As our portfolio name suggests, it is indeed a time of Housing Opportunities across the state. Sizeable new funding resources, innovative public-private partnerships and passage of statewide tenant protection legislation are evidence of the impressive energy and creativity responding to housing challenges across the state. In this moment of great potential, Meyer’s Housing Opportunities portfolio is pleased to open its doors for our 2019 Annual Funding Opportunity.

This is the fourth Annual Funding Opportunity cycle since restructuring our grantmaking program. We continue to refine and (we hope!) clarify the process. The list below highlights those elements that are the same this year, followed by those that have changed.

What’s the same in the Annual Funding Opportunity?

1. Our overarching housing goals are essentially the same:

• Preserve and increase the number of affordable housing rental units for priority populations

• Support the housing stability and success of priority populations

• Foster stronger, more equitable and more effective affordable housing systems and strategies

We’ve tweaked the goal language here to reflect a focus on priority populations — the people who experience the impacts of historical and current racist and discriminatory housing practices. These impacts are widely felt by people of color, Indigenous communities and Tribes, as well as people with disabilities and other marginalized communities. To achieve our vision that every Oregonian has a stable, safe and affordable place to call home, we strive to focus on those who face the disproportionate impacts of housing discrimination and instability. More on that below.

2. Grant-funded work should connect to and advance the outcomes we’ve identified under the three goal areas. In addition to the nine outcomes offered last year, we have added three more. This chart provides a snapshot of the funding goals, outcomes, funding ranges and grant types to help you assess the best fit. The grant types and ranges are the same as last year. Don’t forget to take a look at the shorter list of what doesn’t fit well within the portfolio.

3. Applicants must demonstrate a commitment to ongoing growth through the integration of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) principles into both their external programming or services and internal structures and operations. We seek organizations that share our values and are making progress toward DEI integration.

As part of those DEI values, Meyer believes people experiencing housing challenges are experts on their own situations and key stakeholders in housing solutions. We seek to support work centering the lived experience and expertise of people benefitting from programs and also building the capacity of impacted communities that have faced systemic housing disparities to define and implement their own solutions to housing needs. (This ties to a new outcome around Community Influence.) We are more likely to fund projects that demonstrate meaningful involvement by the people with lived experience in defining the issues and solutions proposed.

4. General operating support grants face a high bar. As noted in our funding guidelines, we have heightened expectations from organizations that are awarded unrestricted operating support. First and foremost, they should be housing organizations (do a majority of their work in affordable housing) and strongly advance the core funding goals in our Housing Opportunities portfolio. Additionally, they should play a unique and/or important role in the field and have wider impact for the sector (e.g., as an intermediary, seen as a field leader in Oregon or nationally); demonstrate leadership for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the context of the communities where they work; and have DEI strategies as a meaningful part of their work plan for the grant period. Reach out if you have questions about whether to apply for this funding type.

5. The Annual Funding Opportunity continues to be a competitive process, with limited funding. In the past two funding cycles, the Housing Opportunities portfolio has funded about half of the proposals we received. This means we’ve had to turn down many solid proposals. We also expect the 2019 Annual Funding Opportunity to have robust demand, due in part to the fact that the Housing Opportunities portfolio will not be offering other Requests for Proposals (RFPs) this year. Moreover, our funding amount for 2019 is smaller ($3.5 million, compared with $3.9 million last year).

What has changed in the Annual Funding Opportunity?

1. The application process will be open for four weeks instead of five. The application period opens Monday, April 15, this year and will stay open for a month, closing at 5 p.m. Wednesday, May 15, 2019.
2. In lieu of multiple information sessions around the state, the Housing Opportunities portfolio is offering an on-demand webinar on our website. Potential applicants are encouraged to watch the webinar and review the online resources. Those with specific questions can then email questions [at] mmt.org (questions[at]mmt[dot]org) to sign up for a 20-minute phone consultation with a member of the housing team. We want to spend more time giving personalized and concentrated feedback to applicants and less time in big, general sessions or travel.
3. We’re trying a one-step application process this year. We heard from many of you that the initial application in our two-step application was much more intense than a typical “letter of inquiry.” This year, we’re going to try a one-step application that looks fairly similar to the questions asked last year. By combining the inquiry application and the full application, we hope for less duplication of content. By early July, we will notify applicants who are invited to move forward in our process. For selected organizations, due diligence will look pretty similar to our previous process with one exception: We will prioritize in-person site visits for newer organizations or complex projects. Applicants who have had recent site visits may only receive a follow up via phone conference.
4. Income of people served will be a factor but not the most prominent factor in our analysis. In the past three years, we have asked all housing projects if they intend to serve people living with low-incomes (at or below 60% AMI). This year, the emphasis is on serving the priority populations who have experienced historical and current housing discrimination. Applicants should understand historical and current racist and discriminatory housing practices that have created disparities and focus their work to eliminate those disparities.

Time and again, we have seen that having a “one size fits all” approach to solving housing instability tends to be less successful than projects that use strategies designed with community input, tailored to the needs of a specific group of people. Foremost, we want to know how your project is designed to serve the needs of priority populations. The language of our goals was revised to connect all of the outcomes to the priority populations. More information on the priority populations can be found in our webinar.

Additional resources
Want more information about what we look for? We’ve gathered a set of Applicant Resources, with everything from building a budget to understanding our definition of collaborations and learning more about diversity, equity and inclusion. You are encouraged to review those resources as you prepare your proposal.

