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| Economic & Community Development, Featured, Housing, Workforce Development
In 2023, Accelerator for America made its first Commitment to Action at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI). As CGI returns to New York on Sept. 22, we are marking progress on two Commitments to Action and reflecting on a two-year partnership with government technology firm Tolemi that helped 17 cities use data to address housing supply and affordability.
Additionally, we are thrilled to report on our current commitment with The Skills Initiative to co-design local versions of this proven workforce model that creates pathways to quality jobs in more communities. Together, these commitments show what’s possible when local leaders get direct access to data insights, peer learning, and evidence-backed solutions.
In 2023, AFA and Tolemi made a Commitment to Action to help cities better understand their local real estate markets and housing dynamics to effectively address the growing crisis of housing affordability for their residents. What began as a pilot envisioned for four to six cities grew into a 17-city cohort that used Tolemi’s BuildingBlocks platform to turn scattered, siloed property data into a comprehensive picture of local land use challenges and opportunities.
Two lessons stood out across the cohort:
The initiative concluded in December 2025, and the numbers reflect how deeply cities put the tools to work, moving from testing the platform to building it into daily operations:
103,451 publicly owned properties available for potential housing construction and other development identified across 464 public entities
473 active platform users across the 17 participating cities
Roughly 18,000 platform sessions logged over the cohort’s run, growing more than 300% over the course of the cohort
427 city-specific datasets, such as zoning overlays, local incentive areas, and permitting data, were integrated into the platform to substantially enhance and customize the local insights for users
20+ custom scoring models built by cities to prioritize everything from vacant parcels to rental compliance
12 peer learning sessions featuring external subject matter experts and leading practitioners from the participating cities
Every city entered with unique local context but faced shared challenges, from vacancy and blight, to unlocking city-owned land for housing, to the opacity of corporate investor ownership. In addition to the local data insights, the peer learning and exchange across the cohort helped to spark new ideas and solutions across places. Here are a few examples:
Cohort Learnings
Kansas City, MO integrated data across five city departments and four counties to produce its first comprehensive inventory of vacant, city-owned parcels — a foundation for future affordable housing siting.
Fort Worth, TX cut through complex LLC ownership structures to map corporate investor concentration and track the erosion of owner-occupancy across its neighborhoods.
Scranton, PA used ownership-linking tools to direct its limited rental inspection resources toward the highest-risk properties and repeat violators.
Birmingham, AL developed a custom scoring model to systematically identify and prioritize parcels for missing middle housing development across eight target neighborhoods.
Chattanooga, TN used the tools to piece together property ownership insights the city couldn't previously access. Those insights helped break down internal silos and supported a wave of new action: a $20 million revolving loan fund, a new affordable housing PILOT program, and the launch of Invest Chattanooga, a model the city adapted from another AFA community.
The Data for Housing Solutions initiative has concluded, but the work it enabled continues. With the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act signed into law this summer, cities that understand their housing markets stand to benefit from new federal tools and potential funding, including a new requirement that every direct recipient of Community Development Block Grant funding build and maintain a public database of the undeveloped land it owns. Thanks to this cohort, 17 communities already have a head start.
AFA and the National Housing Crisis Task Force last week released a Mayor’s Action Guide for the ROAD to Housing Act, highlighting seven actions local leaders should take now. Additionally, we released a Community Foundations Pro-Housing Playbook and a Public Assets Corporations Playbook, which dive into how communities can build housing coalitions and turn public land inventories into mixed-income housing. A philanthropic capital playbook will follow later this fall.
In September 2025, AFA and Philadelphia-based The Skills Initiative made a new CGI Commitment to Action: Partner with more communities to co-design local versions of The Skills Initiative’s proven, employer-led workforce model, whose graduates earn $12,000 more per year on average and stay in their jobs at twice the rate of typical workforce program graduates. The commitment includes working with communities to identify and prepare a local organization to lead effective place-based workforce solutions that create pathways to quality careers for unemployed and underemployed adults, engage employers as collaborators, and strengthen local systems.
Over the past year, AFA has worked to introduce that model to leaders across the country. In fall 2025 and winter 2026, AFA hosted a four-part Economic Opportunity Accelerators series on workforce development, including a Skills Initiative-specific session in January 2026. The session offered details about the model and insights from two Skills Initiative employer partners, Penn Medicine and the Chamber of Commerce for Greater Philadelphia.
As a result of AFA and The Skills Initiative outreach, 10 communities expressed interest in learning how to establish a Skills Initiative-inspired workforce development program in their communities, and AFA is having substantive discussions with leaders in five of those cities. Keep an eye out for more on that soon!
We look forward to sharing these updates with the broader CGI community and to continuing to prove what’s possible when local leaders get the tools, data, and models they need to move faster.
Founded by President Bill Clinton in 2005, the Clinton Global Initiative is a community of doers representing a broad cross section of society and dedicated to the idea that we can accomplish more together than we can apart. Through CGI’s unique model, more than 13,000 organizations have launched more than 4,300 Commitments to Action — new, specific, and measurable projects and programs – that are making a difference in the lives of more than 500 million people in 180 countries.
