DNDA's goals are to:

• Preserve and increase opportunities for affordable housing for a range of incomes
• Celebrate the diversity of cultures
• Encourage connections between people
• Increase opportunities for the participation of young people in community life
• Encourage collaboration and synergy among organizations
• Increase opportunities for lifelong learning
• Increase opportunities for art, recreation and play
• Promote healthy people and healthy organizations
• Increase economic opportunity
• Increase opportunities for selling and buying goods and services within the neighborhood
• Encourage the development of neighborhood business districts with a mix of uses
• Preserve environmental quality
• Improve the quality of the built environment

DNDA is guided by the Delridge Neighborhood Plan. The projects and programs it chooses to undertake are consistent with this community Òroad mapÓ. Defining elements of the neighborhood plan are: creating mixed-use nodes of activity along Delridge Way, preserving housing affordability, creating linkages between Delridge and the Seattle Housing Authority's High Point garden community, fostering and celebrating the cultural diversity of Delridge and reinforcing the environmental quality of the Longfellow Creek watershed and the extensive greenbelts in the area.

In pursuing its goals, DNDA is also guided by the following principles:

Community Development:
Create affordable, attractive, and sociable/walkable nodes of vibrant activity through a combination of mixed-use property development and community projects.

Community Empowerment:
Practice participatory democracy by engaging the community in a wide range of activities. Strive for community involvement that is broad-based and inclusive. Ensure that DNDA is directed by the community and is building on the community's assets.

Partnerships to Better Serve the Community:
DNDA realizes that its vision and purpose are large in scope and that much greater success will be achieved in collaboration with other organizations working toward the same goals. DNDA will strive to build meaningful partnerships with other organizations to leverage its results, especially to provide for support services for residents of DNDA housing and for economic development programs.

Environmental Responsibility:
DNDA follows an environmentally sustainable approach to property development, seeking to minimize adverse environmental impacts from projects, use environmentally sound products and processes, retain and add green space, and build a "walkable" community that also fosters use of mass transit and non-motorized transportation. DNDA also manages a small number of strictly environmental projects.