The CSH Impact Investment team invites investors, philanthropic partners, government, and supportive housing service providers to leverage our knowledge and work with us to use capital to achieve measurable social change. We are focused on strategic solutions to achieve the most impact in our society including, Pay for Success and Social Impact Bonds. We are eager to share how we leverage systems change to better deliver programs and then link these achievements to capital, realizing overall performance improvements that change lives.

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CSH Pay for Success Grants Help Communities Improve Healthcare Delivery & Decrease Costs

CSH has named three local area-providers across the country to participate in initiatives focused on delivering stable housing and improved medical and mental healthcare to people unhoused or leaving institutions who frequently use costly crisis services: Lake County Community Development in Lake County, Illinois, Community Human Services in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, and Ventura County, California

A Proven Model for Investors - Supportive Housing in the Impact Investment Market

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Investments in supportive housing that produce measurable social, as well as financial, returns are part of the broader landscape of impact investment. Impact investors measure performance on a ‘double bottom line’ of social and financial impact. There is evidence to suggest that a focus on social good can improve financial returns: Impact investment funds with less than $100M in assets under management outperformed similarly sized traditional funds over a six year period.[1]

While other types of ethical investment screen out negative impacts or use positive impact as a deciding factor in the investment process, impact investment is the only category that weighs economic and measurable social benefits equally throughout the process.

Supportive housing investments are often included in an ‘affordable housing’ impact theme. A 2014 survey of 300 impact investment funds found that 44% reported access to basic services, including affordable housing, as an investment theme.[2]

The CSH Impact Investment team is focused on three strategic solutions to achieve the most impact and measurable social change.

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Pay for Success and Performance-Based Contracting

Pay for Success transactions (also called Social Impact Bonds) and other performance-based contracts are a subset of impact investment. A Pay for Success transaction involves a third party that agrees to pay for services on the basis of positive social outcomes. In a Pay for Success transaction, the service provider has a need for upfront capital to sustain operations prior to being paid for outcomes. Impact investors finance this provider to deliver high quality services that result in positive social outcomes. The government (or occasionally another entity paying for the services) repays investors only when these outcomes are achieved.

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Pay for Success transactions therefore differ from standard impact investments in several important ways:

  1. Investors’ repayment is dependent on the achievement of outcomes.
  2. The dependence on outcomes for financial repayment makes Pay for Success investments riskier than the average impact investment, particularly because the investors do not usually have recourse to provider balance sheets or other assets as collateral. But most Pay for Success contracts have contract reviews clauses and performance thresholds that mitigate the risk to investors.
  3. The inclusion of government or another entity paying for outcomes strengthens cross-sector collaboration.

There are a number of reasons why governments are interested in paying for outcomes, and we are happy to discuss the potential fit of Pay for Success with supportive housing in your community.

Our Impact Investment Team  

Ryan Moser, Vice President of Strategy & Impact. Ryan has developed models, initiatives, and policy for active substance users, mental health alternatives to incarceration, justice reinvestment, community corrections, veterans, housing interventions for families with criminal justice involvement, and high utilizers of systems including pay for success. As Vice President for Strategy & Impact, Ryan works to build strategic alignment across the agency’s portfolio, lead national strategic initiatives, increase organizational capacity for data analytics and evaluation, and increase impact through social impact financing.

Stephanie Mercier, Director of Impact Investments. Stephanie has more than thirteen years of experience working with communities to strategically address the needs of their most vulnerable citizens particularly as it relates to homelessness and housing. As Director of Impact Investment with the Strategy and Impact team, Stephanie focuses her efforts on expanding and supporting CSH’s portfolio of impact investments and pay for success initiatives.

Our bench is deep and we are supported by the experienced professionals in CSH’s Community Investment team, which lends money through the CSH Solutions Fund and a number of local loan initiatives. We also draw on over one hundred CSH experts working locally to scale supportive housing across the entire United States.

[1] “Introducing the Impact Investment Benchmark.” Global Impact Investment Network. Available at . [2] “Impact Base Snapshot.” Global Impact Investment Network. 2015. Available at .