The Housing Opportunities Program

The Phillips Brooks House Harvard Yard Cambridge, MA 02138 | phone 617.855.5HOP | fax 617.496.2461 | email

Microfinance in Action

The Housing Opportunities Program was established in 1990 by a group of Harvard undergraduates commited to fighting homelessness in the Greater Boston area. Seeking a real structural solution rather than another 'band-aid' program, they decided to address the need for short-term, low-interest credit among Boston's low-income tenant families. Many of these families have poor access to credit and either cannot borrow money during a crisis or have to borrow from payday lenders and checkcashing services at very high rates. HOP's founders envisioned a revolving fund providing no-interest loans to clients in danger of being evicted from their housing.

Today HOP has established itself within a network of local social organizations and is reaching out to community leaders throughout Boston. HOP is staffed entirely by undergraduate students, who work throughout the year to raise funds, recruit and train volunteers, and find families in need of emergency financial assistance. We consider each application by weighing the impact of our assistance against the risks of nonrepayment, and lend to the best applicants. As the scope of our day-to-day operations has grown, we have been able to prevent over 110 evictions in the past decade. The program is funded almost entirely by contributions from the Harvard faculty, with additional support from the business and philanthropic communities. HOP's continuing viability rests both on the financial support of our donors and on maintaining an optimal repayment rate which balances the benefits of repeated loans with the social impact of targeting those in greatest need. At a benchmark rate of 75%, the HOP model turns $500 of initial capital into $2,000 worth of total loans, realizing the concept of a 'community safety net.'

Besides our core business activities, HOP periodically sponsors discussions and benefit events within the Harvard community to raise awareness of housing and homelessness issues. We see our model as very much a work in progress, and we welcome the intellectual involvement of our donors and other faculty members in the project. HOP members also undertake related projects on their own initiative; the Boston Tenants Rights Coalition's website was a joint project to inform tenants of their rights as renters and help them locate social resources - legal assitance, child care, and medical advice.

The Harvard Crimson has a cover story on HOP that is archived online, along with articles on Harvard Hillel's panel discussion on homelessness (which HOP co-sponsored) and a panel discussion on housing policy which HOP hosted.

The HOP Community

HOP is focused specifically on serving the financial needs of low income families in the Boston area (graph). Most of our loans are given to single-parent families, and many of our clients receive assistance from AFDC or other government aid programs. In most cases our clients come to us having recently incurred unexpected medical bills, temporary unemployment, or other financial stress. Typically our clients apply to HOP after receiving an eviction notice from their landlord due to missed payments, and discussing their situation with a case worker, who refers them to us. We issue loans - currently $500 per client - in conjunction with other social agencies to applicants who demonstrate both a pressing need for short-term credit and a reasonable financial outlook, some source of income which is reliable but not adaquate to handle the crisis situation. We take on those risks which we deem acceptable given the potential social benefits: by keeping families in their homes we are able to keep children in school and parents at their jobs.

With experience, we have found that the most reliable clients are those who are connected to a larger community that benefits from HOP's ongoing presence. They decide to pay back their loan out of recognition of other community members needs, needs that may go unmet if the client's loan repayment falls short. We actively search for tight-knit communities in Boston and for service organizations with strong local connections, because we need partners with local knowledge in order to succeed.

For more perspectives on HOP, read internal working papers.

The HOP Team

While all HOP members share the interview load and adopt client cases for individual attention, supervision of the program is divided among elected officers who chair HOP's three departments - Client Loans, Development, and Public Relations. Volunteers generally move between departments from year to year. Because HOP is run by undergraduate students, no single member stays with the program for more than four years, and so we place great importance on the transfer of information and practical experience to new volunteers.

HOP team for the 2010/2011 school year:

Gosia Dymerska

Program Co-Director

Kira Mengistu

Program Co-Director

Kevin Ni

Chair of Client Loans

Matthew Fairbank

Chair of Business

Nathan Nakatsuka

Chair of Outreach

Sophie Cai

Director Emeritus

Emily Cunningham

Volunteer

Luke Thornberg

Volunteer

We actively recruit people to help the Housing Opportunities Program as undergraduate volunteers, donors, or agency partners. Please contact us if interested.