On the heels of the announcement of GEM’s Blockchain + Real Estate workgroup, we have another up our sleeves to start the new year.
The Affordability Innovations workgroup–hosted and curated by Matt Hoffman, Abby Ivory, and Jenna Louie–is being created to find and elevate startups focused on housing affordability, availability, and attainability.
With a 5M+ shortage of housing units in the US and an increasing number of renters and owners who are having trouble finding or staying in their homes, we know housing affordability is more important than ever. While there are many debates and discussions on the issues that have led us here, we are focused instead on the most promising solutions.
The goal is to bring together GEM members who are either (1) working on ideas or ventures related to housing affordability, availability, or attainability, OR (2) have an interest in the space and want to take action. Within this network, we’d like to elevate more organizations working in the space, promote and discuss new innovations, and encourage organizations without an existing focus on affordability to incorporate one moving forward.
As Matt Hoffman says,
Housing is unaffordable in most markets due to a lack of imagination and political will. We will focus on identifying specific innovations and technologies that can help break down these barriers with the goal of developing an open-source wiki for cataloging gating issues best practices.
Founders/execs from the following organizations are already involved: PadSplit (see our Blueprinting Proptech analysis), Pronto Housing, Landis, Haven Connect, Rentor Mentor, CityBldr, Housing Connector, Key, Module, Acre, National Association of Realtors / Second Century Ventures, and Fleq.
We are holding a kick-off Zoom call on Thursday, February 17th at 10 am PST.
Are you an executive working on or passionate about affordability, and interested in attending? Please shoot us an email (community at geekestate dot com).
Source: geekestateblog.com