Upward Mobility

With the right elements in place, home can be a platform for mobility and address persistent poverty in the United States — which has emerged from generations of compounded disadvantage due to the structural racism in all systems, including housing. 

Discriminatory practices — from redlining and de facto segregation to exclusionary zoning and housing voucher prejudice — combine to make economic mobility extremely difficult for the majority of Americans with lower incomes.

We identified a bundle of five interdependent characteristics necessary for a home to become a platform for upward mobility. Our end-to-end approach includes financing, practice, and policy, giving us the unique ability to cultivate all five housing characteristics for every household in every community. 

Together with our cross-sector partners, we are using this housing bundle to address systemic barriers to advancement, drive systems transformation, and maximize mobility from poverty for people nationwide. 

We bring an anti-racist lens to our work, and we are fully committed to dismantling the legacy of systemic racism in housing, and to closing the growing racial wealth and health gaps in America. We want all people to have the tools and resources required to realize the future they envision for themselves and their communities.

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Addressing Systemic Barriers

We identify and tackle discriminatory mechanisms in the housing system via cross-sector partnerships that create equitable pathways out of poverty. Since 2018, we’ve supported more than 25 communities nationwide, facing some of the most urgent housing needs.

Together with our partners, we provide direct technical assistance and capacity building, tools and products for practitioners, guidance on policy development, and advocacy to increase access to the housing bundle.

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Through our partnership with Enterprise, we were able to forge a relationship with our mayor’s office and start thinking about how housing and education are intertwined and move in a positive direction.

Chelsea Powell, Higher Expectations for Racine County, Wisconsin

Shaun Donovan, CEO and president at Enterprise, sits in a blue suit at a table and speaks into a microphone with other people in the room

Driving System Transformation

We work to advance racial equity and equitable investment in affordable homes and communities. Our policy priorities include federal tenant protections that promote fair housing and ban source-of-income discrimination.

We also advocate at the federal, state, and local level to remove barriers to the production and preservation of affordable housing. In addition, we support community ownership and other shared equity models to advance homeownership, wealth building, and lasting affordability.

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Turning Rent Into Wealth

Homeownership is regarded as a traditional path to personal wealth. But as mortgage rates and home prices rise, homeownership is out of reach for too many. The Renter Wealth Creation Fund applies a commonsense solution that benefits renters and investors.

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Maximizing Mobility From Poverty

We focus on ensuring all five characteristics of the housing bundle are available for every household in every community nationwide. Our approach includes everything from innovative pilot programs that pair rental assistance with repayment plans, to resident services that increase income, asset, and wealth building for renters.

Leveraging our deep expertise and the strength of industry-wide partnerships, we deliver innovative opportunities that build community power while supporting economic mobility.

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Featured Partnership

Empowering Black Futures

Disinvestment took a heavy toll on many once-thriving Black legacy communities. As a part of the Empowering Black Futures Neighborhood Program, made possible by a $180 million commitment from Fifth Third, we are providing technical support to help nine neighborhoods across seven states create and implement economic mobility plans designed to create more equitable, connected systems; improve upward mobility; build an inclusive civic infrastructure; promote prosperous small businesses; and develop healthy, built environments.

Five circles of different colors represent the areas of the upward mobility housing bundle

What is the housing bundle?

Working with partners like the Urban Institute, we identified a bundle of five interdependent attributes that are proven to transform a good home into a platform for upward mobility. 

The five attributes include housing quality, housing affordability, housing stability, housing that builds assets and wealth, and neighborhood context.

We call these the “housing bundle,” because they are interconnected and must work together for housing to function as a pathway to economic mobility.

These five attributes only support upward mobility when they are in alignment. Leveraging the housing bundle framework, we help our partners avoid unintended consequences of focusing too much on a single attribute (such as affordability).

The housing bundle includes:

Housing quality — affects health, socio-emotional, educational, and behavioral outcomes as well as household finances (e.g., inefficient heating and cooling systems)
Housing affordability — impacts saving accumulation as well as mental and physical well-being due to financial stress and house crowding
Housing stability — influences academic achievement, job continuity, emotional health, and the ability to form community ties due to costly, stressful, and disruptive moves
Housing that builds assets and wealth — wealth from home equity is a leading driver of economic mobility but is often restricted to homeowners, cutting renters out of the equation  
Neighborhood context — neighborhoods with lower racial and economic segregation, lower income inequality, higher quality schools, and less violent crime promote upward mobility

To address the wide variety of housing dynamics at play across the country, we’ve developed a five-part process that supports increased access to the housing bundle in every community.  

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Anne Griffith

Alexa Rosenberg

Anne Griffith

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