Essay·Non-LIHTC Housing
Workforce Housing, Faster
A companion to the tax credit: why a parallel, CRA-financed path for the 80% AMI missing middle wins on velocity, and the five concessions that would unlock it.
Read the essay
Policy & Pilots · Courage Housing
Policy innovation
that actually scales.
We design housing instruments that pencil for the developer, protect the public balance sheet, and put affordable homes in the neighborhoods families would choose anyway. Our first is in structuring now with the City of Spokane and its banks. We build them to be proven, then copied.
The Practice
- First Pilot · In Structuring
- Spokane 1590 · with the City
- Public Clients
- Washington Public Works Board · CERB
- Discipline
- Incentive, not mandate. Capital that returns.
Why Our Policy Works
We have sat in all three chairs.
Housing policy fails at the seams between government, capital, and community, where each party assumes the others will not move. We design across those seams because we have worked inside each one. A policy only pencils when it works for all three at once, and we know what each one needs to say yes.
Government
How public capital really moves.
Years working inside a U.S. State Department initiative, partnered with HUD, supporting investments in urban infill abroad, and more recently advising the Washington State Public Works Board and CERB, taught us how public balance sheets, mandates, and political risk actually work, and what an elected official can defend on the record.
Community
What funders and NGOs need.
Years inside nonprofits, working alongside funders and NGOs, taught us how mission capital is raised, governed, and held accountable, and how to keep a deal honest to the people it is meant to serve.
Capital
How banks underwrite a deal.
Extensive work with banks taught us how lenders price risk, underwrite, and book new business, so our instruments are things a regulated bank will actually originate and service, not a theory it has to decline.
Tri-sector athletes. The intersection is rare, and it is exactly where durable policy gets built. It is why our work pencils for the developer, protects the public dollar, and reaches the family at the same time, on four principles: geographic equity, incentive over mandate, capital that returns, and evidence before scale.
Current Work
One pilot, built to travel.
We would rather structure one instrument properly than announce ten we cannot stand behind. Our first is a construction-period interest buy-down we are designing with the City of Spokane and its partner banks: the city covers the interest cost on the developer's construction loan during the build, and gets every dollar back when it converts to permanent financing. It is in structuring now: term sheet, intercreditor terms, and partner alignment. The figures below are the projections it is built to test, not results we are claiming.
In StructuringCity of Spokane · Heart Fund
The Spokane 1590 Pilot
The Heart Fund would cover the developer's construction-loan interest during the build, in exchange for a few units restricted at 60% AMI in good neighborhoods. Every dollar is repaid when the building converts to permanent financing. The city's only real cost is the time value of money for about two years, and the same capital recycles into the next project.
Designed To Deliver
~300
projected restricted unit-years per $1M over 30 years, against ~180 for a one-time grant
100%
of principal designed to repay at permanent financing close
2–3
projects, under $4M total, bounded by design
Thought Leadership
The argument, in writing.
Our pilots grow out of a clear thesis about why American housing stays scarce and what actually fixes it. These pieces are circulating among city policymakers and congressional offices, and they are the intellectual spine under everything we build.
Essay·Workforce Housing
The Workforce Housing Fix
The case that the housing crisis is a construction-supply problem, and that building faster for working families moves affordability through the whole market.
Read the essayOpen Letter·Federal Policy
An Open Letter to Congress
An argument that federal housing finance guards the safe end of the capital stack while the construction bottleneck goes unaddressed, and a call for construction-side tools.
Read the letterRead by city policymakers and congressional offices weighing how to deploy local and federal housing dollars. Non-LIHTC housing, in questions and answers.
The Road Ahead
Prove it once. Then everywhere.
Spokane is the first instrument we are structuring, not a finished proof point, and we are deliberate about that order. Because our mechanics are incentives rather than mandates, once one is proven it copies across jurisdictions without a fresh political fight in each one. The path is disciplined: structure it right, prove it, then scale.
Now
Structure the first pilot to signed terms.
Design the construction-period interest buy-down, align the City of Spokane and its partner banks, and get the term sheet and intercreditor agreement to paper.
Next
Run it on real buildings, and report honestly.
Once terms close, fund the first projects, measure what works, and publish the results, whatever they show. Timing follows the close, not the calendar.
Then
A proven mechanic other cities can adopt.
House Bill 1590 is statewide, and the same kind of construction-period interest buy-down works in any jurisdiction with workforce-housing capital sitting idle. With real evidence in hand, it becomes a candidate for other cities and counties, and a first entry in a library of repayable, incentive-based instruments.
Bring us
your hardest housing problem.
If you are a city, an agency, or a community partner, in Washington, the Southwest, California, or anywhere else trying to get affordable homes built faster, in better neighborhoods, without losing the public dollar, that is the work we do. We design the instrument, align the partners, and produce the evidence that lets you act with confidence.
Practice Lead
Robert Foster, MSc
Managing Director · Co-Founder
Based In
San Diego, CA
Engagements across the West
Where We Work
Washington · Southwest · California
Open to other states. Talk to us.
Courage Housing's pilots are developed in partnership with public agencies and described here as works in development. Figures are illustrative and for planning purposes only; final parameters are subject to partner authorization. Nothing here characterizes any existing public program or announces a change to it.