Final thoughts
Your work inspires us every day. Your efforts to serve the person in front of you, while keeping an eye on the larger systems-level changes needed to address housing discrimination and disparities. You push for new tools and resources to bring housing stability to more Oregonians and then figure out how to align resources and efforts for maximum impact. We hope to be the thought-partners and funders that you need to bolster your efforts.

Yours in partnership,

—Theresa

The exterior of Carolyn Gardens in Southeast Portland. Photo source: Human Solutions

Is there a better way to create more affordable housing in Oregon? We intend to find out over the next few years, as four dynamic teams test, improve and iterate on very different innovative ideas.

Last year, Meyer laid down an unusual and ambitious invitation, which we called the “1 Million Months Challenge,” to encourage innovation around affordable housing design, finance and construction. The basic intent was to empower people who think mainstream affordable development isn’t concerned enough with cost, and those who claim there are less costly ways to help people attain housing that’s affordable, but also meets some basic threshold of quality, dignity and comfort (while still attending to long-term costs of operating and maintaining housing).

A Caveat - This is Harder than it Looks!

Full disclosure: After nearly five years of engaging with experts on these issues, we are not entirely certain there’s a path that can deliver dramatic cost reductions. Too often, people who criticize the (admittedly eye-wateringly high) cost of delivering new housing do so without much experience with the thicket of constraints and cross-cutting pressures that define a typical government-subsidized multifamily development. And too often, critics suggest cutting corners without thinking through the tradeoffs of throwing out (for instance) prevailing wage requirements or building to a high standard for energy-efficiency.

As we outlined in our 2015 report, the basic math involved in building high-quality buildings makes it essentially impossible to aim for rents affordable to people earning a modest wage (or far less), and that necessarily means that public funding will be an important part of most affordable development. Factor in a white-hot construction market, expensive land, the string of expectations that follow public dollars, and the risk mitigation requirements of a dozen or more funding partners, and affordable housing seems far from affordable.

Still, that’s not an excuse for complacency, and as the 2015-16 round of grantees pursuing innovative cost efficient strategies demonstrated, there are some important ways to trim costs at the margin in design and construction, as well as some finance and design strategies that haven’t been fully tested that deserve to be further developed.

The 1 Million Months Challenge
As we reflected on what we learned from the 2015-16 RFP focused on innovation, we wanted to open the doors even wider to innovative ideas and approaches and to focus more clearly on the end goal: creating as much access as possible to affordable housing for as little public subsidy as possible. This led us to last year’s 1 Million Months Challenge, a moonshot-style competition, focusing creativity and energy around a specific, lofty goal: Bring us your best ideas for guaranteeing 1 million months of affordability, using as little public subsidy as possible.

We framed the challenge this way to emphasize flexibility and focus on the big-picture outcome: This is less about developing "projects" than creating a viable new model or path that could potentially help our partners house large numbers of people for an extended period of time.

Proposals were invited under three broad categories: Rural Workforce, Extremely Low-Income/Hard to House (i.e. those with additional challenges to housing stability like mental illness, etc.), and an Open category serving any low-income population.

Meyer received 18 proposals from across Oregon, and after an extensive vetting process, awarded grants to four projects:

BRIDGE Housing Corporation: Creating Equitable Opportunity through Opportunity Zone Investments (Statewide/Open)

BRIDGE will explore utilizing the new Opportunity Zones to promote the creation of affordable housing in Oregon without relying on scarce and competitive federal Low Income Housing Tax Credits. The recent federal tax cut package created tax incentives for investing in economically distressed communities (“Opportunity Zones”) defined by the state. BRIDGE will partner with Novogradac & Associates (a national tax and real estate development consultant) to develop a model for creating housing with the help of new investors expected to be drawn to the Opportunity Zones. Many in the affordable housing world are wondering whether Opportunity Zones could be an effective tool for developing affordable housing, and BRIDGE is well-positioned to be an “early-mover” here and to share what they learn with the field.

Housing Development Center: Zero Energy Modular for Rural Workforce Homeownership (Statewide/Rural Workforce)

Housing Development Center (HDC) will partner with Vermont Energy Investment Corp. to bring VEIC’s interesting zero-energy modular housing model to scale in Oregon, combined with a land trust model to assure long-term affordability. HDC is a leading nonprofit consulting firm focused on affordable housing finance and development across the state and a partner with Meyer on several recent important projects. This proposal takes on several key unresolved issues in affordable housing in Oregon: how to scale up modular design and construction beyond its very small current market share, how to jump-start affordable housing production in rural Oregon, and how to leverage highly energy-efficient new construction for long-term affordability.

SquareOne Villages: Affordable Together: scaling a community-based approach to housing (Lane County/Open)

SquareOne Villages was a grantee in the first round of Cost Efficiency grants in 2015-16, developing and documenting best practices around creating new tiny home villages for extremely low-income people (typically those leaving homelessness) in Lane County. In its next phase of work, it will explore combining limited equity cooperative ownership with a community land trust structure to create a new affordable homeownership model. Since it began experimenting with very low-cost housing options, SquareOne has progressively stepped up its ability to improve the quality and design of tiny homes, and if this hybrid ownership structure is successful, it could benefit a range of similar efforts across the state.

In addition to those three projects, a fourth organization was awarded a grant under Meyer’s 2018 RFP to improve access to private market housing and was invited to join the 1 Million Months cohort because its work aligns well with the goals and intent of the 1MM RFP:

Hacienda CDC: Community-based affordable ADU rentals to increase the supply of private market units and stabilize low-income homeowners at risk of displacement. (Portland/Open)

Hacienda has been a leading partner in the Living Cully collaborative (along with Verde, NAYA and Habitat for Humanity Portland/Metro East), which has been engaged in robust neighborhood-focused work on affordable housing and community development since 2010.

