SAN FRANCISCO (May 11, 2021) – Enterprise Community Partners (Enterprise) today announced a partnership with Governor Gavin Newsom’s Office and Facebook’s Housing Initiative to support technical assistance for applicants and awardees in the Governor’s proposed expansion of Homekey. Facebook’s funding will allow Enterprise to build on its support of the Governor’s successful Homekey program.
Homekey is California’s innovative program to purchase and rehabilitate buildings – including hotels, motels, vacant apartment buildings and other properties – and convert them into permanent, long-term housing for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness. Launched with over $800 million in state and federal funding and a $46 million public-private partnership administered by Enterprise in 2020, Homekey created over 6,000 units of housing across the state. Building on this success, as part of this year’s budget, today the Governor announced a proposed massive increase of Homekey with $7 billion to purchase an additional 46,000 units of housing for Californians experiencing homelessness, which is the largest expansion of homeless housing in California history.
“The first phase of Homekey was pivotal to bringing new solutions to the people experiencing homelessness across the state,” said Governor Newsom. “With generous support from private partners and expertise from Enterprise, we’re confident that the number of communities benefiting from Homekey will continue to grow and build on the state’s progress to address homelessness.”
“We must ensure that all of California’s communities are able to take full advantage of Homekey and create stable, permanent homes for their residents,” said Heather Hood, Enterprise vice president and Northern California market leader. “With Facebook’s support, we will help communities create practical proposals, then meet awardees where they are to execute, providing personalized assistance and helping them deliver on Homekey’s ambitious promise.”
Homekey fulfills a need for interim and permanent housing for people across the state who are experiencing or at risk of homelessness. On any given night more than 150,000 California residents are unsheltered.
Developing housing can be a challenging process, particularly for municipalities with limited expertise and resources. In many places, this is a new model for creating affordable homes with supportive services. Some technical assistance is needed to innovate this way. In the first round of Homekey, Blue Shield, Kaiser Permanente, CommonSpirit Health and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative stepped up to provide over $46 million for Enterprise to deploy operating subsidy grants and technical assistance to mission-oriented developers to assist with renovation and operating expenses for awardees.
With an additional $650,000 in funding from Facebook, Enterprise will provide technical support and peer learning opportunities to help guide city, county, developer, and service provider staff as they execute their development, operations and services plans, reinforcing the pathway to safe, affordable and sustainable homes for California’s most vulnerable.
“Habitat for Humanity Yuba/Sutter was overwhelmed to receive program funding from Enterprise to help reduce our overall costs and provide additional programming to tenants through casework and counseling,” said Joseph Hale, CEO of Habitat for Humanity Yuba/Sutter, which received support from Enterprise in the first round of Homekey funding. “We also had the opportunity to receive technical assistance on best practices and processes as we work through Housing First requirements and maintain great relations with our tenants.”
“Homekey is a critical tool in addressing the homelessness crisis in California, so we’re doing our part to help all communities across the state access these resources,” said Facebook’s Mona Pasquil Rogers. “We’re proud to partner with Governor Newsom and Enterprise to support the equitable implementation of Homekey as part of our long-term commitment to address California’s affordable housing crisis and expand access to housing for all.”
The Homekey expansion partnership is part of Enterprise’s larger mission to increase housing supply, advance racial equity and build resilience and upward mobility across the country. By ensuring that every municipality in California has the ability to take full advantage of these funds from the state, Enterprise can help cities achieve functional zero homelessness and implement innovative solutions in addressing the housing affordability crisis.
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ABOUT ENTERPRISE
Enterprise is a national nonprofit with three offices in California on a mission to make home and community places of pride, power and belonging for all. To make that possible, we operate the only organization designed to address America’s affordable housing crisis from every angle: we develop and deploy programs and support community organizations on the ground; we advocate for policy on a nonpartisan basis at every level of government; we invest capital to build and preserve rental homes people can afford; and we own, operate and provide resident services for affordable communities. All so that people not only make rent, they build futures. With this end-to-end approach, 40 years of experience and thousands of local partners, Enterprise has built and preserved 793,000 homes, invested $61 billion in communities and changed millions of lives.
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Media Contacts
Jordan Miller, Group Gordon
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Chloe Meyere, Facebook
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