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WASHINGTON, DC -- The increasingly desperate affordable housing crisis has led nine U.S. foundations, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and The Melville Charitable Trust to announce on Tuesday that they are launching a partnership to tackle systemic problems in the housing market. The aim: to ensure that the more than 11 million families across the country that spend more than half of their paycheck on rent and those who are homeless have access to safe, affordable housing. The partnership, called Funders For Housing and Opportunity, has divided an initial $4.9 million in grant money between four nonprofits that tackle housing insecurity. This first tranche of money is aimed “mostly in the area of policy, advocacy and organizing,” said Susan Thomas, senior program officer at Melville Charitable Trust and chair of Funders for Housing and Opportunity.

WATERBURY, CT -- Waterbury has been awarded a $450,000 jobs grant, which will be used in a $1 million, three-year, effort to improve employment statistics in a depressed South End neighborhood. The city is among five Connecticut communities that will each get $450,000 grants from the Working Cities Challenge. Local politicians and civic activists have spent more than a year applying for the grant through the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.