Who We Are
America has long prided itself on being the Land of Opportunity where upward mobility is the national ideal. However, research increasingly shows that opportunity varies deeply with geography. Millions of low income families in the United States live in communities that are disconnected from opportunity.
Neighborhoods that engender opportunity are safe from physical and social threats, including violence or trauma of any kind. They should be free of toxic compounds in the water, land, and air. They have excellent schools, affordable transit options, and ample access to nature. Their residents have access to affordable health care, and to social and mental health services. They have stores selling healthy and affordable food, include diverse peoples, housing types, and opportunities, with a prevalence of working families. Their governance is reliable, trusted, transparent and free from corruption, and their citizens are able to play a significant role in both its long-range planning and its short-term decision making.
But many Americans don’t live in such neighborhoods. Our mission is to support the theory, practice and data related to the efficacy of making affordable housing mini zip codes of opportunity.
Purpose
The purpose of the Community Opportunity Fund is as follows:
To assist persons with low and moderate incomes in obtaining access to a range of health, educational, cultural, social, and other services and activities that may enhance the quality, wellbeing and opportunity of their lives and communities;
To create and preserve stable communities by sponsoring, initiating, developing, financing, and/or operating a) affordable, elderly, and/or disabled housing; and b) community interventions that enhance the health, nutrition, education, economic, cultural, social service resources available to affordable, elderly, and/or disabled housing residents.
To sponsor, initiate, develop, finance or operate research projects that measure the effectiveness of sponsoring affordable, elderly, and/or disabled housing and providing related social services to its residents and surrounding communities.
To provide financial and technical support to those resident, not-for-profits, affordable housing owners, and stakeholders living and working in low-income communities who seek to achieve the foregoing purposes of the Corporation; and
To engage in any lawful act or activity in furtherance of the foregoing, as well as other charitable activities that combat community deterioration, lessen government burden and assist in the elimination of racial prejudice and discrimination, provided such activities are not in violation, or inconsistent with, the Corporation’s status as a charitable and educational organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Code.
Theory of Change
The transformation of low opportunity neighborhoods takes a concerted public strategy, generations of time, infrastructure investment and a great deal of funding.
If we are to equalize the landscape of opportunity in a much shorter time period, and for a much lower cost, as a first phase, and not a substitute for the above preferred neighborhood state, we work to bring these elements into existing affordable housing and mixed income communities. We will collect data to test the efficacy of a range of strategies, with the dual goals of improving the lives of the residents we serve and identifying solutions that can scale.
