NeighborWorks® America convened a Housing Supply Solutions Lab last week to provide affordable housing and community development practitioners in the network a chance to dig deeply into innovative building techniques, zoning and land-use reform, and attainability and affordability. The lab format allowed the participants a chance not just to listen, but to speak, learn and solve challenges together. They left the eight-hour session with new connections and new ideas. 

From all across the country, affordable housing and community development practitioners convened at the NeighborWorks® Training Institute (NTI) in Chicago, Illinois, this week to learn, to grow and to help build solutions to an affordable housing crisis that continues to put homes, both rented and owned, out of reach. The training institute attracted well over 1,000 participants, though some were slowed by an East Coast snowstorm that landed just as the institute began. 

The supply of affordable rental homes is at a crisis point in communities across America, with millions of renters paying one-third or even half of their income on rent. The cost of homeownership is climbing too, as national median home prices ratchet higher, and mortgage rates stay stubbornly close to 7%.

In 2024, NeighborWorks Capital launched a new lending program to deploy low-cost, long-term capital to NeighborWorks network organizations to empower them to expand their homeownership initiatives in communities across the country. Wells Fargo provided $8.5 million for the launch of this program, and network organizations were selected for funding through a competitive invitation-only application process.

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