WHO WE ARE
The Affordable Housing Institute spans both research and low-bono consulting.
Our research reaches around the world and rests on four postulates that form AHI's theory of change about rapidly urbanizing environments:
1. Housing is a driver of improving cities.
Housing is what defines and makes neighborhoods. People who invest in improving their housing improve their cities. Improve housing and you not only improve the physical city, you also improve the policy and economic environment.
2. Mission Entrepreneurial Entities (MEEs) are a major catalyst of change in urban housing.
Call them NGOs, CBOs, CDCs, or HAs – these entities are the actors that turn ideas and political will into visible changes – new homes, improved homes, better water and sanitation – that prove change is possible and, in so doing, improve the policy and economic environment.
3. Ability to use and lever capital is a critical valve in MEE growth:
What constrains MEE growth is their ability to use and lever capital. Properties and schemes require much more capital than MEEs have from their internal resources, so tapping domestic debt and equity markets is essential to their growth.
4. The best counterparty is municipal government:
It is large enough to be effective, small enough to be responsive. Municipal government canniot hide from the slums the way state or national governments can.
As a housing finance policy/program innovator, AHI organizes, interconnects, and
presents the vast body of existing information on housing to enable change-makers to
conceptualize, design, enact and implement programmatic and structural innovations
that will strengthen their affordable housing supply and delivery systems.
Our consulting puts this into practice by helping particular MEEs throughout the global
south grow their activity with financial product design and development; business and
mission strategy; and organizational growth; as well as negotiating breakthrough projects and pilot programs.
AHI's standard services include education, system assessment, policy development,
program design, monitoring and evaluation, with a particular focus on pilots which test
programmatic innovations in practice.
AHI's theory of change and its services and products are guided by AHI's three core beliefs.