Showing Digital Equity + Housing + Black Philanthropy.

How Digital Equity, Housing and Black Philanthropy Intersect

A family that loses its home often loses its internet too. With it goes a way to join the life of the neighborhood. In Charlotte and across the Carolinas, Black philanthropy, digital equity and housing shape each other every day. Staying in your shelter, reaching a giving chance online and seeing community money follow local priorities all rest on the same ground. That ground is a stable home, a reliable connection and doors open to everyone.

Digital Equityaccess to modern lifeBlack Philanthropycommunity investment and leadershipHousingstability of place
Black Philanthropy and Digital Equity: Giving now often starts at an online door
Digital Equity and Housing: Reliable internet depends on having a home
Black Philanthropy and Housing: Money can follow priorities communities name
Where all three meet: where daily life compounds

Where all three meet: where daily life compounds

  1. Digital Equity and Black Philanthropy: Giving now often starts at an online door
  2. Housing and Digital Equity: Reliable internet depends on having a home
  3. Black Philanthropy and Housing: Money can follow priorities communities name
01

Black Philanthropy + Digital Equity

Giving now often starts at an online door

Collective giving, community events and fundraising now often run online. Think of giving platforms, virtual meetings and web outreach. Black philanthropy counts time, talent, treasure, testimony and ties as giving. If a site demands a certain device or skill with a platform, it can quietly shut out some of those forms. Uneven internet access narrows who gets to take part.

02

Housing + Digital Equity

Reliable internet depends on having a home

A steady address often comes first for reliable internet. And internet is now needed to find, apply for and keep housing. The Center for Digital Equity says about 70,000 Mecklenburg County residents lost a $30 monthly broadband subsidy in 2024, when the Affordable Connectivity Program ended. The U.S. Census Bureau's ACS shows 40.2% of Charlotte renter households pay 35% or more of income for rent. Cost-burdened renters have little room for new bills.

03

Black Philanthropy + Housing

Money can follow priorities communities name

Black philanthropic leadership can help steer money toward housing goals that communities set for themselves. It does this through collective giving, mutual aid and community funds. That giving adds to public policy and the housing market but cannot replace them. The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Housing and Homelessness Dashboard reports low-cost rentals fell from 36% of the rental market in 2015 to 8% in 2024. Changes that large call for public and market action too.

How pressures stack up for one household

  1. 01

    Rent eats the budget

    A cost-burdened household spending 35% or more of its income on rent has little left for internet or devices.

  2. 02

    Internet becomes optional

    Broadband feels out of reach, so the household drops to a phone plan or loses its connection entirely.

  3. 03

    Community channels go quiet

    Without a reliable connection, reaching giving circles and community networks gets much harder.

  4. 04

    Resources flow to the connected

    Participation favors people who are online, so giving reflects a narrower set of voices.

Rent relief for strained renters, subsidized internet and giving channels that work without a fast connection can each break this chain before it tightens.

By the numbers

  • $1.6M$1.6M infused into Charlotte by the New Generation of African American Philanthropists
  • 14%14% of homes in Mecklenburg County did not have internet access in 2023
  • $138K$138K annual income needed to afford a median-priced home in Charlotte
  • 8,6008,600 households connected to free home-internet services through the City of Charlotte’s “Access Charlotte” initiative

Folio links, articles, and reports

Sources & methodology14 referenced sources

Based on fftc:FWD Folio material for these topics and public data, with broader context on how the issues connect.

AI assists with organizing and explaining selected fftc:FWD source material. It does not replace review by FFTC staff or the judgment of residents and civic partners.