Every June, National Homeownership Month invites us to celebrate one of the most meaningful milestones a family can reach: owning a place to call their own. For more than two decades, this annual observance has recognized what a home truly represents. Stability. A foundation for building wealth. A place to put down roots. A stake in the community around you.
At Rufty Homes, this is the work we love. Building homes that families are proud of is the reason we show up every day. But this year, we want to use this month to talk about something bigger than any single home we build. We want to talk about who gets to call the Triangle home at all.
The Triangle is one of the best places in the country to live, and people across the country have noticed. Over the past decade, our region has seen tremendous economic growth. But that growth has come with a cost.
For many of the people who keep our communities running, the teachers, the firefighters, the nurses, and the healthcare workers, incomes simply have not kept pace with the rising cost of housing. The result is that the very people our region depends on are increasingly being priced out of the neighborhoods they serve.
That is a problem worth paying attention to, especially during a month set aside to celebrate the value of owning a home.
On June 3, Jon Rufty and Kelly Nicholson joined more than 500 community leaders at the Raleigh Convention Center for What Matters 2026, the Triangle Community Foundation's signature annual gathering. This year, the entire event focused on housing affordability, with a keynote from Derek Thompson, the bestselling co-author of Abundance.
Sitting in that room alongside leaders from business, government, nonprofits, and philanthropy was a powerful reminder. Solving housing affordability is not something any one builder, company, or organization can do alone. It takes the whole region pulling in the same direction.
The highlight of the event was the launch of the Triangle Impact Fund, a new tool the Triangle Community Foundation created to take on housing affordability head-on. We are proud to help raise awareness about it on the Foundation's behalf this Homeownership Month.
For more than 40 years, the Foundation has invested in our region primarily through grants, granting over $500 million to date. But grants alone cannot close today's housing gap. The Triangle Impact Fund takes a different approach called impact investing.
Rather than giving a dollar away just once, the Fund makes low-interest loans to community development financial institutions and promising local housing projects. As those loans are repaid, the money is recycled back into the community to fund the next project, and the next. In other words, every dollar can go to work more than once, all while prioritizing the careful stewardship of that capital.
The Fund's first investments will focus on housing affordability across Chatham, Durham, Orange, and Wake counties, organized around three clear goals:
The Foundation has set an initial goal of raising $10 million, with the first round of funding closing at the end of July, and a longer-term vision of growing the Fund to between $10 and $50 million by 2030.
We build custom homes because we believe in the power of a great place to live. That same belief is exactly why we care about the families across the Triangle who are working hard and still finding homeownership, or even stable housing, just out of reach.
A strong region is one where the people who teach our kids, answer our emergency calls, and care for us when we are sick can afford to live in the communities they serve. The Triangle Impact Fund is a smart, practical step toward making that possible, and we are glad to stand behind it.
If you want to understand how the Triangle Impact Fund works, or explore the Foundation's broader housing affordability initiative, we encourage you to visit the Triangle Community Foundation directly:
Whether you are a potential investor, a fellow business owner, or simply a neighbor who cares about the future of our region, there is a place for you in this work.
This June, let's celebrate homeownership by helping make it possible for more of our neighbors. That is a Triangle worth building.
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