Has corporate investment in US affordable housing made a difference?

Technology firms like Amazon, healthcare groups and banks have thrown money at affordable housing, but even billions in short-term private capital can't solve the crisis

To Kimberly Driggins, executive director of Washington Housing Conservancy (WHC), the late 2020 news that Crystal House apartments had come up for sale signaled a rare opportunity. The 825-unit luxury apartment building had long been an icon in Arlington, Virginia, lending its name to the immediate neighborhood, Crystal City.

If the affordable housing organization could buy the property, it could house people with a wider range of incomes. But WHC had been founded two years earlier, and this would be its first deal; there was no way the group could afford it alone.