Affordable Housing

Accord­ing to data from 2022, 30% of chil­dren in the Unit­ed States are liv­ing in house­holds with a high hous­ing-cost bur­den — where more than 30% of the house­hold income was spent on a mort­gage, rent, insur­ance etc. Those liv­ing in these sit­u­a­tions often have lim­it­ed funds to pro­vide basic needs, such as food and health care, for their fam­i­lies. At the same time, the sup­ply of afford­able hous­ing is shrink­ing; for the past 10 years, the sup­ply of afford­able units declined by about 2 mil­lion, mak­ing it hard­er for low-income fam­i­lies to find sta­ble housing.

Hous­ing is foun­da­tion­al to bet­ter out­comes for chil­dren, young peo­ple and fam­i­lies and cuts across all of Casey’s lines of work. Decades of research have demon­strat­ed that hous­ing insta­bil­i­ty — being forced to move fre­quent­ly due to finan­cial pres­sures, evic­tion, fore­clo­sure or dis­place­ment due to the imme­di­ate and sec­ondary effects of dis­place­ment and gen­tri­fi­ca­tion —leads to worse eco­nom­ic, edu­ca­tion­al and health out­comes. When fam­i­lies have sta­ble hous­ing, they are health­i­er, chil­dren do bet­ter in school and there is more cohe­sion with­in the house­hold and the broad­er community.

Through impact invest­ments, the Foun­da­tion advances solu­tions that increase the sup­ply of afford­able hous­ing, decrease cost bur­dens for fam­i­lies and sup­port social and eco­nom­ic mobil­i­ty. Specif­i­cal­ly, Casey invests in afford­able hous­ing funds that devel­op and pre­serve qual­i­ty hous­ing, inte­grate afford­able hous­ing into social ser­vices and revi­tal­ize hous­ing with­in under­served communities.

This invest­ment frame­work has three dis­tinct themes:

• sta­ble homes;
• hous­ing as a plat­form; and 
• com­mu­ni­ty change.

Sta­ble Homes

Invest­ments are made to pre­serve, cre­ate and pro­vide access to qual­i­ty, sta­ble afford­able hous­ing for low-income chil­dren and their fam­i­lies. Objec­tives include cre­at­ing or pre­serv­ing afford­able hous­ing, low­er­ing the hous­ing cost bur­den, sup­port­ing home own­er­ship and/​or cre­at­ing or pre­serv­ing qual­i­ty afford­able hous­ing in neigh­bor­hoods of opportunity.

Hous­ing As a Platform

Hous­ing as a plat­form is an invest­ment approach that lever­ages hous­ing as a foun­da­tion for deliv­er­ing ser­vices that improve access to oppor­tu­ni­ty and the over­all lives of chil­dren and their fam­i­lies. Objec­tives include:

• pro­vid­ing on-site ser­vices for par­ents and children;
• focus­ing, where pos­si­ble, on inte­grat­ing local providers of ser­vices (e.g., a health cen­ter or day-care) with hous­ing invest­ments; and
• cre­at­ing ser­vice-enriched hous­ing in low-oppor­tu­ni­ty neighborhoods.

Com­mu­ni­ty Change

Com­mu­ni­ty change invest­ments in afford­able hous­ing are one part of a broad­er strat­e­gy to trans­form dis­in­vest­ed neigh­bor­hoods into com­mu­ni­ties of oppor­tu­ni­ty. Com­mu­ni­ties of oppor­tu­ni­ty are defined as sta­ble, healthy neigh­bor­hoods where chil­dren and fam­i­lies have access to good schools, healthy food, health ser­vices, jobs and civic participation.