Congress included a special $5 million, mixed-income demonstration program in Neighborhood Reinvestment Corporation's FY 2003 appropriation. The purpose of the set-aside was to explore approaches for serving households with incomes less than 30 percent of the area median ("extremely low income" or "ELI" households) in mixed-income communities. This paper shares highlights of the 21 grant applications (17 of which have been selected for funding) and how the special congressional funding made a distinct difference in the projects