Foundation Housing

Foundation Housing or debt-free housing is what Brewster Kahle calls this class of housing. This article was published by Brewster on January 9th, 2012. Debt-Free Housing for Public-Benefit Workers:

The largest single expense for the staff of the Internet Archive is housing, as this paper will show the majority of the cost of housing goes to debt service (either directly through mortgage, or indirectly through rent). If employees could live in debt-free housing, then their expenses would go down and sense of security could go up. This paper explains why this might be a good idea not only for the Internet Archive employees, but for all workers in public-benefit non-profit organizations and goes on to suggest how to start a system of debt-free housing.

Foundation House

Also described in his post from June 28th, 2020 10 years trying 7 approaches to providing affordable housing for non-profit workers, here are the results so far, where Foundation House is Brewster's first test of foundation housing:

this is permanently affordable employee apartments– about $900-$1000 a month which is about 1/2-1/3 of market based rent in San Francisco. The way we did this is to have it be permanently debt-free (no mortgage), and have the fee to live in an apartment covering all other costs. Since this is like faculty housing or a monastery, people leave the housing as they leave the non-profit sector. We bought an apartment building (as a form of endowment) in San Francisco with 11 units, trying it out.  Three out of 11 apartments now have non-profit workers.  It is working pretty well, but not saving the Archive much money but giving security to people.  On the other hand, one employee said they felt a bit trapped because they can not afford to move out and stay in San Francisco.  Most employees don’t want to move in because they already have apartments they are happy with, so it is not serving a huge need.  But still, I think we should do more of these. It can be done with a careful investment strategy so it does not cost much to buy the buildings.

Covered in a news report December 2nd, 2013: On the Commons: A New Way to Make Housing Affordable for Nonprofit Workers