Catalyze - Build It Green

Innovation Fund

The Innovation Fund supports emerging and early stage innovative project ideas that originate from the California Housing Systems Innovators Network.

The purposes of the Fund are:

Transformational Impact: Support work that showcases the Network’s three impact themes, moving ideas along its theory of change. Provide resources and capacity to unique projects supported, sourced, and funded by the Network (i.e. “but for” this Innovation Fund support, these projects would likely not happen.)
Collaboration: Deepen and diversify the Network’s collaborative relationships.

Regeneration and Equity: Build lasting capacity within communities to approach their work differently. Use a holistic approach to create living environments that contribute to the well-being of residents, the surrounding ecosystem, and future generations – particularly those from historically and presently disadvantaged communities.

In 2024 we awarded eight projects, learn more about them here and stay tuned for stories about their work in the future.

Catalyzing Action for Transformation

Our efforts in Catalyzing Action for Transformation (CAT) come directly from Build It Green’s theory of change. We see in catalyzing and incubating new ideas and creating spaces for practitioners to experiment and innovate as critical to achieving our mission. We’re focused on catalyzing action at different points in the housing ecosystem in order to transform perspectives, policy and practice.

Einstein famously said that “the problems we face will not be solved by the same level of consciousness that created them.” Or, in more straightforward language: ”if you do what you’ve always done, you get what you always got.”

We must find ways to question, reimagine and innovate when it comes to the housing and community development ecosystem. To provide opportunities to work with each other on new ideas through both learning and action in finding different pathways and practices.

While these conversations are about seeding new ideas and trying new things, we imagine the potential for new projects, programs and practice emerging from these learning groups; and, like all of our other work, we can learn more deeply and apply this more closely by engaging in place-based partnerships.

Innovation Initiatives

Innovation Initiatives are working groups developed and populated by members of BIG’s Innovator’s Network, working with communities across California from a variety of approaches — community-based organizations, agencies, developers and designers — collaborating together to push the evolution of the housing ecosystem.

Groups are woven together by BIG facilitation that helps maintain focus in a particular area and connect the work of different groups as part of a broader vision and goal for communities in California. These groups share their progress, learning and challenges through virtual sessions, written reflections, and at the BIG annual gathering.

In an ongoing conversation about what it takes to achieve true community or social housing (places for people to live that are affordable, healthy, accessible, and community-centered), this group–started at BIG’s 2022 gathering–initially focused on co-operative housing models and how we can increase the adoption and availability of cooperative housing. The group has transitioned, after conversations at the 2023 gathering, into a focus on land acquisition and shared ownership as fundamental practices that are able to support collective housing models and will be working in 2-3 different regions in California to partner with communities and developers.

Codes and standards are the DNA of any community. In seeking more regenerative, equitable and collaborative outcomes for our communities, we need to find new ways of working with city, regional, and state agencies–driven by communities and innovative practitioners–to develop model codes that can influence healthier, more holistic outcomes for both individual building design and for neighborhoods and citywide and regional infrastructure. This group is currently working on a municipal-level project around decarbonization and on outlining design guidance that can result in more regenerative and equitable outcomes.

Building the housing we need, for the communities that most need it, is already a challenging goal. Our financing models and mechanisms complicate that even further. In exploring innovative financing at both project/site specific and corridor redevelopment levels, this group seeks to learn about and propose ways to both streamline and innovate related to the funding frameworks we use and is currently pursuing projects in Richmond and Berkeley.