This project will fund the design, planning and implementation of affordable accessory dwelling units to be rented to low-income tenants and people of color in Cully, Lents and Inner North/Northeast Portland. The project will not only create new affordable units, but also help insulate low-income homeowners from displacement pressures by supplying them with supplemental income from the rentals.

What Comes Next

The four grantees are just beginning their work now and are committed to sharing what they discover over the next two years. Meyer plans to provide a series of opportunities for stakeholders and other interested parties to engage with the cohort and learn from their work to build out replicable and scalable new approaches. Stay tuned for more!

— Michael

In the road of Meyer’s housing work, we are seeing a “Merge Ahead” sign. Our Affordable Housing Initiative, a five-year plan to explore innovation, support systems change and leverage resources to meet the housing needs of Oregonians is coming to its official end. That isn’t to say that our work will stop. Rather, it will be blended in with the Housing Opportunities portfolio and not labelled as a separate initiative.

In the foundation world, an initiative is a focused effort to support change. It implies that the foundation is taking the initiative to set aside specific goals and strategies for a particular effort. At the time the Meyer’s Affordable Housing Initiative was established, the foundation was a traditional responsive grantmaker. Applicants could submit proposals on the topic of their choice, which allowed grantseekers to have maximum flexibility but made it difficult to move a body of work toward a specific end.

The Affordable Housing Initiative was one of Meyer’s first two initiative experiments, the other being the Willamette River Initiative. From the time they launched in 2008, both became incubators for new ways of working as a foundation. Through the Affordable Housing Initiative we:

• Engaged with our partners in deeper collaborative work, starting with an advisory committee that helped identify the eight targeted strategies of the Affordable Housing Initiative;
• Sought grant proposals that advanced our specific strategies, using new funding mechanisms like Requests for Proposals (we’ve completed 15 RFPs, awarding more than 125 grants) and Meyer-directed grants;
• Launched an early prototype of an equity lens, specifically prioritizing under-resourced communities, including communities of color, culturally specific organizations and underserved rural communities. For the first time, our applications asked for disaggregated data on who was being served by a project, as well as the board and staff makeup of an organization;
• Hired program officers Elisa Harrigan and Michael Parkhurst for their specific experience and leadership in the affordable housing sector;
• Began to regularly incorporate new tools beyond grantmaking: convening to foster sharing and peer-learning, research, assessments and third-party evaluations, advocacy and education, along with strategic communications;
• Used smaller grants to support the technical assistance needs of our partners, along with field-building grants to support broad conferences and other learning opportunities;
• Established collaborative funding efforts with other funders, including Oregon Housing and Community Services; and
• Developed stronger ties with the investments side of the house at Meyer. This has allowed us to better connect our work and support some innovative work by the investment team.

In these ways, the Affordable Housing Initiative ran as a parallel path to Meyer’s core grantmaking work. Successes and stumbles learned from this incubator helped inform the restructure of Meyer’s programs in 2015, when we created four portfolios to help move us toward a flourishing and equitable Oregon. Forming the Housing Opportunities portfolio provided us the space to add more dedicated housing staff and roll out a more responsive funding opportunity to complement the targeted strategies we had been doing through the AHI.

When the parallel roads merge this month, you are not likely to see much difference. We’ll have the same staff, the same use of RFPs to advance specific strategies as well as an annual funding opportunity and the same attention to policy- and systems-level change. We’ll have a clear focus to center people experiencing housing discrimination and work to reduce the disproportionate impacts of racist and discriminatory housing policy on Indigenous communities, people of color, people with disabilities and other priority populations.

Through five intense years of the Affordable Housing Initiative, Meyer’s housing staff have reflected on our work and corrected our course based on market fluctuations, policy changes and a sharpened equity mission. Later this year, we’ll complete a more holistic assessment of the impact of the AHI on our partners and the larger housing landscape in Oregon. If you are interested in participating in a focus group for the evaluation, let us know on this form.

The Affordable Housing Initiative helped Meyer deepen and transform its work, and we are confident its lessons will continue to influence our work and the wider housing field in Oregon.

The road ahead is full of promise.

— Theresa

Today, Meyer's Housing Opportunities portfolio released a new Request for Proposals to support housing advocacy efforts around the state.

We think of "advocacy" pretty broadly, including community organizing and mobilization, policy analysis and research, focused communications and education around housing issues, as well as targeted approaches to achieve specific policy goals. Proposals under this RFP can address local, regional and/or statewide issues but must have a strong connection to affordable housing.

This RFP will focus on two tracks: Campaign Leaders, for work that is focused on a clear policy or systems change goal and is led by a strong coalition of partners, and Advocacy Mobilizers, which may be more broad and less focused on one specific issue or for the early stages in mobilizing support for more affordable housing opportunities.

For either track, strong proposals will reflect a strong commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion; a clear sense of the issues to be addressed and obstacles to be overcome; and some track record doing the kind of work proposed. We strongly encourage proposals that bring in voices and collaborators that may not have been part of affordable housing advocacy in the past.

Those awarded grants under this RFP will be invited to participate in one or more convenings and will have a chance to network with and learn from other grantees in the cohort.

An application under this RFP does not preclude organizations from submitting proposals for other Meyer funding opportunities and grantseekers may apply to this RFP regardless of any other active Meyer grants.

