Several community foundations have already devoted grant and impact investments to support housing production and affordability. In high-cost, fast growth markets like San Diego, they are launching impact investment funds to support the production of needed workforce housing and partnering with nonprofits to pilot new models of affordable housing development. In cities like Chicago with a stark homeownership gap, they are convening the private and philanthropic sectors to work collaboratively to pilot new pathways to homeownership. In Los Angeles, where public resources are insufficient to meet the huge demand for affordable housing, they are partnering with the city and private sector to launch flexible capital funds that can speed housing production and opportunistically acquire existing market-rate housing that can be converted into affordable rental housing. Finally, in Atlanta, philanthropy is serving as a catalyst for policy change and an aggregator of impact capital, partnering with the city and private foundations to deploy impact investments at scale.

The following case studies provide more information about the activities of philanthropic actors in each of these cities: