A new joint venture between the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF), Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future (SAHF) and National Affordable Housing Trust (NAHT) aims to raise $1 billion over the first five years of the partnership to build, protect and preserve approximately 10,000 affordable homes across the country. Even before the pandemic, the research was clear that having access to safe, quality, affordable housing is one of the most powerful social determinants of health. Now, public health is not only threatened by COVID-19, but by the recession that is sure to follow, which in the past prompted private equity to gobble up distressed real estate assets at bargain prices, dramatically increasing rents and deepening the inequities in our nation’s housing system. It is urgent to combat this momentum by preserving and building new affordable housing, so this does not happen again.