The Challenge
For too many youth in Birmingham, financial literacy and stability take a backseat to survival. All six of the city's open-enrollment public high schools are deemed failing by the Alabama Department of Education and less than 10% of students graduate ready for college or careers.
Build UP aims to break the cycle of poverty through a scalable housing innovation that ensures young people have the credentials, skills, and agency to realize transformative, liberating wealth.
How it Works
The innovation s rooted in the belief that success is possible when people have a true stake in their communities. Donated homes from affluent areas are relocated and renovated as infill housing in neighborhoods where new construction has been economically impossible for decades. The approach reinvigorates neighborhoods, eliminates construction waste and prioritizes green technology.
The breakthrough approach prepares youth for careers in the high-demand building trades and readies them to become first-generation homeowners as early as age 21. Build UP’s plans to scale include expanding to other cities and states and creating a first-time homebuyer mortgage program.