Two information sessions are scheduled to explain the RFP in detail and answer questions. Register to attend a session at 10 a.m. on Jan. 29 or 3 p.m. on Feb. 5. Register online here.

Proposals will be accepted online (via grantis.mmt.org) until Feb. 26, 2019. Funding decisions are expected in late spring, with grant payments going out shortly thereafter. Make sure you're signed up for our Housing newsletter to stay current on this and other funding opportunities!

— Michael

Housing Opportunities: 2019 Advocacy RFP details

1. Award amount + grant period
2. Information sessions

Funds will be awarded in two tracks: 

• Campaign Leaders: grants intended for focused and targeted efforts with a clear policy or systems change goal led by a strong coalition of partners with a credible plan to succeed. Maximum of $75,000 available per year, for a total of $150,000 over two years.

• Advocacy Mobilizers: for organizing efforts that may be more broad-based and less focused on one issue, or in an earlier stage of mobilizing support for more affordable housing opportunities. Maximum of $40,000 available per year, for total of $80,000 over two years.

Final award decisions are expected in May 2019, with first-year payments released in June 2019.

Meyer staff will present an overview of the RFP and be available to answer questions at two information sessions:

• Tuesday, Jan. 29, from 10:00-11:30 a.m.
• Tuesday, Feb. 5, from 3:00-4:30 p.m.

Both information sessions will be held virtually. Visit our official event page to RSVP.
 

As most folks packed up their belongings and headed home after the Philanthropy Northwest annual conference, I boarded a bus with several other PNW members and staff and headed to Jerome, Idaho to visit the Minidoka National Historic Site and view what’s left of the former incarceration camp that held my family, along with 13,000 other people of Japanese ancestry during World War II.

As you step onto the ashy soil of the high desert plain, it’s hard not to notice how little of the camp is left and the expansive scale that it once occupied. Originally 33,000 acres, the camp became the seventh largest city in Idaho at the time. I try to imagine what life would’ve been like behind these barbed wires and underneath the ever-present gaze from the guard tower. I think about how terrified my grandmother must have been, younger than I am now with two young children and pregnant with a third, having just lost everything and now forced to live in a shabby barrack with several other families and no idea about what will happen next. Everything unknown.

I grew up with stories of my family just trying to maintain as much a sense of community as possible, and I can feel that when walking along the baseball field or stepping into the fire stations at Minidoka. Scanning photos of the makeshift holiday celebrations and the community gardens, knowing how my family had to completely rebuild their lives after leaving the camps, the resiliency of the Japanese American community is not lost on me. I feel the strength of my relatives under the face of oppression in the core of my being and in my motivation for supporting communities of color in this work.

My grandmother was vocal about sharing her experience at Minidoka so that it would never happen again. As a yonsei, fourth generation Japanese American, I also know that the trauma of this experience lasts for generations. As I continue to grow within the field of philanthropy, I carry my family’s strength and experience with me and I move towards the ways that philanthropy can play an active role in fighting the oppression of communities of color by centering them in our work, following their lead, elevating their voices and supporting their work. Because “never again” is right now.

— Lauren

---

This article was originally published by Philanthropy Northwest.

A stone monument near the entrance of Minidoka Relocation Center, reminding visitors of “what can happen when other factors supersede the constitutional rights guaranteed to all citizens and aliens living in this country.”

Turns out, Fred Meyer was right. When he established what would become the Meyer Memorial Trust, Mr. Meyer offered this insight: "With thoughtful giving, even small sums may accomplish great purposes."

So it might not come as a surprise that just a few thousand dollars can sometimes make a huge difference for people facing unsafe housing conditions, shockingly high utility costs or even homelessness.

That's one takeaway from the Year One (interim) report recently delivered by an independent evaluator Meyer engaged to analyze the impact of grants we made in 2017 to nine organizations helping to make crucial repairs and other important upgrades to manufactured homes in rural Oregon.

Why Manufactured Housing?

Meyer has been actively engaged in issues around manufactured housing for about a decade. We've supported creative and impactful work to convert investor-owned parks to resident-owned cooperatives; funded efforts to pilot affordable replacement of older, substandard homes; and more than once wrestled with issues around repairing homes. We have been fortunate to work with a wide array of partners committed to improving conditions for people in manufactured homes, including CASA of Oregon, NeighborWorks Umpqua, St. Vincent de Paul of Lane County, Network for Oregon Affordable Housing, the state of Oregon, Energy Trust of Oregon, Craft3, and USDA Rural Development, among others.

All this work is driven by the realization that manufactured homes are a crucial slice of currently affordable housing in Oregon and often the only affordable homeownership option for many people, especially in rural Oregon. About 140,000 households across the state live in manufactured homes, and nearly half those homes are at least 40 years old. Not every older manufactured home is in dire shape, but many older homes are well past their best days (particularly those built before the federal code updates of 1976 raised the bar for the initial quality and durability of new homes). Residents sometimes are living with structural defects, health hazards, terrible energy efficiency and even major safety issues.

Ideally, many of these homes would be retired and replaced by new, energy-efficient homes, but not everyone is in a position to afford such an upgrade, even with new layered subsidies some of our partners are piloting.

This urgent and ongoing need motivated our Request for Proposals in late 2016 focused on crucial repairs (including energy- and accessibility-related upgrades). We directed this funding to programs serving rural Oregon, both because we felt much of the state's need was outside urban areas and because smaller communities typically lack the local resources that could fund these repairs.

