Three Programmatic Pillars
Constructing, financing and supporting residents to address the housing affordability crisis.
The Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge focuses on three pillars that are paramount to housing affordability: Housing Construction, Housing Finance, and Resident Services and Support.
Housing Construction
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cdcb | come dream. come build.
MiCASiTA
Scaling an environmentally sustainable, disaster-resilient modular homeownership innovation offering choice and agency to rural families across the Rio Grande Valley and beyond to empower more communities where poverty persists. cdcb | come dream. come build. has served South Texas since 1974.
Forterra NW
Prototyping Modular Cross-Laminated Timber
Re-engineering the affordable housing supply chain through cross-laminated timber – beautiful, highly modular building material that can create rural jobs and mitigate the dangers of climate change if harvested responsibly. Forterra is a Washington-based nonprofit that enhances, supports, and stewards the region’s most precious resources — its communities and its ecosystems.
"With the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge, we are bringing forward our financial resources combined with our business expertise to inspire vitally needed, scalable and effective housing affordability solutions."
─ Eileen Fitzgerald, Head of Housing Affordability Philanthropy, Wells Fargo Foundation
Housing Finance
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Center for NYC Neighborhoods
Underwriting for Good
Expanding homeownership by dramatically increasing the amount of credit flowing to families of color with modest means through at-scale non-discriminatory lending and the creation of a new automated underwriting system. The center promotes and protects affordable homeownership so middle- and working-class families can build strong, thriving communities.
Gulf Coast Housing Partnership
Health + Housing
Aligning incentives to show health care payors the value of investing in affordable housing, while ensuring residents’ access to community-based health care. Created in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, GCHP works across the region to pursue real estate development that propels sustained, transformative community revitalization.
Resident Services and Support
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Impact Justice
The Homecoming Project
Revolutionizing community reentry by pairing people returning from prison in Northern California with homeowners who have an available room and a desire to help someone rebuild their life with dignity. Impact Justice is a national innovation and research center testing and advancing new ideas and solutions for justice reform.
Preservation of Affordable Housing
Designing Trauma-Resilient Communities
Designing Trauma-Resilient Communities reimagines affordable housing design and services through the lens of trauma-informed care and its core principles: safety, trust, choice, collaboration and empowerment. Preservation of Affordable Housing is a nonprofit developer, owner and operator of more than 12,000 affordable homes in 11 states and the District of Columbia.
Learn More About the Challenge
The challenge is elevating vitally needed scalable and effective housing affordability innovations.
Stay connected to follow the progress of our six housing innovators
