In Massachusetts today, there is an acute shortage of housing that is affordable to families whose incomes are extremely low. A typical low-wage worker making $10 an hour earns $1,733 per month, while the median asking rent for an apartment in Boston’s least expensive neighborhoods is $1,500 to $1,700. Between 2007 and 2013, family homelessness in Massachusetts rose by 75%.

A major reason for this shortage is that housing production has been lagging far behind demand in Massachusetts and has remained low since the 1980s. A housing production bill filed this year recognizes that the state needs to produce 17,000 new homes each year to respond to demand. For low-income renter families, the effects of the housing shortage are acute: as of the end of August 2015, there were 4,550 families living in emergency shelter and motel rooms across the state.  These families represent just a fraction of the 79,000 extremely low-income (ELI) renter families who are at risk of homelessness due to high housing cost burdens.

Affordable housing is associated with positive effects on physical and emotional health, educational attainment and well-being of lower income families, especially their children. Research shows that housing can improve health and educational outcomes for children, which can lead to better employment outcomes later in their lives.

The commitment to affordable housing is evident in Massachusetts with its affordable housing innovations and innovators, strong capacity and support of its networks of lenders, intermediaries, and public and private funders. In areas of financing, construction and policy, Massachusetts stands out as a leader. Despite the Commonwealth’s fiscal challenges, local housing advocates, development practitioners, and public officials have worked tirelessly to secure increased funding for core housing programs — including capital pro­grams and the Massachusetts Rental Voucher Program (MRVP). In recent years alone, new programs and strategies in the private and public sectors have produced housing and increased long-term access to housing for ELI families.

There also is significant interest and energy at the local level to identify and seek solutions to barriers to affordable housing development. While some communities have reported an uptick in housing production in 2015 — including housing targeted to low- and moderate-income households — current housing programs and the market do not support the development and preservation of housing that is affordable to ELI families. The housing affordability crisis is deepening for these families, who face rising housing costs, stagnant  wages, and decreases in rental subsidies and other supports due to declining federal resources. The many challenges to preserve and create affordable housing persist and require new approaches, solutions, and innovations.

The Prizes

Home Funders plans to award prizes of $10,000 to $25,000 each to up to three orga­nizations or teams that propose well-crafted, innovative, feasible and sustainable solutions to build, preserve or create access to housing units for ELI families. It is Home Funders’ hope that the winning strategies could be implemented at scale in regions across Massachusetts to increase access to long-term ELI affordable housing in new ways. The cash prizes will be unrestricted and may be utilized for any purpose by the prizewinners. Ideas selected will show­case best practices and creative approaches, and demonstrate how they would leverage financial and other resources to lead to the creation, preservation and access of homes for ELI families. The proposals should be pragmatic and replicable. The Innovation Fund Competition advisory panel will review proposals and make recommendations for prizewinners. It will judge the proposals for their effectiveness, feasibility and sustainability. The advisory panel will consist of representatives from government, private philanthropy, and academia, and innovative practitioners in the affordable housing field. Building on the advisory panel’s recommendations, Home Funders will determine the final number of prizewinners and the prize amounts for each winner.

Eligible Applicants

Proposals from public and private entities, and for-profit and non-profit organizations are all welcome. We strongly encourage proposals and entries from partnerships of stakeholders. While this is not a requirement, partnerships could potentially help demonstrate higher levels of feasibility and sustainability for a proposed idea. We do not wish to limit eligibility for the competition; rather we hope it will generate broad interest and foster new collaborations to meet the goals of the competition.

Timeline

December 3, 2015, 9:30am	Information Session at The Boston Foundation
February 5, 2016	Proposals due to Home Funders through online submission portal
April 2016	Announcement of prize-winners

Selection Criteria:

The proposed innovation/idea should:

• Result in new approaches, improved systems, and/or policy change to advance production, preservation and/or access to affordable housing for the long term for ELI families. Ideas for improving housing access for ELI households via housing search, housing counseling, tenant services or similar strategies will NOT be considered unless linked to larger identifiable changes or innovations that expand the amount, or deepen the long term affordability of the housing in which the ELI families will live.
• Be feasible and sustainable.
• Demonstrate potential for scalability and replicability for increasing the number of ELI family units in Massachusetts. The competition is looking beyond individual housing development projects to broad strategies that could have a significant impact on the availability of affordable housing for ELI families.
• Build on existing research and effective practice in the field.

Illustrative Examples:

Except as noted in the selection criteria, there are no restrictions on the types of activities an organization or part­nership may propose. We envision there could be significant diversity in the types of proposals and we encourage applicants to use this opportunity to innovate. Without limiting respondents’ creativity and thinking, the types of areas in which we think innovations are possible and have potential to move ELI housing practices forward in­clude: design, building/engineering, the vehicles by which the housing is financed and the income streams are combined, cost reduction, value capture, policy/institutional change(s) that enhance(s) affordability, and others. We have listed below some strategies that are being explored currently or are at the forefront of state and national housing policy. We share this as an illustrative, not prescriptive, list of ideas to increase ELI housing:

• Innovative use of the National Housing Trust Fund capital expected in early 2016
• Utilizing a variety of programs such as Massachusetts Housing Partnership’s Housing Reserve Assurance Program and the Massa­chusetts Rental Voucher Program to preserve existing affordable housing for ELI families
• ELI housing production linked to zoning regu­lations
• A partnership between independent land­lords in the private rental market and agen­cies that administer housing vouchers to house, on a long-term basis, ELI and homeless families with tenancy barriers
• Lowering construction costs through negotiated agreements or partnerships, such as between unions and a housing authority; utilizing savings to include higher numbers of ELI units
• Developing ELI housing without state subsidy or tax credits (utilizing the Community Preservation Act, municipal funds, other local sources)
• State or federal tax incentives that increase the supply of deeply affordable housing
• Innovative architectural or urban design ideas that enable increased ELI housing production

Advisory Committee

Finalists will be selected via careful screening by a blue ribbon Advisory Committee that includes:

• Chrystal Kornegay, Undersecretary for Housing at the Massachusetts Department of  Housing and Community Development (MA DHCD), Boston MA
• Linda Couch, Senior Vice President for Policy, National Low Income Housing Coalition, Washington DC
• Melinda Marble, Director of Family Philanthropy at Pilot House Associates, Boston MA
• Professor Phil Clay, MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Cambridge MA
• Thomas Bledsoe, President and CEO, Housing Partnership Network, Boston MA
• Xavier de Souza Briggs, Vice President, Economic Opportunity + Assets, Ford Foundation, New York NY

The Committee will work closely with the Home Funders staff, selecting up to three prize-winners.