Evaluating Impact

Looking beyond the two-year grants Meyer funded, we wanted to be able to show other funders (public and private) that continuing and expanding this work was impactful and a prudent use of scarce housing resources. To that end, we hired an independent evaluator (Chari Smith of Evaluation Into Action) to help us design and carry out a cross-site evaluation that could analyze and summarize what we learned from the nine projects we funded. We recently received the Year One report, which summarizes early results.

Highlights from the Year One Report

Evidence the evaluator collected from the program staff and from the people who were helped validated Meyer's sense that this work addresses important housing issues and made a material difference in the lives of people served. A total of 107 home repairs were completed by the nine grantees. Roughly half of those served completed and returned detailed surveys about their experience with the repairs done. Of these:

• 72 percent reported the repairs will help them continue to live in their home longer (by addressing potentially serious issues that could jeopardize their ability to stay there); 90 percent felt that the general comfort level of their home was improved.
• 70 percent felt their home was made safer by the repairs.
• 64 percent reported the repairs would help improve their health.
• 74 percent saw increased energy efficiency as a result of the repairs.

The improvements were targeted to people who had few other options for making these kinds of repairs. Nearly all the people helped live on an annual income of less than $30,000, two-thirds are seniors, and more than half the households have one or more members with a disability.

"For me, this process was lifesaving. Without your help, I can't imagine how things would be. I feel much safer and am so thankful you have programs like this for me."

 

"I was able to wash dishes, do my laundry, take a shower or bath. I can say that I never realized how much having hot water means in everyday living. … I live on a fixed income, and I could not have afforded to get a new hot water heater without this program."

 

Looking Ahead

The nine projects will wrap up their two years of Meyer funding in early 2019, and next fall we'll share the final report summarizing what we learned and what other funders might take away from this work. Some early thoughts on next steps we would highlight for our partners:

• There is a real need for more data, specifically on the health impacts of improvements to homes with serious health and safety hazards. This is an area where health partners such as coordinated care organizations could target some research connecting longer-term results of repairs with health outcomes and could lead to a strong evidence-based argument for funding repairs like this. Preventing falls, addressing respiratory issues such as mold, and generally supporting the ability of people to age in place (often in tight-knit and nurturing communities) seems likely to be well worth the relatively modest cost.
• Flexibility is an important consideration for other funders. All of the projects funded used some federal and/or state funding to help with these repairs, but those sources come with restrictions that can exclude homes (or particular issues) that urgently need attention. We heard loud and clear from our partners that the flexibility of Meyer funding was helpful in both leveraging other funds and filling gaps some programs can't.
• Organizational capacity can be a big issue for those delivering these repairs. Stable, multi-year funding is really essential to allowing organizations to make the investments in personnel, training and other resources to consistently serve this niche, and we all should be alert for opportunities to scale up and increase this capacity. Every grantee spoke of long waiting lists and unmet needs they could address with more funding. Steady and reliable funding could also help with building a cadre of reliable contractors ready and able to do repairs, which was an issue in some parts of the state.

We look forward to sharing this work and continuing to partner with the determined and dedicated partners around the state committed to sustaining and improving this affordable housing option.

— Michael

This summer Meyer challenged Oregon experts on innovative housing design, construction and finance to think big: Bring us your best ideas to create 1 million months of affordable housing for as little public subsidy as possible.

Our 1 Million Months Challenge RFP elicited 18 proposals from teams around the state that brought fresh thinking to the basic thrust of our question: How can communities help many more people into housing that's suitable and affordable, given current levels of funding?

We are glad to report that a first look through the proposals validates our hope that there are promising, untested approaches that might well be worth trying. Those who submitted concepts in that first round that seem most impactful and innovative will be invited to submit more detailed full proposals this fall, with funding decisions announced in January 2019.

We look forward to sharing what emerges from this work with you and getting your thoughts on how to channel and support the creativity people have brought to it!

–– Michael

Meyer will select a small number of projects to develop innovative approaches to housing affordability in Oregon, with initial grants of up to $125,000 available early in 2019 and potential follow-on grants in 2020 to further develop the pilots and broadly share results of the work.

Defining the problem

Meyer prioritizes stable, safe and affordable housing as one foundation of a more equitable Oregon. A shortage of housing generally has driven up rents and home prices across the state, and for those unable to earn enough to pay for even very basic housing without help, the consequences can be life-altering. A growing body of research shows that housing instability contributes directly to poor performance in school, difficulties getting and keeping a good job, and poor health outcomes.

Our tax code and social policies invest billions into housing in the form of property tax deductions (for mortgage interest and property taxes) that mostly benefit affluent households. For poor people, people with disabilities and chronic illnesses, and people of color, public investment (outside of prisons and jails) has been rather less lavish.

Even at that, publicly subsidized affordable housing has long been under intense scrutiny around cost. Hardly a week passes without a new article or news segment challenging the ostensibly high cost of new affordable housing. The urgency behind that concern is understandable, as the gap continues to grow between the demand for affordable housing and the public investment necessary to meet the need. There's no doubt we must look for ways to get more from every public dollar going into affordable housing.

Beginning in 2015, Meyer has sought to play a constructive role in this conversation, convening 16 experts as the "Cost Efficiency Work Group" and producing a report aiming to clearly articulate the factors that tend to drive up costs in affordable development and to focus on real opportunities to bring down costs.

