Why This Matters

The conditions needed to facilitate homebuying have remained under immense pressure over the past year. Despite experiencing significant pressures, local collaboratives under the Wealth Opportunities Realized Through Homeownership (WORTH) Initiative have continued to support households’ ability to achieve or preserve homeownership. Collaboratives have demonstrated a strong commitment to their mission of reaching all high-barrier communities by seeking new methods for facilitating impact, including employing technology. And they have shown a willingness to test new ideas and engage with each other, resulting in more homebuying and preservation activity under WORTH.

Key Takeaways

This report shows the following findings:

• As challenges to new home purchases have persisted, collaboratives sharpened their focus on home preservation activities.
  •  Foreclosure prevention is the leading home preservation tool WORTH collaboratives used.
  • Resolving heirs’ property was an emerging strategy more collaboratives started using.
• Rising construction costs have limited innovative housing supply programs.
  • New home construction accounted for 6.5 percent (411) of total new homeowners created in the third year of WORTH.
  • Collaboratives also used WORTH support to advocate for policy changes that could support longer-term increases in housing supply (e.g., zoning changes).
• Collaboratives consistently reported that sustaining systems change and civic infrastructure work requires steady, flexible grant funding to cover backbone functions such as staffing, coordination, data systems, and advocacy.

How We Did It

Urban came to these conclusions using a mix of interviews with participating collaboratives and analysis of data these grantees provided. One parameter in our data calculations is that we count people who entered the program on or after April 1, 2022. Persons served or participating in activities within the evaluation period are excluded if they entered the overall system before that date. This date is when we assume the Wells Fargo Foundation sent the first payments to collaboratives. But some collaboratives have shared outcomes for people of color who entered strategies before this date. If those entering strategies before April 1, 2022, and who either achieved or preserved homeownership were included, the activity counts would be higher.