In 2019, Habitat for Humanity launched Cost of Home, a five-year home affordability advocacy campaign in the U.S., that sought to cultivate, inspire and educate housing advocates to influence policy and re-shape systems to increase access to affordable homes.
On this pageIn the first four years, the campaign supported Habitat’s local and state organizations to effectively help change over 300 policies, unlock more than $21 billion in government funding and increase access to affordable homes for an estimated 6.6 million people.
Habitat funded the Urban Institute, a nonpartisan research organization that provides data and evidence to help advance upward mobility and equity, to assess eight policy changes and conduct interviews with various stakeholders to distill factors critical to Cost of Home campaign’s success in impacting home affordability. Based on their findings, Urban Institute researchers found six key strategies for change.
Delivering policy and systems change at local, state and federal levels.