The article mentions the Essential Housing Fund, a private investment vehicle focused on workforce housing run by Fifth Space. Crankstart One of The Affordability Project’s key partners, was one of the first investors. Missy Narula, CEO of Crankstart, explains the fund saying, “the fund was not designed for investors seeking outsized returns: Its goal is to demonstrate that housing serving the city’s middle class can also be a viable investment.” She added, “If you care about building the kind of housing that will house the people who sustain our city, it’s a great investment.”

We are honored to partner with people on the cutting edge of thinking about innovative capital. Business as usual works for what it is designed to do. But business as usual, on its own, has not produced affordability at the scale the shortage demands. If it could, the gap would not be three to four million homes. Unless we are willing to add an option. Not a replacement for the market. A complement to it. A for the Common Good Capital option earns a place only if it competes on quality and on business fundamentals, and only if its ambition matches the size of the problem. It requires philanthropists, social impact investors, and mission-aligned landowners, developers, and contractors willing to build a different model together.

Fundamentally, we believe housing has become unaffordable because of capital market failures. When the cost of capital is associated with maximizing returns, the middle-income earner cannot pay enough to achieve traditional expected returns. Our approach is similar to Wal-Mart’s strategy: negotiate hard to drive down costs, pass the cost savings to consumer, and then focus on volume. The Affordability Project, a 501(c)(3) organization, is not interested in developer fees or maximizing individual deal returns, we are focused on our mission to increase the long-term supply of housing of the people who ensure our communities’ civic and economic viability.