Part of this work is a communications challenge. Subsidized affordable housing is different in significant ways from market-driven real estate development, and there are constraints that are beyond developers' control that make it easy to put affordable developments in an unflattering light for those unfamiliar with the special nature of this work. There's also an important conversation about tradeoffs between long-term lifecycle costs and upfront construction costs -- building smart for the long term is not necessarily "inexpensive."

Still, in the face of urgent unmet need and a widespread skepticism about government's ability to respond effectively, it's critical to achieve as much as possible with the limited amount of public subsidy available. Although it's unlikely there's a completely novel "silver bullet" approach to creating affordable housing no one has ever thought about or tried before, it does seem worthwhile to support exploring new ways of looking at these perennial issues.

Changing the frame: focusing on the big-picture outcome

In mid-July 2018, Meyer will release a Request for Proposals that builds on our recent efforts to support innovative work around how to provide more affordable housing by lowering costs. In 2015-16, we awarded funding to five projects looking at different approaches to bringing more housing online at a lower cost, and we continue to follow that work with keen interest.

For this RFP, we wanted to open the doors even wider to innovative ideas and approaches and to focus more clearly on the end goal: creating as much access as possible to affordable housing for as little public subsidy as possible. To that end, we are defining a "moonshot"-style challenge, focusing creativity and energy around a specific, lofty goal.

The 1 Million Months Challenge ("1MM"):

Bring us your best ideas for guaranteeing 1 million months of affordability, using as little public subsidy as possible.

This takes a bit of unpacking. There are many possible paths to 1 million months; here are some potential examples to illustrate the kinds of ideas this could include:

• Piloting an approach to build, site and deliver new factory-built units meant to be affordable for 20 years that would aim for just under 4,200 units (240 months x 4,167 units = just over 1,000,000 months of affordability)

• Creating affordable units for 60 years with lower rents through cross-subsidy from other income-producing uses in the same properties, aiming to scale up to about 1,400 total units (720 months x 1,389 units = over 1,000,000 months)

• Maybe your best idea doesn't involve building any new housing? Exploring a sustainable approach to master-leasing new units in the private-market for five-year increments, staggered over time, to assist nearly 17,000 households five years at a time (60 x 16,667 = over 1,000,000)

The key point is that we are leaving it up to people who know the most about these challenges to define how to reach the goal. We're framing the goal this way to emphasize flexibility and focus on the outcomes:

• Flexibility: This is less about developing "projects" than creating a viable model or path; we are explicitly open to purely financial strategies that deliver on the outcome of creating more access to affordable housing.

• Outcomes: We are not necessarily focused on production of units (although more housing is important, and some strategies will rightly focus on that), but rather on the end-goal of housing large numbers of people for an extended period of time.

Finally, it's worth highlighting that we're pulling the focus away from the raw total development cost to focus on what really matters most: the amount of public subsidy required to achieve the goal.

Unlike a typical Meyer RFP, we're not looking for affordable housing projects per se, but a model or path that changes the game. You could say we're trying to "get out of the way" of solving these problems, by putting as few limitations as possible on what counts as a solution. We're calling the question for those who insist that the current system doesn't deliver bang-for-the-buck and there are better ways to do things. Ultimately, the point of this RFP is to give you an opportunity (and some resources) to take an idea or a notion or intuition that you've been thinking about and build it out to a full-fledged plan, test it, improve it and share it.

Sharing ideas, results and lessons learned will be a central part of participating in this experiment. Project teams funded under this RFP will be expected to participate in a learning cohort with each other, sharing and critiquing ideas, and helping each other refine and improve each model. Additionally, Meyer will create a variety of platforms and public events to highlight this work, to broaden the circle of folks around the state trying to think about these challenges in a different way and improve upon the ways we help people into housing they can afford, and ultimately to help public funders and other partners identify new models and approaches worth their support.

About the RFP 

The strongest proposals will be invited to submit more detailed proposals in the fall, with decisions and grant funding in early 2019. Grantees receiving funding under this RFP will be eligible to request follow-on implementation grants to be awarded in early 2020.

Finally, because it matters who is being helped and how much rent they are able to pay, and because there are distinct challenges in this larger context of cost and efficient use of subsidy, Meyer has defined three categories under the RFP and hopes to make awards in each:

1. Hard-to-House or Extremely Low Income: Housing solutions affordable to people/households between 0-30% Area Median Income (AMI), and/or designed and specifically intended to assist populations with significant challenges around access to affordable housing:
   • Transition Age Youth exiting foster care
   • Immigrants and/or refugees
   • People of color
   • Indigenous communities and tribes
   • People with disabilities (including severe and persistent mental illness)
   • Domestic violence survivors
   • People released from incarceration or people with a criminal record
2. Rural Workforce Housing: Housing solutions intended to serve residents of rural communities up to 100% of the local AMI. "Rural" in this context means any community not located within one of the federally defined "Metropolitan Statistical Areas": Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, Salem, Eugene-Springfield, Medford, Corvallis, and Bend.
3. The Open Challenge: Housing solutions affordable to households at or below 60% AMI that do not fit in the other two categories.

Applicants will be asked to specify one of the above categories when they apply. Meyer's intent is to make at least one award in each category, depending on the quality of proposals received.

For more answers, check out this recording from our 1 Million Month Challenge Information Sessions or contact me directly at michael [at] mmt.org (michael[at]mmt[dot]org) or (503) 228-5512.

–– Michael

The application deadline for this RFP was 5 p.m., on Tuesday, August 13, 2018.

