Innovative Housing Solutions

I’m excited about some of the innovative housing solutions that will be showcased at our conference in February. They go far beyond traditional government affordable housing, thanks to some innovative philanthropic funders who are targeting their catalytic investments at precise inflection points in the system to make real change. 

And what’s even more significant is that several of these solutions are replicable; they are working in multiple places and could potentially be replicated in your home town. 

Replicable innovative solutions that deliver economic power to those traditionally denied access to that stability is one of the keynotes of our content platform. 

For instance, Hello Just is replicating an innovation piloted by Colorado-focused Gary Community Ventures called the Deerfield Fund, which has shown that a philanthropic investment of $40,000 is enough to help poor Black people become homeowners and be able to  handle mortgage payments, avoiding being displaced by gentrification. Hello Just is replicating that proven  model in Austin and San Antonio, with philanthropic support from the Schmidt Foundation, working with the 39 highest performing members of Hello Just’s immigrant saving circles. 

Another solution is the Just Home project, a project funded by the MacArthur Foundation, that’s been launched in half a dozen cities. It provides housing to formerly incarcerated people. Deborah McKetty of the South Carolina  Community Loan Fund is helping run the pilot in Charleston, SC, and will be one of the speakers in San Antonio, along with Steve Wanta of Hello Just, who will talk about these funds. 

Through the Just Home initiative, three communities were selected to receive grant funding from McArthur to create a plan to address this crisis in their community, with technical assistance and coordination from the Urban Institute. The fund is already supporting the following communities: Charleston, South Carolina; Rapid City, South Dakota; City and County of San Francisco, California; and Tulsa, Oklahoma. Each community will be eligible to receive an investment from MacArthur from a $15 million pool of impact-investment funding to implement their plan and acquire or develop housing for populations that are not being served by current housing resources.

Formerly incarcerated people are more frequently homeless, and the cities chosen are going to be allowed to find their own way to decouple those situations and find a way to stabilize housing. Research has shown that severe housing instability, in the form of chronic homelessness, can increase a person’s risk of becoming involved with the justice system because many behaviors associated with homelessness—such as sleeping, sitting, and asking for money or resources in public spaces—have been criminalized. Nationally, researchers have found that someone in jail is between 7.5 and 11.3 times more likely to have been homeless than someone with no history of jail incarceration. Because the foundation is linking grants with its own impact investing, MacArthur hopes to lower the risk of the deals and make it easier to bring alongside funding from the cities chosen. 

“Criminal justice reform cannot happen in a silo—it is  pivotal to address adjacent issues that contribute to ongoing crises in the system,” said Laurie Garduque, Director of Criminal Justice at the MacArthur Foundation. “Tackling housing instability head-on is critical to decreasing the misuse and overuse of jails and systemic and structural racial inequities, and it is a much-needed step toward transforming the entire justice system.” 

In subsequent newsletters, I will be writing about the other themes of the conference, such as the role of the Church in community economic justice, shared ownership, entrepreneurship as the path to intergenerational wealth for marginalized communities, community-focused commercial real estate, and subverting redlining.  

The top practitioners are bringing their stories of replicable ways to create economic justice; the lineup of speakers is coming together, and more national catalytic foundations are saying they are coming. In addition, the faith-based theme is growing and will be  ready for a story or two soon.

This is growing into an event you absolutely don’t want to miss.