Why Grove Park Residents Say This Housing Nonprofit Is Hurting Their Neighborhood

The Squamish Nation is building Senakw, a 6,000-unit, 11-tower residential development on 10 acres of ancestral land returned to them in Vancouver, one of North America's least affordable cities. Freed from the city's restrictive zoning and land-use laws, the Squamish completed the first three towers in 2025, putting 1,408 rental apartments on the market, including several hundred subsidized units for lower-income families. The first tenants moved in at the end of May, and the project has prompted Vancouver to begin loosening some of its own housing rules.

Community development financial institutions (CDFIs) like BlueHub Loan Fund are stepping up to help create and preserve affordable housing. BlueHub Loan Fund recently financed a project in Nashville that converted two abandoned motels into affordable studio apartments, when larger banks wouldn’t finance the project.

The CHN Housing Partners’ lease-purchase program builds affordable homes for low-income individuals to rent. Residents live and pay rent in the homes for 15 years while taking homeownership and financial counseling courses to equip them with the knowledge and skills necessary to become homeowners. Over the past 30 years, CHN has built more than 1,700 lease-purchase homes and more than 1,600 of them have been sold to owner-occupants.

Programs like the federal Housing Choice Voucher Program — or Section 8 — and the Fort Wayne Housing Authority’s Family Self-Sufficiency Program help low-income individuals and families afford quality homes through participating private landlords and housing developments. With the voucher program, the tenant’s financial obligation is capped at about 30% of their annual gross income, while the voucher covers the rest. In some cases, the voucher can cover up to 100% of the tenant’s rent.

Homestead Community Land Trust and the local Habitat for Humanity specialize in helping lower-income residents become homeowners. They have portfolios of homes available to lower-income residents who make less than 80% of the area median income. To date, the community land trust model has been implemented at a small scale relative to the need and Habitat plans to build almost 300 new homes in the coming years.

The Sacramento Community Land Trust helps people gain more access to permanently affordable housing while simultaneously working to prevent displacement. Through its work, the Community Land Trust preserves affordability and stability, expands home ownership, and grows community wealth.

Community of Hope offers day shelter services and intensive case management for unhoused residents in the Las Cruces area. In the fiscal year 2020-2021, the program served 3,263 people, connecting them to affordable, income-based housing solutions.

It takes political will to create mixed-income housing and manage the social impacts of gentrification. In contrast to New York, the London borough of Hackney has taken steps to fix its housing crisis by putting the interests of residents ahead of the interests of developers. Several housing developments slated for development in the East London neighborhood now blend subsidized and market-rate units.

South Dakota Habitat for Humanity affiliates are tackling the affordable housing crisis by shifting from building single homes to developing entire subdivisions. In Sioux Falls, Habitat completed a 26-unit project and in Rapid City, Habitat purchased land and secured a $12.5 million funding package to build 40 units in the organization's largest-ever South Dakota development. Both projects are pricing homes below $300,000, making ownership more accessible to working-class families.

In response to a lack of action from local government, individuals are turning to digital platforms like WhatsApp and Facebook groups to avoid scammers and price gouging in the rental industry. These groups have thousands of members and allow landlords and tenants to interact directly without middlemen interfering and charging unnecessary fees.