Massachusetts is in the middle of a housing crisis that is, by most measures, getting worse. Rents are rising faster than wages. Affordable units are disappearing. Displacement is pushing long-rooted families out of the communities they built. And the federal policy environment is making housing stability harder and harder.

Over the past several months, GMA’s Housing Solutions Fund brought together a group of funders to learn alongside practitioners and advocates working on housing stability across Greater Boston and Gateway Cities. What emerged from those conversations was not a single answer to the housing crisis (because there isn’t one), but a clearer picture of where philanthropy fits, and where it doesn’t.

Philanthropy cannot build housing at scale, fund voucher programs, or replace the public investment that government, funded by the taxes of the very people being displaced, is obligated to provide. What it can do is help communities build the power and evidence base to demand that government fulfill that obligation.

Four approaches to housing stability for philanthropy:

1. Fund early intervention

Prevention is both more humane and more cost-effective than crisis response, and yet our systems are almost entirely oriented toward crisis. Small, early interventions such as a legal consultation before an eviction notice escalates, emergency cash assistance before debts pile up, a housing navigator who catches a family before they hit a shelter waitlist, can prevent enormous downstream harm.

The organizations doing this work such as Family Aid Boston and Heading Home described it consistently: the window of opportunity is narrow, and when it closes, the cost to families and to public systems multiplies. Philanthropy, with its flexibility and relatively low compliance burden, is unusually well-positioned to fund early intervention. That is not a small thing.

2. Fund housing to improve outcomes in education, health, or workforce development

Housing is not a housing-only issue. It shapes whether children stay in the same school year to year, whether parents can hold jobs, whether older adults can age in their communities, whether families can build any financial cushion at all. That means funders who see themselves primarily as education funders, or health funders, or workforce funders are already implicated in housing outcomes, whether they name it that way or not. The National Center for Housing + Health, for example, connects the research across sectors and highlights innovative intertwined solutions.

The crisis is systemic enough that staying in our lanes is simply not a luxury we can afford. It’s not serving funders, nonprofits, or communities.

3. Fund advocacy and policy change

Perhaps most important, community power is not peripheral to housing solutions. It is central to them. Speakers from organizations like Homes for All MA who are doing tenant organizing, resident governance, and grassroots coalition work made a compelling case that sustainable housing stability requires shifting who has influence over land, development, and policy.

Funding services for people navigating a broken system is necessary but not sufficient. The system also has to change, and that requires organized power. Philanthropy has historically been more comfortable funding direct services rather than advocacy. This moment is asking us to reconsider that.

4. Invest in change

None of this means philanthropy can solve the housing crisis. It cannot, and pretending otherwise does a disservice to what public investment and policy change must do. But the organizations we met through this process showed that catalytic, flexible, early-stage philanthropic dollars can seed new models, build evidence, and help communities develop the organizing infrastructure that makes larger-scale change possible.

Read the 2026 Housing Solutions Fund’s announcement of the two organizations awarded $80,000 grants for housing stability: EDEN and BAY-CASH.

Massachusetts is in an unusual policy moment right now: zoning reform is moving, tenant protections are gaining traction, coalitions are broadening. Investments made now may shape the trajectory of housing access in this state for years to come.

That feels like exactly the kind of moment philanthropy should show up for.

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Rachel Rifkin, GMA’s Director of Grantmaking, leads our Funder Community. Contact her with questions and ideas, rrifkin@gmafoundations.com