Cost Efficiencies: 1 Million Month Challenge RFP details

1. Award amount + grant period
2. Information sessions

• Funds will be awarded in two stages: 

  • Concept Development (early 2019)

  • Implementation (late 2019 or early 2020)

• For Concept Development, Meyer expects to award grants ranging from $75,000 to $125,000 (up to $550,000 in funding will be available in this stage.)

• Grantees awarded Concept Development funds under this RFP will be eligible to for Implementation grants (up to $1.2 million in funding will be available.)

• Final award decisions are expected in January 2019, with first-year payments released in February 2019.

Meyer staff will present an overview of the RFP and be available to answer questions at two information sessions:

• Tuesday, July 24, 9:30-11 a.m.
• Monday, July 30, 3:20-5 p.m.

Both information sessions will be held in Portland at Meyer’s office (425 NW 10th Avenue, 4th floor); interested parties may also participate by telephone conference. Visit our official event page to RSVP.
 

Funding Timeline

 

Oregon needs new, bold and innovative ideas to solve our affordable housing problem. What's your idea?

Preparing a project budget begins with capturing the correct numbers. Simpler, straightforward projects are typically fine just focusing on creating a clear and accurate budget.

For organizations with large, complex or multiyear projects, more advanced budgeting techniques can be helpful. Numbers have meaning in themselves, but the budget framing tell a larger story about the organization's values and how it is approaching the project. It requires strategic thinking. Without some strategy, the budget for a complex project may fall flat or raise more questions than it answers.

Here are some practical considerations as you prepare budgets for larger, complicated projects.

Understand the funder's guidelines

The crucial and often overlooked first step in the grant process is to orient to the funders' requirements. Is it willing to be the only funder on a project? Does it require matching funds from other sources? Is it only willing to fund a certain percentage of the project budget or the organization's operating budget? Does it like to see an organization's own investment in a new project before seeking outside support? Getting that clarity up front will guide both your thinking about fit with the funder and also strategy about how to frame the budget.

At Meyer, we are rarely the first or the only funder of a project. Beyond that, there are few generalizations. We look at proposals differently based on the type and size of the project and the type of funding requested. More nuanced explanations can be found in funding guidelines for each portfolio.

Locate your proposal on the project timeline

Timing is a crucial aspect of a proposal, and capturing timing in a budget can be a little tricky. It may be helpful to think about the larger project and the steps that build on each other for a larger vision. We often see projects that build on some prior work or pilot effort and want to bring to bear the data, understanding, connections and vision to scale up the project or new business line. In these types of proposals, the narrative sections of the application will describe this pilot step and how it informed the larger vision.

The budget can mirror that progression by reflecting the work that has gone on up to the point an applicant applies and capturing it in the budget. Put another way, your project budget doesn't need to start at the time of application. Your project may be a four-year effort, starting with the year before the application, including a two-year grant period and also a year after the grant ends. Being clear about how the proposed grant period fits into the larger project timeline helps to ground your efforts and orient the reader.

If you are using Meyer's sample budget templates to describe a multi-year project, the project or capacity-building formats can be adjusted to show multiple years.

Consider your framing – wide-angle or close-up?

Related to timing, we often see that a project is defined discretely, as a finite piece of a larger effort. With this kind of close-up framing, it often appears that Meyer is being asked to fund 100 percent of the project, and this bumps up against the notion that Meyer is rarely a first or only funder of a project. To get around that issue, you might consider putting a wider angle on the project framing by showing the work that has come before it or the work expected after the grant, as long as it is reasonably connected. This wider angle can show a more diverse range of financial support for the proposal, and consequently, it does not appear that Meyer is being asked for 100 percent of the project budget. Panning out so far that the project is framed as a 10-year effort, however, loses a lot of detail and punch. Balance is prudent.

Describe the role that Meyer funding can play

We understand that, for many projects, any funding will help. For others, a Meyer grant represents something different, and it is often larger or more flexible than many other sources of grants or revenue. If the Meyer funds can play a certain role in the support of your project, describe that in your project budget and narrative. Some examples of the roles we are often asked to play:

• Experiment with new approach or prototype.
• Evaluate a demonstration project.
• Support efforts to build diversity, equity and inclusion in your work.
• Leverage or matching grant for public funders.
• Fill a key funding gap.
• Complement more restricted grants and contracts.
• Share funds with partners in a collaborative effort.
• Provide support during a critical transition.
• Augment advocacy and systems change efforts.
• Build a new or strengthen an existing skill base in the organization.
• Achieve a level of work that unlocks funding from other, larger sources.

Describing the role of Meyer funds, if appropriate for your project, can build a more compelling case for your grant proposal.

Reflect your organization's commitment to equity, diversity and inclusion

Every organization Meyer partners with is expected to share our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). As such, project budgets can also be a good place to reflect your organization's commitment to DEI in your external or program delivery as well as in internal work of the organization. When DEI is centered in a proposal, it can raise some additional costs for the organization, such as training consultation, compensating community partners, collaboratively sharing grant funds, or data management and evaluation to track DEI outcomes, to name just a few. You are encouraged to include these important costs in the project budget.

The bottom line? For complex or multiyear projects, don't overlook budgets as an opportunity to amplify the application narrative, strategically frame the project, build the case for Meyer funding and reflect your organizational values. Budgets are an integral part of the application and more than a mechanical exercise.

— Theresa

We're open! The Housing Opportunities portfolio is pleased to begin accepting applications for a third cycle of our Annual Funding Opportunity. In 2018, we will be deploying about $3.9 million to open doors to opportunity and strengthen communities through safe, affordable housing.

