Susannah Patton

Gulf Coast Housing Partnership – a 2020 winner of the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge led by Enterprise and Wells Fargo – celebrates the opening of its first Health + Housing pilot development, H3C.

As Enterprise’s vice president and market leader for New York, Baaba Halm says she never forgets the people she advocated for each day in her first job at Covenant House, even as she now focuses on broad policy changes that aim to create more affordable homes for millions of New Yorkers.

Bernadette Butler is the director of the Homecoming Project, which pairs people leaving prison with homeowners who have a room to spare. We spoke with Butler recently about her first six months on the job and her vision for the project's future growth.

Could mall-to-housing conversion be a part of addressing the country’s affordable housing shortage? In a new white paper, Enterprise senior research analyst Ahmad Abu-Khalaf examines the promise and challenges of converting malls into affordable housing. We spoke with two developers featured in the white paper.

In his first six weeks on the job, Shaun Donovan has visited 11 cities, met with dozens of partners and investors, and toured affordable housing properties across the country. The recent travels drove home the breadth and depth of Enterprise's work, mission, and partnerships. But as the organization's new CEO and president, Donovan believes Enterprise must expand its network to tackle the full scope of the country's affordable housing crisis.

With affordable housing on the national radar like never before, we must seize this moment to find solutions to a crisis that is damaging and dividing communities across the country. This was the message from Shaun Donovan, Enterprise’s new chief executive officer and president, speaking at the National Building Museum’s Future Cities: Housing Affordability Summit.

Brandon Adkins teaches kitchen skills to people who want to turn their lives around. He realizes, however, that the food these people are learning to chop, prepare, and cook, is not the most important ingredient. “Food is a tool,” said Brandon, who is culinary trainer at Kindred Kitchen, a job skills training program In Everett, Washington. “What’s most important is that these individuals gain self-esteem and the ability to know they are capable of changing their lives for the better.”

While Colorado was once considered “relatively affordable,” that has changed over the past decades, said Jennie Rodgers, Enterprise’s vice president and market leader for Rocky Mountain and Tribal Nations and Rural Communities. In fact, affordable housing was rated the top concern people are grappling with across the state, according to a recent survey by the Colorado Health Foundation. “Right now, many people here are cost burdened, and many are even on the verge of eviction,” Rodgers said.

Tina Rogert manages a jobs training program and furniture store in Everett, Washington and recently moved into a home of her own. Moving up in a job and getting your own place may seem like a typical sequence of events. But Tina’s path has not been smooth or ordinary. Tina credits the support she received from job training and housing organizations HopeWorks and Housing Hope with her ability to rebound from periods of addiction and homelessness.

Look upward in downtown Detroit and you’ll see ornate skyscrapers built even before the city’s automotive-fueled heyday of the 1950s, when it was the richest city in the country. Lower your gaze, and the bevy of cranes offers signs of renewal. At street level, crowded restaurants and busy sidewalks create an urban buzz familiar to any city dweller. For Melinda Clemons, this activity is a positive sign, as her hometown builds back from the national foreclosure crisis in 2008 and municipal bankruptcy five years later.