Search

Enterprise Community Partners Seattle 

Description

At Enterprise, we believe that a safe and affordable place to call home is an essential platform for building a successful life. Enterprise helps communities across Seattle and the Pacific Northwest create and improve decent, affordable housing for individuals and families with low and modest incomes. We bring together public and private sector partners to ensure that neighborhoods are safe, healthy, environmentally sustainable, and economically diverse places for people of all incomes to live.

Mission Statement
Enterprise creates opportunity for low- and moderate-income people through affordable housing in diverse, thriving communities. We believe housing provides true opportunity if linked with a supportive living environment that includes a safe location with access to transportation, green and community spaces, employment, quality schools and healthcare, and food and retail services supporting a healthy lifestyle.  
Donate Now
Enterprise Community Partners Seattle
2025 First Avenue, Suite 1250 
Seattle 
WA
98121 
(206) 223-4519 

M.A. Leonard 
Vice President and Pacific Northwest Market Leader 

Programs

Enterprise Community Partners Seattle Programs

Seattle and King County face a critical shortage of affordable housing, particularly rental housing, at a time when the recession has left more and more individuals and families struggling economically.  Many of Seattle’s workers cannot afford to live close to where they work. King County’s homeless population doubled from 1998 to 2010, from 4,300 to more than 8,900 people. Nearly half of renters in King County spend more than 30% of their income on housing.

Enterprise takes a unique, comprehensive approach to meeting Seattle’s affordable housing needs:

  • We raise and leverage capital and other financial resources to build and preserve affordable apartments and homes.

    We play a leading role in shaping affordable housing policy. 

  • We provide solutions to the most urgent challenges facing low-income people and communities, and create innovative financial tools to drive more resources into affordable housing.

We do this by providing the solutions, tools and resources our partners need to provide housing, community facilities and other services for low and very low income residents, in order to afford these populations the opportunity to move up and out of poverty.

Recent Successes and Current Challenges

In Seattle and the Pacific Northwest, Enterprise has:
  • Created or preserved more than 200,000 healthy and affordable homes, in developments such as Broadway Crossing, Lake City Village, University Apartments, High Point, and more.
  • Put $1 billion in capital and other financial resources to work to create and sustain affordable housing.
  • Created Enterprise Green Communities, the first standards for green, healthy affordable housing, now the industry standard for affordable housing throughout Washington State and nationwide.
  • Pioneered new financial resources to support the creation and preservation of affordable housing near public transportation, such as a $15 million transit-oriented Land Banking Loan Fund, in conjunction with Sound Transit.
Moving forward, Enterprise is providing critical leadership in driving the region’s efforts to create and preserve affordable housing in thriving neighborhoods with access to transportation, quality schools, employment opportunities and other vital resources. Key priorities include:
  • Convening community leaders in creating a regional housing plan with a focus on healthy, affordable housing for low- and moderate-income people that is linked to transit, employment and educational opportunities.
  • Creating a $50 million transit-oriented development fund to drive the creation of new affordable housing near public transportation.
  • Through our organizational sustainability efforts, support local nonprofit affordable housing providers who are struggling in the economic downturn, helping them protect and preserve the existing affordable housing they own and operate.

Evaluation


Enterprise Community Partners (ECP) works to create opportunity for low- and moderate income people to prosper through affordable housing in diverse, thriving communities. By bring together public and private sector partners; EPC seeks to ensure that neighborhoods are safe, healthy, environmentally sustainable, and economically diverse places for people of all incomes to live.

Collaboration
Enterprise Community Partners is collaborating with the Urban Land Institute, Futurewise, Forterra, the Housing Development Consortium and Leadership for Great Neighborhoods to ensure that low-income people benefit from the region’s public transportation expansion. This partnership formed to ensure that quality affordable housing exists in close proximity to transit so that residents have affordable access to employment, education, healthy food, health care and community services.

Proven Success
Since 1982 ECP has put $1 billion in capital and other financial resources to work in order to create or preserved more than 200,000 healthy and affordable homes in Seattle and the Pacific Northwest. ECP has led the greening of affordable housing through Enterprise Green Communities Criteria, now the design and construction standard for low-income housing in the region. Additionally, ECP initiated the Smart Growth Fund which makes low-interest capital available to local organizations to buy properties and develop affordable housing close to transportation and job centers. In other communities (Denver, Washington D.C. and the Bay Area), ECP has played a key role as a financing and a partner in community engagement around transit oriented development issues.

Cultural Competency
Enterprise works to reach out beyond the “usual suspects” to bring new voices and perspectives into the sustainable community conversation. Enterprise’s partners, and the community participants they are engaging, are committed to promoting diverse, sustainable and vibrant neighborhoods where all residents can gain access to good quality of life, educational and economic opportunities.

Use of Best Practices
The partnership will engage community members and other stakeholders in neighborhoods along existing transit hubs to align efforts and resources in a planning effort to shape housing affordability and smart growth leading to more diverse, sustainable and vibrant neighborhoods. Through education and outreach, this form of engagement can help communities be more involved and active in land use and housing policies decisions that make their neighborhoods great.

Grant History with The Seattle Foundation:

Grants Awarded through The Seattle Foundation Grantmaking Program:

DateAmountPurpose
6/10/2012 $25,000.00to support community engagement and the development of transit oriented neighborhoods in Seattle and King County.

Financials

Similar Organizations

Give broadly to Basic Needs
If you care about preventing homelessness, increasing affordable housing, and ensuring access to nutritious food, then make a difference by giving to the Grantmaking Program.
Questions or comments about this organization?
Contact us to learn more.