Wells Fargo and Enterprise Announce Winners of $20 Million Housing Innovation Challenge
November 14 2023 - 9:00AM
Business Wire
Six nonprofits and mission driven companies to scale housing
affordability solutions across the U.S.
The Wells Fargo Foundation and Enterprise Community Partners
(Enterprise) today announced the winners of the 2023 Housing
Affordability Breakthrough Challenge, a $20 million nationwide
competition to find and seed innovative housing solutions. The six
winning organizations will each receive between $2 million – $3
million in grants and support from peers and industry experts to
scale new strategies aimed at making homes more accessible and
affordable. The wide range of winning solutions include a workforce
training program that prepares students for homeownership; a new
way of financing housing in rural communities like the Mississippi
Delta; and a new construction technology that reduces the carbon
footprint of multifamily buildings.
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Build UP in Birmingham, Alabama named
winner of 2023 Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge. The
unique workforce development high school combines academics with
paid construction and real estate internships with opportunities
for students to become homeowners and build generational wealth.
Photo: Build UP
“There is incredible demand across all types of communities for
affordable housing solutions that are tailored to local needs and
have the potential to scale,” said Jacqueline Waggoner, president
of the Solutions Division at Enterprise Community Partners. “The
Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge enables leaders on the
ground to multiply their impact nationwide. We are so excited to
work with this second cohort of winners to bring their ideas to the
next level.”
“Creating true equity in the nation’s housing system requires a
focus on transformative ideas that challenge current housing
practices and processes,” said Stacy Spann, head of Housing Access
and Affordability Philanthropy at the Wells Fargo Foundation.
“Through the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge, we are
intentionally lifting up solutions to serve communities that have
experienced disinvestment and marginalization for far too long. And
the winning group of entrepreneurs and social innovators truly
combine expertise with the lived experiences of the communities we
aim to serve.”
The 2023 winners and their breakthrough ideas are:
Housing Access and Resident Support
- Build UP: Build Up Birmingham and Beyond aims to expand
the unique workforce development high school in Birmingham, Alabama
that combines academic learning with hands-on, paid internships in
home construction and real estate. The model relocates donated
homes to underinvested neighborhoods where students renovate the
homes and eventually have the opportunity to live in and buy them,
creating a pathway to homeownership and wealth creation. As part of
the Breakthrough Challenge, Build UP plans to enroll more than 120
students, renovate and relocate more than 40 homes, and facilitate
200 paid construction internships.
- Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority: Success Starts
With Me Home Ownership Program is a new housing model which bridges
the gap between traditional mortgage loans and the financial needs
in rural Alaska to provide low-income tribal citizens access to
homeownership on tribal lands. Partners including Haa Yakaawu
Financial Corporation will offer construction and home loans with
individualized down payments, payback schedules, and education
courses with the goal of supporting more than 100 families in the
Juneau region.
Housing Construction
- Hydronic Shell Technologies: Thinking Outside the Box
for More Sustainable and Healthy Affordable Housing will pilot a
new technology in Syracuse, New York, that will make it possible to
do large-scale energy retrofits of multifamily buildings from the
exterior using prefabricated modular panels. The high-efficiency
system, which is the first of its kind in the United States, aims
to reduce CO2 emissions while improving indoor air quality,
lowering energy bills and enabling residents to remain in place
throughout the process.
- Module: The Last Mile Network is a partnership between
the modular housing company and affordable housing developers to
bring prefabricated homes into urban communities and create
on-ramps into the construction industry through workforce
development programs. The project will scale Module’s construction
facility in Pittsburgh, and develop new facilities in Maryland and
Virginia, building 100 all-electric affordable homes with a local
workforce that has an equity stake in the business.
Housing Finance
- Hope Enterprise Corporation: Securing Homeownership
Through Expiring LIHTC Developments is a new mortgage innovation
which aims to convert long-time renters in rural communities into
homeowners by providing residents of Low-Income Housing Tax Credit
(LIHTC)-financed homes the option to purchase the home when those
credits expire. The model will be piloted in the Mississippi Delta
in collaboration with local design partner, Delta Design Build, and
HBCU engineering students who will renovate the properties.
- Grounded Solutions Network: The Homes for the Future
Fund will use private capital to purchase 200 homes in communities
of color in the South — starting in Atlanta — that are experiencing
rapid appreciation and rent increases, rehab the homes, and lease
them to families at an affordable price. As the property values
grow, the project will enable residents to use a portion of the
equity toward purchasing the home. The unique investment structure
aims to provide investors with a modest return while allowing the
bulk of the equity generated to remain in the community through a
shared equity model.
The competition drew more than 400 applications from a wide
range of innovative nonprofit and mission-driven for-profit
organizations stretching from Florida to Alaska in three
categories: Access and Resident Support, Construction, and
Financing. After two application rounds, 16 finalists were invited
to present their innovations in a 10-minute pitch to a panel of
judges composed of national affordable housing and community
development experts, including leaders from Wells Fargo and
Enterprise.
The 2023 winners will take part in a multiyear peer learning
network to share ideas and cultivate their innovations into
solutions that can be applied to communities across the U.S. The
cohort will gain access to a network of leaders from across the
housing sector, including experts from Enterprise and past winners
of the competition.
Named in 2020, the first cohort of winners have launched and
begun scaling an array of innovations that include a modular
building system that can grow over time, a shared-housing and
services program for people returning to communities after
incarceration, and an underwriting tool designed to close the
racial homeownership gap.
“The Breakthrough Challenge allowed us to build a bigger table,
where residents and frontline staff had real power and leadership
over decisions in their communities,” said Julianna Stuart-Lomax,
vice president of community impact for 2020 winner Preservation of
Affordable Housing. “It fundamentally reoriented our organization
and gave us the space to imagine a new kind of housing system for
this country.”
For more information on the competition, as well as the
finalists and their winning proposals, visit the Housing
Affordability Breakthrough Challenge website.
About Enterprise Community Partners
Enterprise is a national nonprofit that exists to make a good
home possible for the millions of families without one. We support
community development organizations on the ground, aggregate and
invest capital for impact, advance housing policy at every level of
government, and build and manage communities ourselves. Since 1982,
we have invested $64 billion and created 951,000 homes across all
50 states — all to make home and community places of pride, power
and belonging. Join us at enterprisecommunity.org.
About Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a leading financial
services company that has approximately $1.9 trillion in assets,
proudly serves one in three U.S. households and more than 10% of
small businesses in the U.S., and is a leading middle market
banking provider in the U.S. We provide a diversified set of
banking, investment, and mortgage products and services, as well as
consumer and commercial finance, through our four reportable
operating segments: Consumer Banking and Lending, Commercial
Banking, Corporate and Investment Banking, and Wealth &
Investment Management. Wells Fargo ranked No. 47 on Fortune’s 2023
rankings of America’s largest corporations. In the communities we
serve, the company focuses its social impact on building a
sustainable, inclusive future for all by supporting housing
affordability, small business growth, financial health, and a
low-carbon economy.
News, insights, and perspectives from Wells Fargo are also
available at Wells Fargo Stories.
Additional information may be found at www.wellsfargo.com
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/wellsfargo
News Release Category: WF-PESG: Philanthropy &
ESG
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version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231114901101/en/
Media Jordan Cooke (Enterprise) jcooke@groupgordon.com
212-784-5703
Melissa Murray (Wells Fargo) melissa.k.murray@wellsfargo.com
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