Early prototypes of the community action movement included local housing and service agencies started by the Ford Foundation Gray Areas Initiative and the United States Office of Economic Opportunity, and both federal and private Mobilization for Youth in New York City.
A local Roman Catholic church parish facilitated a process of community organization that identified the needs of low-income neighborhoods in Newark's Central Ward.
However, in 1998, NCC opened its first homeownership project for working families, the 206-unit Community Hills complex built on the site of the former Hayes Homes high-rise public housing towers.
In 1999, New Community took over the Family Service Bureau of Newark, giving NCC greater resources in dealing with mental health issues.
In 1988, New Community partnered with the Hartz Mountain Corporation and the State of New Jersey to newly construct a 102-unit apartment complex dedicated to homeless families in the Newark area (named Harmony House).
New Community invested nearly 10 years of planning effort and legal fees in acquiring site control, and gaining zoning clearances and financing (despite a variety of objections from landowners and political interests).
In 1999, NCC centralized most of these classes within a new $2.4 million, 24,500-square-foot (2,280 m2) Workforce Development Center, and increased its cooperation with State and local welfare-to-work initiatives.
By 1998, New Community further expanded its presence in the financial services field (it opened a credit union for residents, employees and families otherwise served by NCC in 1985).
It began two new programs, the first offering loans for the start-up or expansion of small businesses that create jobs for Newark area residents.
New Community had become involved in elementary grade level education in the mid-1980s, through a cooperative relationship with a local Roman Catholic parish school.
In 2001, after taking over the Essex Valley Visiting Nurse Association, NCC and its direct affiliates employed approximately 2,000 employees and managed or had developed 2,818 units of housing.
Also, in 2001 New Community and Babyland Family Services terminated their cooperative agreement to jointly develop new facilities and programs and integrate them within NCC's broad array of activities.
NCC is developing additional homeownership housing, and recently built and opened a four-story office building so as to consolidate the management of its medical care services.
It recently opened a for-profit temporary staffing agency for office workers, and continues to participate in welfare-to-work assistance contracts.
And NCC continues to be cited for its long list of accomplishments; had there not been a New Community Corporation, the City of Newark would not have experienced the same level of neighborhood and downtown re-investment as has occurred since 1980.
Also, a 1993 ethnographic study by the New School University (published in 1997) indicates that although New Community's broad range of services benefited its tenants in numerous ways, it could not shield them from the negative forces plaguing the surrounding neighborhoods, i.e. crime, gang activity, substance abuse, unemployment, social isolation, insufficient education and other human capital, etc.