The application process kicks off March 15, 2018, and will continue for almost five weeks, closing at 5 p.m. April 18, 2018. In that time, Meyer will be hosting information sessions at seven sites around the state. Two additional virtual information sessions, March 20 and April 4, will focus on the Housing Opportunities portfolio. Attending a live or virtual session will give you the most up-to-date information on our process and the details of the Annual Funding Opportunity.

Initial Applications should advance one of our overarching Housing Opportunities funding goals:

1. Preserve + increase the number of affordable housing rental units.
2. Support the housing stability + success of Oregonians living on low incomes.
3. Strengthen the housing sector by building capacity, diversity, equity and inclusion + collaboration.

Each of these goals has intended outcomes, and you are encouraged to review the funding goals, strategies and outcomes as you consider how your work aligns with the vision for this portfolio. Click here to find a visual representation of Meyer's goals, outcomes, funding ranges and types to help you assess the best fit. Equally important is the shorter list of what doesn't fit well with the portfolio.

In 2017, the Housing Opportunities portfolio received 78 applications in the Annual Funding Opportunity and ultimately awarded 39 grants in a competitive process (a 50 percent funding rate). These grants reflected a range of approaches, united by a common understanding that housing is key to flourishing and equitable communities and a vision that every Oregonian has a stable, safe and affordable place to call home. More information on the 2017 housing grant slate can be found here, and all of last year's Annual Funding Opportunity grants are listed here.

What we've learned

With two annual funding cycles under our belt, we can share a few observations about the process.

• Showing an equity commitment. Meyer's grantmaking centers around equity principles, such as understanding and working to address the disparate housing outcomes experienced by seniors, people with disabilities, people of color and other marginalized populations. All applicants must demonstrate a commitment to ongoing growth through the integration of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) principles into both their external programming or services and internal structures and operations.

Although we don't expect perfection from our partners (nor do we have it ourselves!), we do expect to see commitment to advancing DEI principles in your work. Conversely, a proposal that mentions no specific efforts to advance your organizational commitment to DEI will be challenged to succeed in the competitive batch.

• Timing for capital proposals can be tricky. The Initial Applications we see can be at all stages of the development process, from firm concept to nearly completing the fundraising process or breaking ground. If your project is on the more nascent side — indicated perhaps by a lack of site control, the design is far from ready and the financing plan is still unclear — it is hard to be competitive against projects farther along the development path.

Think about when these pieces might be coming into place. If you expect important legal decisions, site control or design features finalized soon, and major funding decisions determined by late summer, it probably makes sense to apply in this year's cycle. If many of these pieces are not expected until late 2018 or beyond, we'd likely counsel you to consider waiting. At a minimum, you should feel free to consult with housing staff by emailing questions [at] mmt.org (questions[at]mmt[dot]org).

• General operating support has a high bar. As noted in our funding guidelines, we have heightened expectations from organizations that are awarded unrestricted operating support. First and foremost, they should be housing organizations (do a majority of their work in affordable housing) and strongly advance the core funding goals in our Housing Opportunities portfolio. Additionally, they should play a unique and/or important role in the field and have wider impact for the sector (e.g., as an intermediary, is seen as a field leader in Oregon or nationally); demonstrate leadership for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the context of the communities where they work; and have DEI strategies as a meaningful part of their work plan for the grant period. Reach out if you have questions about whether to apply for this funding type.

• Multiple grants and organizational capacity. Two rounds of annual funding opportunities and multiple Requests for Proposals over the past four years mean that some organizations are managing multiple Meyer grants, in either the housing portfolio and/or other portfolios.

We allow these multiple grants and encourage them if the organization has sufficient capacity to advance multiple projects and collaborative efforts at the same time. During the review process, we look at capacity concerns and also consider how much of an organization's overall financial support may be coming from various Meyer grants, including collaborative grants. We wouldn't want an organization to inadvertently bump up against the "tipping" rules of the Internal Revenue Service (which seek to ensure nonprofits have a diversified funding base and do not "tip" over to be treated as private foundations).

As a reminder, if you received a multiyear grant from a previous annual funding opportunity and that grant is ending this year, you can apply again in the 2018 round. If you are in doubt, reach out and we'll confirm your eligibility.

Other funding opportunities this year

In addition to the 2018 Annual Funding Opportunity, the Housing portfolio expects to release two Requests for Proposals (RFPs) that tie to the Affordable Housing Initiative, Meyer's focused five-year effort to catalyze outcome-oriented, transformational strategies that will move the dial on affordable housing in Oregon.

These RFPs will be tied to the Cost Efficiencies Strategy (an effort to develop models for creating and preserving affordable units as cost effectively as possible over the units' lifespan) and the Private Market Strategy (efforts to expand low-income renters' access to safe, decent, affordable housing through existing private market units). Both of these RFPs are expected to be released around July 2018, and organizations that apply to the 2018 Annual Funding Opportunity are not precluded from applying to a targeted RFP (assuming it has sufficient capacity, as described above). Sign up for the Meyer newsletter to make sure you hear about any RFP releases.

Additional resources

Want more information about what we look for? We've gathered a set of Applicant Resources, with everything from building a budget to understanding our definition of collaborations and learning more about diversity, equity and inclusion. You are encouraged to review those resources at any time.

Final thoughts

One of the best parts of our year is seeing all the amazing work across the state to bring affordable housing to our neighbors. Your work is deeply impressive and energizing. We're excited to see what you're working on and connecting in the 2018 Annual Funding Opportunity and the coming year!

— Theresa