2025 Awards for Excellence: City of Jackson, Michigan
The housing crisis across the United States is real. The City of Jackson’s leaders decided that now is the time to tackle this issue through a comprehensive approach that features public-private partnerships, grants management, process improvement, creativity, innovation, and a focus on solving problems that have historically prevented residents from achieving home ownership. In 2019, the city found itself with access to funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) and a few other federal and state sources. It decided to allocate $3.5 million of its ARPA funds to the Affordable Housing Board, with the goal of making housing more affordable. The Community Development Department used this funding to begin work on what would become the 100 Homes Program, an ambitious effort to construct 100 new houses in the city in three years. The program ushers income-qualified home buyers through a process that includes homebuyer education, banking connection, lot selection, construction, down payment assistance, and closing assistance. Subsidies for the builder and buyer create affordable new construction homes to help reverse the city’s population loss, strengthen neighborhoods, make housing affordable, and create incentives for other infill development and for investment in the city.
Publication Date: December 2025
Author: Mike Mucha
