Housing is most families’ largest expense, and stable, affordable homes are indispensable for Americans’ health, education, and well-being.

Zest AI is honored to be working alongside housing advocates as a member of the OCCs’ Project REACh, the National Housing Conference and partners such as Freddie Mac to bring new credit scoring tools to the market to make homeownership possible for the millions of Americans currently locked out of the mainstream mortgage market.

That’s why today Zest AI joined nearly 200 local, state, and national organizations to sign a letter urging Congressional leaders to make sure that policies across the housing continuum are comprehensively included in the Budget Reconciliation Bill, especially those with a strong focus on affordable homeownership.

We support the entire continuum of housing assistance in the package, including aid for the homeless and support for affordable rental housing. But the real path to closing the racial wealth gap in America is by tackling housing affordability challenges comprehensively with a strong focus on expanding affordable homeownership.

Homeownership is essential to expanding economic opportunity and offers families the benefits of stable housing costs, and the ability to build assets as home equity increases. It is associated with better health, education, and public safety outcomes. In many parts of the country, homeownership is less expensive than renting, especially for lower-income families. No investment alternative is as beneficial as homeownership for wealth building and we need to make homeownership accessible to communities of color long disadvantaged by historical housing discrimination.

As the letter concludes, “Safe and affordable homes provide the physical foundation for success in nearly every aspect of our lives. They strengthen families, neighborhoods, and businesses and pay tremendous dividends for our economy and public health. Investing in our nation’s housing infrastructure by building and preserving homes for affordable homeownership will fortify our communities and will expand an economic recovery for all of us.”

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Teddy Flo — Chief Legal Officer 

Teddy lives in Thousand Oaks, California with his wife, two kids, and cat and is a passionate advocate for financial inclusion. In his role as CLO at Zest AI, he ensures that the company’s technology will not only enable fairer lending outcomes, but also boost the standard of what it means to lend more equitably. Teddy works across Zest AI to manage risk and leads the company’s legal, compliance, and policy teams.