Nonprofit creates housing subsidiary

Excellerate looks to help provide affordable dwellings as need grows

ROGERS — The Excellerate Foundation has created a subsidiary to speed the development of affordable housing in Northwest Arkansas.

The wholly owned subsidiary is called Excellerate Housing LLC, according to a news release from the nonprofit foundation Monday.

“The affordable housing crisis has been with us for years, but it continues to intensify in the wake of the covid-19 pandemic, historic inflation, and a population growth rate that shows no signs of slowing down,” Jeff Webster, Excellerate president and CEO, said in the news release.

He added Excellerate Housing will help those who have been hit the hardest by a lack of affordable housing, especially those who fall into the category of the acronym ALICE: Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed, according to the release.

Excellerate Housing represents six years of work to find solutions for affordable housing. Among the goals are to unify area stakeholders in the effort to find housing funding and to make the most of that money, according to the release.

“When we first adopted housing as one of our program pillars, there wasn’t a lot of attention given to the issue,” Henry Ho, board chair of the Excellerate Foundation, said in the news release. “But a study funded by Walton Family Foundation in 2019 shined a spotlight on the housing crisis, which had been an almost invisible problem to many of those in the community.”

That study said that “failure to act could result in widespread instability, including job losses, increased poverty, and rising numbers of homeless individuals and families,” according to the release.

“It was a call to action, and Excellerate did not hesitate to pick up the baton on behalf of lower-income families across the region,” Ho said.

The Rogers-based foundation sparked creation of the NWA Regional Fund, according to the release, and area banks invested more than $40 million in equity for five affordable housing developments in Northwest Arkansas.

Excellerate is involved in a proposal to help alleviate the problem of finding affordable housing for teachers in the Bentonville School District. The district proposed donating some of its land to build housing for school employees and possibly others in the community. The proposal involves 9 acres just east of Bentonville High School and just north of Southeast 21st Street, according to information from the district.

Only 6 of those acres can be developed because the other 3 are in a floodplain, according to the information.

The district awaits an attorney general’s opinion on the legality of the plan. That project would be led by Excellerate’s housing division, Webster said in a text Monday.

“We will be one of the many solution finders for the region,” Webster said. “We need all of what is going on and more.”

The Benton County Quorum Court in June chose Excellerate Foundation to administer the $2.4 million the county received as part of the Emergency Rental Assistance Program. The program, authorized by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, provides $21.55 billion nationally to offer eligible households financial assistance, provide housing stability services, and as applicable, cover the costs for other affordable rental housing and eviction-prevention activities. The Excellerate Affordable Rental Housing Development is expected to bring affordable rental housing to an estimated 160 families in Benton County.

Washington County earlier this year provided $1.7 million to the foundation, which will pull together other partners to develop a low-income housing development.

Excellerate has about $140 million in assets, is focused on Northwest Arkansas and has investments throughout the area. It is geared toward social support, education and housing, according to Webster.