Help Us Develop Truly Affordable Housing
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Care Association asks for donations to help us advance our mission to create truly affordable homes. We are still 100% volunteers. Every cent will be used toward providing a roof, a bathroom, and a place to prepare meals to a low-income household. And donations are tax-deductible as allowed by law.
Millions of American households struggle to put food on the table. For many of them, there is only one barrier to their financial wellbeing: the high cost of housing.
Care Association is dedicated to alleviating the affordable housing crisis. With our experience in real estate, architecture, construction, and land trusts, our goal is to create truly affordable housing beginning in the toughest region of the country for affordability—the San Francisco Bay Area. No one should be paying more than 30% of their income on housing.
To create truly affordable housing, our development will focus on three main tasks:
- Build small. The tiny house movement is an example that many people are willing to downsize in order to save money. Living small may not be for everyone, but Apartment Therapy thinks it's cool. They even have a yearly Small Cool contest.
- Use donated or salvaged materials. High-end builders often discard new and perfectly-useable windows and cabinets due to factors such as mismeasurement or client rejection.
- Use sweat equity. Reminiscent of Habitat for Humanity's model, able-bodied occupants or volunteers help construct or do finish work, such as cabinet installation or painting. As developers, we can also be a general contractor. Plus, when residents contribute to building their own homes, doing so builds dignity and promotes responsibility for their maintenance.
Plus, with alternative construction methods, such as cob construction or 3D printing technology, the cost to build may be a fraction of traditional construction methods.
- Start small. We are working on building an accessory dwelling unit (ADUs) in the San Francisco Bay Area. (ADUs are separate dwelling units that can be built inside a house or on the lot of a single-family or multi-family residence). In 2022, we hope to take advantage of Sonoma County's cottage housing development provision and build 3 or 4 single-floor cottages on a single lot.
- Acquire real estate. Using the land trust model, Care Association aims to preserve affordability by owning real estate and preventing sharks from inflating its price beyond what most people can afford. Best case scenario, we find enough cash or land owners donate their properties to us. Worst case, we apply for a loan.
- Prepare. We have been hosting public meetings to know what people are looking for and what they are willing to do and learn. We will continue to host meetings and plan learning seminars.
- Partnerships. We may be far from acquiring property, so partnerships are key. We have been working with San Francisco Community Land Trust, met with Habitat for Humanity of Greater San Francisco, and are working with communities to protect homes from gentrification.
Care Association began with the hope of utilizing technology to connect people who can help each other with housing and other needs. Poor timing and public fears prevented the success of the Care For Us platform, but we were able to help one family that was an original participant with the deposit for a below-market-rate home.
In the meantime, we also met with groups of people and listened to their needs and concerns. We also worked with a community to help them become limited equity owners of their homes. And we met with other nonprofits seeking collaboration on the very difficult problem of lack of affordable housing.
Care Association's founder, Kiai Kim, also had the opportunity to work with a San Mateo County nonprofit in mental health counseling and saw the effects stress has on families due to the high cost of housing. The experience has fueled determination to establish Care Association as a nonprofit housing developer. This direction fulfills a vision for housing the homeless that began when Kiai was an Urban Studies major at Vassar College, her thesis titled, "Self-help Housing as a Strategy to House the Homeless."
For more about Care Association, visit careassociation.us.
Your tax-deductible donation helps, and we thank you for it. Here are some other ways you can help:
- Spread the word. Share our campaign with your friends and family. Tell them we want to change the way affordable housing is done not only in the Bay Area but also in the rest of the country and North America. Not with subsidies, but by being smart.
- Be an ambassador. Raise $500 or more with your own fundraising page listed under Angel 😇 Ambassadors.
- Join our mailing list.
- Choose Care Association when you shop via Amazon Smiles, or when you sell something on eBay, NextDoor, or other platforms that support nonprofits.
- Share your expertise with us. We could use all the help we can get. Maybe you're good at marketing, writing Google ads, or creating website content. Or maybe you're a contractor, civil or structural engineer, architect, lawyer, or a real estate developer. With many advisors our plans will succeed.
- If you're in San Francisco, donate stuff at Community Thrift Store on Valencia Street and tell them you are supporting Care Association (number 225).
