Strategic Initiative: Housing Affordability

Chatham Habitat works in partnership with people to create self-help opportunities for families to own affordable homes, improve their lives, and strengthen their communities. Homes are built using staff and volunteer labor, and are sold to qualified applicants who earn between 30 and 70% of AMI through 30-year, 0% interest loans.

The mission of the Community Empowerment Fund is to cultivate opportunities, assets, and communities that sustain transitions out of homelessness and poverty. Our approach combines person-centered support with financial services that pursue equity in order to reduce the racial wealth gap.

Community Home Trust delivers housing affordability to diverse populations in partnership with our communities. Our vision is a world in which barriers are removed for those wanting a home they can afford, where the supply of those homes keeps pace with the demand, and all individuals have long term access to a safe home where they can thrive, work, and grow. Our work is guided by these core values: We care about our homeowners, tenants, and the community we share. We seek out new and innovative opportunities and solutions to partner and serve. We want our organization to reflect our community and we hold ourselves accountable to building a diverse and inclusive organization. We promise to act on that commitment and respect each other in the process. We are committed to excellence in our work and we invest in each other and our team. Our community and our workplace are safe, encouraging, equitable spaces, and we always support each other. We are open to criticism if it makes us better.

The mission of Durham Community Land Trustees (DCLT) is to build strong communities by developing, managing, and advocating for permanently affordable housing that offers low- and moderate-income residents a stable foundation for achieving economic security. Conducting development without displacement, DCLT works at the intersection of housing and environmental justice, climate resilience, wealth-building, and accessibility.

The mission of Families Moving Forward is to help families in the crisis of homelessness find their way home. We provide temporary housing, case management, skills education, and connection to community resources to help parents and children thrive in stable homes.

Hope Renovations builds futures and transforms lives with a dual mission: preparing underemployed women and gender-expansive individuals for construction careers and helping older adults age in place with dignity.

Housing for New Hope’s mission is to end homelessness one valuable person at a time. Our vision: Housing for New Hope creates and continually improves innovative, data-informed programs shaped by client feedback and responsive to evolving community needs. We encourage, motivate, and enable individuals and families experiencing homelessness to take their next best step toward long-term, stable housing with an array of supportive housing and affordable housing options. We connect our most vulnerable neighbors to housing and hope.

Our mission is to honor, renew, and build community in Northside, Pine Knolls and Tin Top, historically Black neighborhoods in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, NC. Like residents in similar low-income communities across the country, Northside neighbors are facing market pressures resulting in instability, displacement, and, often, a sense of defeat. We ally with neighbors to respond with what we call community-first planning: we put community knowledge, visions, and values first in every aspect of our work. Our approach is abundance based. Beyond meeting community needs and bridging assets, we build on deep networks of care, long histories of courageous leadership, and rich traditions of creative community to revive the vibrant, diverse, affordable, and family-friendly neighborhoods our neighbors prize. Our vision is Beloved Community: a world of creative reconciliation, hard-won rights, and abiding love and respect of which we may be a means.

Our mission is to lead a movement to ensure that every North Carolinian has a home in which to live with dignity and opportunity. Our vision is a North Carolina with just and affordable communities.

Oak City Cares is a public-private partnership that exists to support the self-determination of our neighbors experiencing homelessness through trusting relationships and connections to coordinated services that increase their ability to be safely and stably housed. No person should experience homelessness alone. Oak City Cares is a gathering space where we listen to, connect with, and serve persons at-risk or experiencing homelessness so they can quickly reestablish a home.

Our mission is to create dignified, affordable, tiny homes in a caring community for and with people transitioning out of homelessness. We build and maintain deeply affordable rental homes for individuals earning 30% or less of the area median income (AMI), prioritizing those who have experienced chronic homelessness and elders. Our work goes beyond housing by connecting residents to critical community resources that support their long-term success. We envision a community of permanently affordable housing that places residents in a supportive environment to promote independent living in safe, accessible conditions. By 2030, we aim to build 20 tiny homes, expanding our impact through small clusters and community village models. Pee Wee Homes values housing equity and sustainability to ensure that residents can access stable, safe, and accessible homes. We strive to develop innovative, replicable models that expand affordable housing options and supportive communities across the region.

Preserving Home, Inc. (PH), formerly Rebuilding Together of the Triangle, Inc., is dedicated to ensuring safe and healthy homes for vulnerable residents. As a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit and a licensed general contractor, we preserve the homes of seniors, individuals with disabilities, veterans, and families with children through collaborative partnerships with local communities. Our mission is to preserve the homes of vulnerable neighbors through collaborative partnerships with local communities. We achieve this by focusing on repairing and improving existing affordable homes, recognizing that this is a cost-effective strategy for preserving vital community assets. Preserving Home envisions stable communities with homes that support the needs of those living in them. We work towards this vision by delivering comprehensive home repair services, ensuring that these homes are not only safe and healthy but also tailored to meet the unique needs of those who live within them.

The Raleigh Area Land Trust (RALT) expands affordable homeownership opportunities for families with low to moderate incomes so that they are able to live or remain in the communities of their choice. Our vision is to protect neighborhoods from the affordable housing crisis by ensuring working families can afford to live in their community and by keeping homes in their community affordable for generations using the Community Land Trust (CLT) model. Our work is driven forward by our values—dedication to racial equity, commitment to community, collaboration with our homeowners, and permanent affordability.

The Hope Center at Pullen empowers emerging adults who are transitioning out of foster care in Wake County with the support and connections needed for a safe and stable adulthood. Our vision is to build a community where a person’s history in foster care does not limit their future.

UWCC tackles critical challenges, focusing on poverty, housing instability, and educational inequities. We envision a community where all residents can thrive. In 2023 we launched our Bold Goal Program: to end and prevent poverty for 2,000 people in 2,000 days (2030). This transformational approach reimagines the traditional United Way model, shifting from short-term, transactional solutions, to fostering systemic change through collaboration and innovation. The Bold Goal Program strengthens our partner agencies by building capacity, facilitating collaboration, and addressing service gaps through co-created, sustainable solutions. Guided by our Theory of Change, we work toward five critical outcomes: increasing earned income for households; ensuring housing stability; supporting educational success for children in poverty; aligning partner programming for systemic change; and advocating for expanded opportunities for economic success in Chatham County.