New Way Homes

In many regions, housing is too expensive, leading to rapidly increasing displacement, homelessness, length of commutes, overcrowding, and poverty. These changes affect everyone but are disproportionately displacing and burdening lower-income communities of color—the same communities that have long faced housing discrimination.

New Way Homes creates new below-market-rate, affordable, and supportive housing by pairing private impact investment with non-profit landowners and new development strategies. A majority of our current and future projects are partnerships with black churches, with those organizations gaining the long-term full ownership of the housing. 

Sibley, President of New Way Homes, co-founded an initiative that has helped over 950 chronic and veteran homeless individuals into permanent housing in Santa Cruz County alone. But, homelessness continues to rise. California now has the highest poverty rate in the US (including housing costs) at 23.8% and rising. Yet, the state is building only about half the housing each year needed just for new demand.

We re-designed the housing development structure from the ground up to create less expensive housing. Here’s how our model works:

We've seen our community being torn apart. Just in Santa Cruz, we have half the families with young children than we had 20 years ago. We have less economic and racial diversity. We have more people becoming homeless — even those who have and keep employment. We have teachers commuting for hours because they can’t afford to live in their school districts.

Every one of these problems trace back in part to the same thing — our housing crisis. It is causing or making each of these challenges much worse. Working on any of these problems directly without also solving the housing crisis is not enough. Our country needs a housing industry that can meet demand while also being equitable and putting people first.

So in 2015, Sibley founded New Way Homes to be a big part of the solution to the underlying problem of housing affordability.

We need far more housing and to have that housing really help people live affordably…. So, we’re building it! Our first 19 units (all either supportive housing or low-income affordable housing) are fully approved and being constructed. Our next 6 projects are under design and permitting - these projects include over 300 units ranging from very low-income housing to moderate-income housing for people like teachers, nurses, and so many other essential jobs in our community.

Having succeeded in getting our first projects fully approved and funded, we are now raising capital to accelerate our work. We're ready to create these next 6 projects AND start engaging with dozens of other non-profit landowners who have already come to us. Here are some of the projects we're working on.

We are actively exploring potential projects with churches, schools, cultural organizations, and many other parties. With your help, we're ready to accelerate this work. We hope you will be a part of our effort to create a new part of the housing industry. By lending New Way Homes funds for 10 years, you'll get a steady, annual interest payment and help solve one of the biggest underlying problems our society faces.