, more than 200,000 abandoned cars have been removed from city streets, graffiti has been erased from more than 200,000 buildings, 15,000 dead trees have been cut down, and more than 5,000 dangerous structures have been demolished.