Greater Seattle

Through the Black Home Initiative, Civic Commons will address inequities with a cross-sector approach that includes obtaining land, creating new funding mechanisms aligned with the needs of developers, and targeting a variety of housing types and methods of sale.

FOCUS AREAS

Affordable Housing

Racial Equity

The 3C initiative helps teams strengthen local community investment ecosystems and advance racial equity through safe, affordable housing.

Using the Center for Community Investment’s Capital Absorption Framework, multisector stakeholders in Seattle collaborate to achieve ambitious results that go beyond individual projects to systems change. The three-year initiative is working to scale affordable housing and redress the ways structural racism has shaped American housing systems with dramatically negative consequences for many communities of color.

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Building a Foundation

Discriminatory housing practices such as redlining and restrictive covenants have a long history in the Seattle-Tacoma area, where a current shortage of affordable housing is further contributing to a significant racial gap in homeownership rates.

Black Home Initiative seeks to generate 1,500 new Black homeowners in the next five years in South Seattle, South King County and North Pierce County.

Affordable housing and homeownership is out of reach for far too many people, especially Black households.

The rate of homeownership among Black households is roughly half the rate among white households (25.8% versus 50.9%). 

A locally driven effort centering the experience of communities of color and weaving a robust network is essential. 

Aligning equity and housing production resources could double the Black homeownership rate in the next two decades.

Network Partners

This grant is part of JPMorgan Chase’s national $400 million, five-year philanthropic commitment to promote housing stability and affordability and improve homeownership opportunities to close the housing affordability gap for Black, Hispanic, and Latino households.

Partner

JPMorgan Chase & Co

Organizations Represented by Core Team Members

  • Byrd Barr Place
  • HomeSight
  • Rainier Beach Action Coalition
  • United Way of King County
  • Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle
  • Zillow
  • The cities of Kent and Tacoma
  • 30 additional organizations are represented by the full Greater Seattle 3C Team

Program Partners

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