The Housing Innovation Collaborative [“HICo”] is the non-profit housing-focused R+D platform showcasing and piloting new design, finance, & policy solutions to address the housing affordability crisis, from Los Angeles to the world.
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Mission
Housing Underserved Communities…
The Housing Innovation Collaborative exists to bring people and ideas together to accelerate the production of lower-cost, higher-quality housing. The only way we can achieve the efficiency and scale we need to overcome this housing crisis and build a better home for all of us is by coming together to learn from and support one another in the journey of incubating, showcasing, and implementing our best new housing solutions.
Better Design
Improved engagement in creating new policies, processes, and products.
Faster Implementation
More efficiencies, less redundancies.
Lower Cost
Scaling new ways to deliver more quality housing for less.
Background
The magnitude of the housing crisis in Los Angeles – and communities around the world – requires us to exponentially improve the way we plan, design, and build housing in our communities.
In Los Angeles County – the epicenter of the nation’s affordable housing crisis – the majority of renters cannot afford their rent, almost one million people live on the verge of homelessness, and 60,000 people are homeless on any given night. Just to sustain ourselves, we need to build over 500,000 affordable housing units and increase our current housing production by 4.5x.
While building more affordable, quality housing faces many challenges – notably rising costs, delays, and tensions – when the entire housing production ecosystem comes together to collaborate and innovate, we can implement our best and brightest solutions to overcome these challenges and build a better city in the process.
In early 2019, the leaders of Housing on Merit, a non-profit affordable housing co-developer, alongside several partnering organizations from throughout the housing and community development ecosystem formed The Housing Innovation Collaborative, the nonprofit coalition tasked with designing, organizing, and funding the place for us all to come together. As the world’s urban laboratory of the future, Los Angeles is the perfect place to explore new frontiers and bring innovation home.