COLUMBIA, Md. and SAN FRANCISCO – Enterprise Community Partners (Enterprise) and Wells Fargo today opened the application process for the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge, a nationwide search for the most innovative, scalable and viable ideas to increase housing affordability solutions. The competition, which is expected to draw hundreds of applications from around the U.S., will award six grants of more than $2 million each, in addition to providing two years of technical assistance from Enterprise to help turn the grantees’ concepts into reality.
“Transformative change in communities happens when the best ideas are paired with the right mix of resources and technical know-how, and the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge allows us to do that six times over,” said Melinda Pollack, senior vice president of national initiatives at Enterprise. “This incredible commitment from Wells Fargo will elevate and scale promising new ideas that will create real change for the millions of families who lack access to quality affordable homes nationwide.”
Winning proposals will detail scalable solutions that specifically address one of the Challenge’s three focus areas:
- Housing construction
- Housing financing
- Resident services and support
Responses to the first-round request for proposals (RFP) are due Feb. 19, 2020. Enterprise will facilitate a review process to select up to 40 finalists for the second-round RFP. Fifteen finalists will be invited to the Challenge’s third and final round including participating in a pitch competition. The final six grant recipients will be named this summer.
The Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge is part of Wells Fargo’s $1 billion commitment to support housing affordability solutions across the U.S. by 2025.
"Together with Enterprise Community Partners, we will engage with creative innovators who have know-how, technical skill, imagination—and with catalytic investment—can transform housing affordability ideas into real action on the ground,” said Eileen Fitzgerald, head of housing affordability philanthropy with the Wells Fargo Foundation. “With the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge, we are bringing forward our financial resources combined with our business expertise to inspire vitally needed scalable and effective housing affordability solutions.”
The Challenge is open to applicants in all 50 states, as well as Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Proposals may cover single-family or multifamily housing, can assist homeowners or renters and can focus on any sector of the community, including children, youth, families and seniors.
For more information and to read the request for proposals, visit the Housing Affordability Breakthrough Challenge website.
About Enterprise Community Partners
Enterprise is a proven and powerful nonprofit that improves communities and people’s lives by making well-designed homes affordable and connected to opportunity. As a social enterprise, we bring together the nationwide know-how, policy leadership, partners, donors and investors to multiply the impact of local affordable housing development. Over more than 35 years, Enterprise has created 585,000 homes, invested more than $43 billion and touched millions of lives.
About Wells Fargo
Wells Fargo & Company (NYSE: WFC) is a diversified, community-based financial services company with $1.9 trillion in assets. Wells Fargo’s vision is to satisfy our customers’ financial needs and help them succeed financially. Founded in 1852 and headquartered in San Francisco, Wells Fargo provides banking, investment and mortgage products and services, as well as consumer and commercial finance, through 7,400 locations, more than 13,000 ATMs, the internet (wellsfargo.com) and mobile banking, and has offices in 32 countries and territories to support customers who conduct business in the global economy. With approximately 260,000 team members, Wells Fargo serves one in three households in the United States. Wells Fargo & Company was ranked No. 29 on Fortune’s 2019 rankings of America’s largest corporations. With its corporate philanthropy, Wells Fargo aims to pave a path to stability and financial success for underserved communities by applying a problem-solving mindset to housing affordability, small business growth, and financial health, among other local community needs. In 2018, Wells Fargo donated $444 million to nearly 11,000 nonprofits. For 10 consecutive years, Wells Fargo has held the honor of No. 1 in workplace giving by United Way Worldwide. Wells Fargo team members also actively support communities by donating more than 2 million hours of volunteer time in the last year. News, insights and more information on the company’s overall corporate responsibility are available at Wells Fargo Stories and www.wellsfargo.com/impact.
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