Clinton Global Initiative Shares AFA and Tolemi Housing Initiative Progress
Data for Housing Solutions was launched as a Commitment to Action by Accelerator for America and Tolemi at last year’s Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) Meeting, and at the 2024 CGI in New York, was highlighted for having already emerged as an effective catalyst to advance affordable housing strategies in 17 cities across the United States.
As Americans confront rising housing costs and supply challenges, Data for Housing Solutions equips local leaders with cutting-edge analytical tools, comprehensive data sets, and valuable peer learning opportunities to unlock innovative solutions to their housing challenges.?
At the core of this initiative is Tolemi’s BuildingBlocks data platform, which transforms how local governments access and analyze property-level data. The platform's ability to generate data insights, previously inaccessible to local leaders, has become a game-changer in strategic decision-making.?
Recognizing the important role local governments play in ensuring every resident has access to safe & healthy housing, the City of Waterloo leveraged BuildingBlocks to revamp their Rental Housing Program. The Building and Inspections Department implemented a data-driven approach to streamline the registration & inspection process, make it easy for landlords to comply, proactively flag noncompliant rental properties, and identify owners with portfolios of substandard rentals. Waterloo Mayor Quentin Hart said, "This partnership marks a pivotal turn in our journey, ensuring data-driven decisions that benefit every corner of our community. With Tolemi, we're not just keeping pace, we're setting the standard in innovative municipal management. This is the game-changer Waterloo has been searching for, a leap into a future where our potential is matched only by our data's power. This is another example of Accelerator for America bringing the best and the brightest together to get things done in our cities."
The City of Albuquerque found that BuildingBlocks helps their staff “dramatically improve” their evaluation of properties for housing development and allows them to track down ownership data and relationships between property owners across the city. This improved analytical capability for local leaders allows cities to make more informed and strategic planning decisions about site identification, acquisition, disposition, development, and financing opportunities to increase the supply of housing. Desmond Wilson, Director of Community Development for the City of Montgomery, said, “BuildingBlocks has been instrumental in gaining insights for our city database. This application allows visual data to be represented in real time which is crucial in developing stories that help receive grants and other funding.”?
The City of Chattanooga exemplifies how AFA’s Data for Housing Solutions initiative drives investment decisions and facilitates public land disposition. Officials there have shared ?BuildingBlocks across all city departments, breaking down silos and bringing different key staff together to plan for development opportunities. In the past year, the city launched an innovative new Affordable Housing Payment-in-Lieu-of-Taxes (PILOT) program to incentivize private developers to build mixed-income projects, including units affordable to households at 50% to 80% of the area median income (AMI). Additionally, the city is developing a new $20 million Revolving Loan Fund to invest directly in mixed-income projects, which was a key recommendation in the Housing for One Chattanooga Action Plan . City leaders have also leveraged BuildingBlocks to conduct analyses of city-owned and other public properties as they establish the Chattanooga Land Bank Authority. This new land bank aims to create for-sale units affordable to households earning at or below 100% of AMI and create rental units affordable to households earning at or below 80% AMI.
In Oklahoma City, the Key to Home program is a collaborative effort between the city and more than 40 organizations to house people living in encampments with a goal of housing 500 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness by 2025. City leaders have used BuildingBlocks to help identify the owners of properties on which encampments are located as well as to identify potential sites for redevelopment into affordable housing, with a focus on sites located close to critical services such as transit and groceries. ??
The Philadelphia Accelerator Fund (PAF) is a non-profit loan fund, established with support from the City of Philadelphia in 2019, that provides flexible financing for affordable housing and works to increase access to capital for historically disadvantaged groups, with a focus on Black and Brown developers. In the last year, PAF has raised $5 million in new loan capital and has projects under contract and in the pipeline that will create hundreds of new housing units. PAF is using BuildingBlocks to support their underwriting process. PAF’s leadership has begun introducing other local stakeholders to the data platform, including the leaders of a local training initiative designed to increase the number of homes built by diverse developers, contractors, and workers.
In the City of Tucson, the Housing and Community Development Department recently updated its five year strategic plan –?People, Communities, and Homes Investment Plan (P-CHIP) ?– utilizing BuildingBlocks to ensure that their analysis was based on the most current data. Having this type of comprehensive, data-informed plan in place is key to driving success in securing funding for critical projects. In 2024 alone, the City of Tucson was awarded $2.5 million in Low Income Housing Tax Credit funding to build 66 affordable housing units and a $500,000 Choice Neighborhoods Planning Grant to help craft plans for Tucson’s 29th Street Thrive Zone to redevelop severely distressed HUD-assisted housing, improve outcomes for residents, and bring new amenities to high-poverty neighborhoods.
Perhaps one of the most valuable aspects of the Data for Housing Solutions initiative has been its emphasis on peer learning. This component allows local leaders to understand how others are approaching similar challenges or opportunities in their communities and identify new strategies that can be customized for their specific needs.?
For example, after hearing him present during a Peer Learning meeting, officials from the City of Chicago invited Ben Preis, a Research Fellow at the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University and?Director of the National Housing Crisis Task Force co-convened with AFA, for a collaborative meeting with staff from the Mayor’s Office, Department of Housing, Department of Public Health, and Department of Planning and Development to explore rental registry program design. Preis laid out best practices from his experience working on national, state, and local housing policy, including studying rental registry programs across the country. City staff used this opportunity to continue to define the priorities for a rental registry in Chicago and leveraged data from BuildingBlocks to identify neighborhoods with growing numbers of investor-owned rental properties and decreasing rates of homeownership.?
Similarly, the Philadelphia Accelerator Fund took note of ?the Port of Cincinnati’s model (featured in a peer learning session) of purchasing properties out of foreclosure to keep residents in their homes. Officials in the City of Albuquerque highlighted the value of leveraging national experts and peer cities to gain insights on how other communities have approached data accumulation and management. These comparisons have opened doors to important discussions about various data sources and potential improvements, fostering a culture of continuous learning and improvement among participating cities.
As cities continue to grapple with complex housing challenges, the Data for Housing Solutions initiative’s comprehensive approach provides a robust framework for innovation and effective policy-making to tackle the most pressing housing issues facing communities today. By equipping local leaders with the tools they need to make data-driven decisions, foster cross-sector collaboration, and learn from peers across the country, the Data for Housing Solutions initiative is not just addressing current housing needs, but is building a foundation for more resilient, equitable, and sustainable communities in the future.