As CEO of Build UP, David Hardin is helping scale an award-winning innovation that bridges a quality education with workforce development and a path to homeownership.

Winners of the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge are advancing innovations at the intersection of housing, career education, and workforce development.

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.

In opening remarks to kick off the pitch competition for the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge, Enterprise's David Bowers called on finalists – and everyone working in the housing and community development sector – to "celebrate the wins, kick the dirt on the losses, then buckle up and keep at it."

Civil rights leader Shirley Sherrod and her late husband Charles devoted their lives to advancing voting rights, solidarity, and wealth building through land ownership. But for a new generation of housing leaders like Devin Culbertson of Grounded Solutions Network, a Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge winner, their story is much more than a history lesson. It’s an urgent call to action.

In the Deep South, Hope Enterprise Corporation is helping turn renters of single-family LIHTC properties into homeowners. Their Y16 innovation is a winner of the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge led by Enterprise with support from the Wells Fargo Foundation. Enterprise Senior Director of Rural Communities Robin Wolff speaks with HOPE's Jena Reed about how the idea for Y16 emerged, where it has the potential to scale, and why homeownership is core to HOPE's mission.