Region 2020 Housing Initiative

Region 2020 is a not-for-profit organization whose goal is to provide region-wide opportunities, organizational resources and grass roots strategies to define and address the major concerns of residents in a 12 county area of North Alabama.

 In 1999 Habitat for Humanity's “Twenty-First Century Challenge” called on communities to eliminate sub-standard housing. Region 2020 and Habitat convened more than 50 organizations and 200 housing and community activists in Jefferson County to respond to the challenge. These activists embarked on a year long series of meetings and work projects to identify and develop more effective means of addressing affordable housing needs.

Twenty-First Century Challenge

The Twenty-First Century Challenge method is to enumerate every house that does not meet standards of human habitation and mark them for destruction or renovation: “No more poverty housing!”  Housing activists proposed to conduct such an inventory in Jefferson County.

Dilapidated houses such as these create an unhealthy environment
for residents of the Woodlawn neighborhood

University of Alabama at Birmingham Professor Mark LaGory published an analysis of housing needs in Jefferson County that identified as many as 9,000 units of substandard housing.

In 2000, the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham and the Kaul Foundation gave $250,000 to Region 2020 to fund efforts to create new capacity to address Jefferson County's Housing crisis. One of its efforts was to begin a pilot community renovation project in Woodlawn.