WASHINGTON DC, June 25th, 2014 – Home Matters®, a national movement focused on raising awareness and funds to make home a reality for everyone, announced today that it was selected to receive a three-year grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to help change public perception of home and its crucial impact on health, education, public safety, personal success and the economy.
The $300,000 grant spread out over three years will enable Home Matters to ignite a long overdue public conversation around the value of housing in people’s lives by leveraging recent research, including that from the MacArthur Foundation’s How Housing Matters initiative. Current findings show that a safe and stable home plays a central role in shaping successful families and communities. “We are absolutely thrilled to receive this grant from such a recognized housing leader,” said Dave Brown, Executive Director of the National NeighborWorks® Association, a proud founder of the Home Matters movement. “The overarching hypothesis guiding this research dovetails with the Home Matters mission and vision and will enable us to elevate the importance of home in the hearts and minds of Americans, getting the general public to take action and placing housing firmly on the national agenda.”
Home Matters will leverage the MacArthur grant and research to build a consumer-friendly and interactive online experience which will engage the general public – to think differently about home’s value in Americans’ quality of life; create viral, credible video content regarding the importance of Home; and thread the research throughout its consumer communications plans and activations.
This support comes at a critical point in time as Americans’ perceptions of housing is shifting. Innovative organizations like Home Matters recognize the need to take the complex world of housing and make it relevant and compelling to mainstream audiences. The grant is part of the MacArthur Foundation’s How Housing Matters to Families and Communities initiative.
According to the recent MacArthur-supported How Housing Matters national survey, conducted by Hart Research Associates, half of all U.S. adults (52%) have had to make at least one sacrifice to cover their rent or mortgage since 2011. These sacrifices, which include getting an additional job and cutting back on health care and nutrition, prove that having a home isn’t just an economic issue, it’s our nation’s social common denominator. Home Matters plans to help solve this problem, one home and one community at a time.
Remember to “join the cavalry” by subscribing to Devin’s content here.
