Affordable Housing Broadband Initiative

Through the generous funding of Schmidt Futures and the Ford Foundation, House New York, NYSAFAH, HR&A Advisors, Inc., and the Broadband Equity Partnership (the program partners) aim to identify pressing needs in broadband infrastructure deployment and create pathways to implementation and adoption.

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To better understand varying community needs, the project partners will use webinars, surveys, one-on-one interviews, and focus groups to engage affordable housing stakeholders in urban, suburban, and rural areas across the state. These stakeholders and their roles include:

Policymakers will help advance the design, development, and implementation work. Elected officials have recently begun to create innovative policy agendas which aim to expand affordable and high-quality broadband funding and access amongst constituents.

Affordable housing advocates and tenant advocates will set ambitious goals for accessibility, affordability, and adoption of fast and reliable broadband both locally and statewide.

Property owners will play a crucial role in implementing the program, evaluating infrastructural need and supply conditions at a granular level, ensuring broadband deployment at multiple scales. They have the potential to create economies of scale for the building retrofits across their own portfolios and by aligning with other owners, reducing the cost of infrastructure and expanding coverage for their tenants.

Property managers are fundamental to establishing links between owners and tenants. They will have the capacity to expand program reach as we look to evaluate adoption strategies for final users.

Real estate developers will leverage broadband infrastructure as a necessary component of their affordable development portfolio. They will keep abreast of the latest innovative technologies for new and preservation developments.

Tenants, as current and future users of internet services, will inform program design with the challenges of adopting broadband technology, the difficulties with a limited offer of ISPs, and the importance of community organizations as vehicles for digital literacy.