Youngstown fits a rustbelt profile. A history of disinvestment and decline – punctuated as three large steel mills closed during 1979-1981 also portended a political incapacity to respond to the decline. But within the trend there also emerged the community development corporation, Commonwealth Inc. which by the 1990s settled on the production of affordable housing under the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program – with developer fees sufficient to secure the organization an increasing diversity of new efforts. The road to this ultimately successful outcome led through a series of other efforts, whose story is told here.