Note: After many successful years, Full Circle Fund members decided to look upstream from the systemic problems related to the lack of affordable housing in the San Francisco Bay Area. In November 2008 at our Forum Event with the help of Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus and Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, the Affordable Housing Circle was reinvented and launched as the Global Economic Opportunity Circle. The circle will continue to look at economic self-sufficiency domestically, but also explore and support poverty alleviation techniques used globally. The information below and in the following pages demonstrate the achievements of the Affordable Housing Circle.

Affordable Housing Circle

The Challenge

Housing is more than just bricks and mortar; it is a key factor in determining a family's access to economic and educational opportunities, exposure to violence and environmental hazards, and ability to accumulate financial assets. Likewise, access to housing is closely related to the need for other publicly provided social services.

The Bay Area is, by all accounts, the most expensive housing market in the United States. Housing is generally considered affordable when a household pays less than 30 percent of its income on housing; yet in the Bay Area, 64 percent of extremely low-income households pay more than half of their income toward housing. Homelessness rates in San Francisco and other Bay Area counties are among the nation's highest.

It is typically more cost-effective for communities and governments to provide affordable housing than to support those who have lost their homes. And while housing alone is not the answer, it is a first step toward stability for at-risk individuals, families and children.

Our Goal

Full Circle Fund's Affordable Housing Circle focuses on creating successful strategies and encouraging opportunity for affordable housing in the Bay Area.

Our Approach

There are many approaches to affordable housing that can benefit individuals and families, improve neighborhood vitality and have a considerable economic effect at the state and local level. Full Circle Fund has developed a Theory of Change, a broad analysis of the approaches that can contribute to effective, long-term affordable housing

• Supportive Services - where affordably priced permanent housing units are combined with on-site services such as treatment, job training or crisis intervention. Such services can help people retain their housing or transition to permanent housing.
• Homelessness Prevention - where resources are applied to keep people from losing their housing in the first place, or to rapidly re-house the recently homeless.
• Advocacy - where individuals and organizations work to build community involvement, influence policy and build awareness in order to foster the development of affordable housing.
• Facility Development - where resources and incentives encourage increased development of high-quality affordable and subsidized housing units.
• Transitional Subsidies - where interim support helps reintegrate individuals into the community and enables them to achieve economic self sufficiency.

Through grant projects, Full Circle Fund has supported a variety of groundbreaking research and worked with innovators bringing new solutions to affordable housing.

Past Grantees

Selected by the Affordable Housing Circle in 2007:

• Blue Ribbon Committee
• Hamilton Family Center

Selected by the Affordable Housing Circle in 2005:

• First Place for Youth
• Project Homeless Connect
• Santa Clara County Housing Study

"We were excited to work with Full Circle Fund. They immediately stepped in to assist us with our public relations strategy, connected us with a public relations firm to do pro bono work for us and are actively promoting our annual fundraiser. It was great to have this infusion of talent and energy from the Full Circle Fund team."

Deanne Pearn

Co-Founder, First Place for Youth