African Community Housing & Development (ACHD) is a community-led organization serving African Diaspora communities throughout the Puget Sound region. Founded in 2018 in response to skyrocketing cost of living and rampant displacement throughout Seattle and King County, ACHD works to meet our community's needs so that every person can thrive.
Led by visionary women of color, ACHD provides holistic, complete, and culturally responsive support for the community in King County. In 2024, ACHD served over 10,000 individuals across 75 zip codes in King, Snohomish, and Pierce counties. Our program participants are youth, families, and elders of the African Diaspora immigrant and refugee community.
Mission and Values
Mission: To empower the community of African Diaspora immigrants, refugees, and their descendants in the Greater Seattle Area by building culturally rooted health and housing stability through economic development, legal support, resource navigation, holistic education, and access to cultural arts and traditions.
In everything we do, ACHD seeks to provide holistic solutions that address the root causes of problems and symptoms. We use a whole-person approach that eliminates barriers to prosperity for everyone we serve. Our programs are rooted in our values: Justice, Innovation, Excellence, Community, and Prosperity.
What Is Affordable Housing & How Is It Created?
Addressing Community Needs
Families in the African Diaspora immigrant and refugee communities face issues of poverty, food and housing insecurity, xenophobia, racism, and significant language barriers. Providing trauma-informed, culturally responsive wraparound services that address many barriers to health, academic and economic achievement, and wellness, ACHD creates solutions to many of our community's issues. ACHD's solutions come from lived experiences.
Read also: Experience Fad's Fine African Cuisine
Our staff can understand the needs of the African Diaspora immigrant and refugee community because we are that community. We speak these languages, and we've lived these stories. ACHD starts by helping families navigate the unfamiliar and complex institutional landscapes (housing, education, social services, etc).
Key Programs and Initiatives
ACHD’s robust programming responds to the community’s most common challenges and needs. In 2022, ACHD provided holistic and culturally rooted programming and services to nearly 9,000 community members who spoke almost 30 languages, including distributing close to $38M in pandemic rental and basic needs assistance.
ACHD’s programs include:
- Housing assistance
- Eviction prevention services
- Food access and basic needs
- Education and after-school programs
- Elder enrichment programs
- Workforce development
- Advocacy and referral services
- Economic development
ACHD also supports families with youth sports programs to promote healthy, active lifestyles, and the Positive Family Connections program that brings parents and teens together to navigate their changing relationships.
Delridge Farmers Market
In June of this year, ACHD launched its Delridge Farmer's Market in Southwest Seattle, which brings delicious culturally-relevant fresh food to immigrant and refugee communities living in the Delridge “food desert”/food apartheid zone. ACHD also runs the weekly Delridge Farmers Market, now is it’s third year of operation. To ensure the success of the farmers at the market, ACHD also purchases all leftover produce at the end of each market day and delivers the fresh food to elders in the community.
Read also: The Story Behind Cachapas
Affordable Housing Projects
ACHD is honored to share that we have been selected by the Seattle Office of Housing to receive land and funding for our next affordable homeownership project in the Rainier Valley neighborhood of Seattle. We will be building 8 permanently-affordable townhomes rooted in our community’s cultural character and designed to support multigenerational families. This award represents a major milestone in our growth as an organization and reflects our commitment to affordable homeownership as the cornerstone of family stability, wealth-building, and neighborhood permanence.
ACHD is currently working towards building an African Diaspora Cultural Anchor Village in Tukwila, which will combine early learning facilities, community gathering space, and affordable family-sized housing that allows large families to live together, rather than be split into multiple homes.
These projects are the first in ACHD’s and Habitat SKKC’s historic partnership to center Black homeownership and prosperity across multiple projects throughout Seattle and South King County.
ACHD and Habitat SKKC will build a mixed-use building with 31 condos and 1,452 sf of commercial space at 6740 MLK Way S (Site #6), a 31-unit condo building at 3601 MLK Way S (Site #7), and 3 townhomes at 4865 MLK Way & 3112 S. Ferdinand (Site #9). All homes created will be permanently affordable homeownership opportunities for households at or below 80 percent of King County’s Area Median Income - far below the current market prices for homes in the area.
Partnerships and Collaborations
We are deeply grateful for the mentorship and collaboration of our partners: Seattle Office of Housing, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), Amazon, Grounded Solutions Network, Civic Commons’ Black Home Initiative, Housing Development Consortium of Seattle - King County, Habitat for Humanity Seattle-King & Kittitas Counties, and Mercy Housing Northwest. Together, we are creating homes that families can own and cherish for generations to come.
Read also: Techniques of African Jewellery
With a community-based partnership deeply rooted in collaboration, capacity-building, and colearning, ACHD and Habitat SKKC will combine their strengths to deliver high-quality and permanently affordable homes that meet the critical needs of BIPOC and low/moderate income families.
ACHD’s robust offerings have garnered support from local businesses like Verity Credit Union who provides its community with small business loans, sponsorships for programs and events, tools for improving credit scores, and more.
Impact and Future Goals
Once complete, the partners hope that this approach will help build the capacity of ACHD and the greater African Diaspora community to build and manage homeownership projects for generations to come.
ACHD works to meet our community's needs so that every person can thrive. ACHD’s essential programs use a whole-person, whole-family approach that aims to eliminate barriers to prosperity for all in the community.
As members of the Black Home Initiative, Habitat SKKC and ACHD are committed to a bold partnership that will increase Black homeownership in the Rainier Valley and throughout King County.
These projects will also generate opportunities for Women- and Minority-Owned Businesses (WMBE) contractors and suppliers, as well as living-wage jobs that support workforce development for the neighborhood.
“These projects will address barriers for WMBE contractors and suppliers, as well as support thriving and diverse neighborhoods. When the development of real estate and affordable housing is led by community, it truly represents what is needed by the community,” said Lauren McGowan, Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC) Executive Director.
| Race | Homeownership Rate |
|---|---|
| White Households | 68% |
| BIPOC Households | 49% |
| Black Households | 31% |
