Community Solutions, a New York-based, national nonprofit founded by Rosanne Haggerty in 2011, has a bold goal: to put an end to homelessness. Or at least make it “rare and brief.” As its website proclaims, “Homelessness is solvable. This is not a radical belief.”
It sounds pretty radical to me, a Los Angeles resident who can’t walk from my house to get a donut without stepping past someone sleeping on the sidewalk. But Community Solutions’ grand ambition for accelerating an end to homelessness in the country and world — plus its detailed, data-driven, community-based plan to get there, called Built for Zero — is the kind of thing that activates funders.
Philanthropic supporters include the Ballmer Group, Rocket Community Fund, the Tableau Foundation, Home Depot Foundation, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation. And in 2021, the nonprofit won the second round of the MacArthur Foundation’s much-heralded 100&Change grant contest, which netted Community Solutions $100 million over five years to help with its vision, as IP reported when the award was announced. Community Solutions quickly put $10 million of the MacArthur money toward the housing piece of its Built for Zero plan, using it to kickstart a social impact private equity fund called the Large Cities Housing Fund. The fund is designed to buy buildings in partner cities, then lease units to people experiencing homelessness.
