Understanding
Structural Innovation

We seek to advance our understanding of how, when, and where structural innovations can and should be used to (re)design the market for the public good.

Articles

Upzoning without displacement through multi-family housing cooperatives

Tamara Knox and Josh Morrison designed the Frolic model, born out of their research at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning and the MIT Center for Real Estate. Today, Frolic works with upzoned property owners facing displacement to develop formerly single-family lots into multi-family housing cooperatives. Read More
Oct 3, 2024

Unlocking homeownership with shared equity and down payment assistance

Four years ago, Gary Community Ventures, a Denver-based ​philanthropic organization, committed​ to a transformative shared equity model to address both barriers to homeownership and wealth disparities across Colorado. Read More
Oct 1, 2024

How CLT innovators are pioneering structural changes in housing markets

In addition, economic shocks resulting from sudden, unpredictable events like hurricanes or pandemics disproportionately impact Black communities and can also can cause rapid displacement. This is another aspect of a broad pattern of racism and environmental and economic injustice. But it’s important to recognize that displacement isn’t primarily caused by… Read More
May 20, 2022

From devaluation to displacement

Today, homes in majority Black neighborhoods are devalued by an average of 23% (worth on average $48,000 less per home, or $156 billion less collectively) relative to comparable homes in neighborhoods with very few or no Black residents. Home prices in Black- majority neighborhoods don’t reflect their real value, and… Read More
May 20, 2022

A short CLT primer

The first one was established in rural Lee County, Georgia in 1969 by New Communities Inc. to help Black famers overcome forces excluding them from owning land such as industrial farming, racial discrimination, and predatory lending. Through the 1970s, most CLTs were designed to help Black farmers buy rural land. Read More
May 20, 2022

Four Houston neighborhoods dealing with displacement

The Third and Fifth wards prospered in the 1920s, as successful Black business owners and civic leaders built outward from the stronghold of the Fourth Ward, which was known as Freedman’s Town. It was Houston’s first Black neighborhood, established soon after Emancipation. Just outside the city, Independence Heights, the first… Read More
May 20, 2022

Innovating CLTs in Houston

Last year, the net population of the Houston metro area grew by 250 people[ii] every day, as people flocked to the area seeking job opportunity and affordable neighborhoods. But from March 2020 to March 2021, home prices grew 16%[iii], pricing many Houstonians of… Read More
May 20, 2022

Structural inequities in New Orleans

They were three times as likely as white residents to be flooded out in the storm, since historic discriminatory housing and lending practices concentrated higher ground property in the hands of white homeowners. By the time banks started lending to Black buyers, what was left was mostly flood-prone property. In… Read More
May 20, 2022

Championing affordable rentals and tenants’ rights in New Orleans

Today, new disruptions such as the pandemic, growing gentrification, and the rise of tech- enabled short-term rentals for tourists are ratcheting up displacement pressures. Available housing inventory is down to its lowest level in a decade, public housing is now rented out at market rates, and affordable rentals are disappearing. Read More
May 20, 2022
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Foster

We seek to foster a new generation of structural innovations with the potential to address problems of historic proportions.

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Design

We seek to design, build and launch structural innovations with the potential to address problems of historic proportions.

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