JPMorgan Chase has announced that five organizations will receive philanthropic commitments of $3 million each to scale innovative climate-resilient affordable housing models. This work is part of the firm’s $400 million five-year commitment to improve housing affordability and stability for households of color, particularly in Black, Hispanic and Latino communities, a release stated.
The five organizations will work primarily in Southern California, Rio Grande Valley, Texas, Buffalo, New York, Washington, D.C., and Miami, Florida, with a goal to generate a broader impact on a national level.
As part of JPMorgan Chase’s strategy to combat the housing affordability crisis, the firm is supporting organizations advancing innovative housing models that can be successfully scaled throughout the country. Through testing new models and collecting lessons learned, these commitments aim to increase the supply of sustainable and affordable housing for households of color across the U.S., as well as influence key stakeholders in the housing industry, including the public and private sectors. This commitment also reflects how the firm is building on previous experience and insights gained through its unique set of business, data, policy and philanthropic resources to help close the housing affordability gap, the company stated.
The challenge
Against the backdrop of historically high rents and persistent barriers to homeownership rates for communities of color, Americans are facing a housing supply crisis, with a shortage of nearly 3.8 million units nationwide. In addition, the climate crisis has adversely affected housing supply, with extreme weather affecting about 1 in every 10 homes in the United States in 2021. Low-income Black, Hispanic and Latino households are often concentrated in locations that are highly vulnerable to environmental disasters, subjecting them to effects of the climate crisis and economic uncertainty, the company stated.
“In our efforts to advance an inclusive economy, we remain committed to addressing some of the barriers to affordable housing and homeownership to provide family stability and build generational wealth for households of color,” said Abigail Suarez, Head of Neighborhood Development, JPMorgan Chase. “More households deserve accessible options to homeownership and now more than ever we need equitable, sustainable solutions that better equip communities with affordable, climate resilient housing.”
Working with local partners to deliver impact
This announcement will support organizations working to reverse racial inequities and climate risks embedded in the existing housing system. To address the shortage of energy-efficient and climate-resilient affordable housing, JPMorgan Chase notes the following organizations will each receive $3 million in philanthropic capital to influence housing construction practices:
- come dream. come build (cdcb) – Rio Grande Valley, Texas: cdcb will expand their MiCASiTA program, which offers affordable sustainable homeownership options for rural families of color. This includes constructing and selling modular homes, lowering the home base sales price to 15% less than a stick-built home, enhancing the model’s sustainable features by integrating solar, energy, and water efficiency systems, and expanding into six new locations in other rural Black, Latino, and Indigenous communities.
- Neighborhood Partnership Housing Services (NPHS) – Southern, California: is building Homes by NPHS, a scalable social enterprise that will increase the supply of affordable housing by building factory-built single-family homes and accessory dwelling units (ADUs) on vacant lots, with anticipated savings of 20% in construction costs compared to site-built homes. NPHS will also increase the number of developers of color who can access factory-built housing and incorporate energy-efficient features and weatherization upgrades into factory-built homes in order to help lower pollutants, stay resilient and adaptive against weather, and lower utility costs.
“NPHS is grateful for JPMorgan Chase’s investment which will support the use of factory-built housing technology to increase the supply of affordable homeownership and mitigate the impacts of climate change on low-income homeowners,” stated NPHS CEO, Clemente Mojica. “This grant will expand our reach throughout underserved markets and address the systemic obstacles that have historically impeded households of color from achieving and sustaining homeownership.”
To help decarbonize affordable housing, JPMorgan Chase reports the following organizations will each receive $3 million in philanthropic capital to increase the technical knowledge and financing tools in the housing industry to reduce carbon emissions:
- Solar and Energy Loan Fund of St. Lucie County (SELF) – Miami-Dade County, Floridia: SELF aims to increase the supply of resilient and sustainable affordable housing by scaling their climate resiliency and clean energy home improvement program to help homeowners, landlords, developers, and contractors of color access innovative funding to rehab homes, upgrade workforce housing and increase green sustainable, affordable housing supply and building expertise.
- National Housing Trust (NHT) – Washington D.C. Metro Area: NHT aims to promote decarbonization efforts in the Washington DC metro area by involving residents in program and policy design, providing retrofit technical assistance to owners of buildings to improve resident health outcomes, and engaging decisionmakers and lenders to make public resources and mission-driven capital products more accessible and aligned for decarbonizing affordable housing. NHT also aims to have at least 50% of affordable housing rehabilitation projects in the Washington area incorporate yearly decarbonization measures by 2025.
- PUSH Buffalo – Buffalo, NY: PUSH Buffalo will advance sustainable affordable housing initiatives by building and rehabbing single-family affordable housing with net zero standards and decarbonizing vacant two-unit buildings with green technology for first time homeownership. PUSH Buffalo will also study the health and utility impact of replacing natural gas with electricity in different aspects of affordable homes to understand the resident experience, inform local residents and connect them to new technology and provide data to the wider ecosystem.
JPMorgan Chase says it will work with the Urban Institute to support grantees in the execution of their strategies and in the testing and scaling of their innovations, which will include measuring impact and sharing insights with the housing industry to advance housing stability and affordability for Black, Hispanic and Latino households.
“I am pleased that Urban has this great opportunity to help these innovative changemakers accelerate solutions. Together with JPMorgan Chase, we will support, collaborate with, and spread insights from this new group of field-leading grantees, who are working to expand and decarbonize the country’s housing supply, tackle housing affordability, and address the embedded inequities for households of color in our housing system,” said Urban Institute president Sarah Rosen Wartell.
A firmwide approach to supporting affordable housing
This philanthropic commitment complements the firm’s sustainability efforts to help advance the transition to a lower-carbon future and support community resilience to the climate crisis, as well as the JPMorgan Chase PolicyCenter’s housing recommendations to increase equitable access to stable, affordable housing. According to the company, additional firmwide efforts to help close the housing affordability gap include:
- Since 2021, the firm has committed more than $145 million of its $400 million philanthropic commitment to organizations across the country. This includes low-cost loans, equity and grants to advance housing stability and affordability strategies.
- For example, the firm’s commitments to Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future and Housing Partnership Network helped support housing stability of low-income households affected by the pandemic. The program disbursed more than $1.7 million to 19 nonprofit housing providers to support services that helped more than 7,800 families remain housed through the pandemic.
- To help address two of the biggest barriers to achieving homeownership, Chase expanded its Homebuyer Grant program to offer a $5,000 grant to help customers with closing costs and/or down payment assistance when buying a home in predominantly Black, Latino and Hispanic communities across the country.
These commitments are part of the firm’s $30 billion commitment to advance racial equity and drive an inclusive economic recovery that was announced in October 2020.
To learn more, visit www.jpmorganchase.com/racialequity.
