Growing up on a campground in California’s Sierra Foothills, Rebecca Center Foster came to understand a powerful truth: community and belonging are deeply rooted in a sense of place. She developed a lifelong conviction that everyone deserves a safe, stable home in a place that truly matters to them. But after moving to one of the country’s most expensive cities, Rebecca quickly saw that this fundamental human need was out of reach for so many. Addressing San Francisco’s housing challenges, she realized, would require bold ideas and innovative solutions.
In 2017, Rebecca became the founding CEO of the San Francisco Housing Accelerator Fund, an independent nonprofit that brings public, private, and philanthropic partners together to move quickly on affordable housing. Under her leadership, the HAF has unlocked more than half a billion dollars in community investment, financing over 3,000 permanently affordable homes for more than 6,000 Bay Area residents. It offers fast, flexible capital to help developers preserve and expand housing, prevent displacement, reduce homelessness, and create opportunities for individuals and families. “The Housing Accelerator Fund was created to stretch private sector and philanthropic dollars to achieve more impact, more quickly,” Rebecca explains. “Building and growing this public-private partnership is exactly the messy, hard work we should be challenging ourselves to do.”
Rebecca’s work at the HAF builds on years of tackling big challenges at the intersection of finance and community. She has led social impact investment and civic innovation for the City of San Francisco, and earlier in her career, raised capital for schools, cities, and nonprofits as a vice president at Goldman Sachs. Today, she also serves on the boards of the California Housing Partnership Corporation, San Francisco Friends School, and ARTA, a whitewater rafting nonprofit. Through it all, her motivation is constant: “I believe firmly that another world is possible, in small and big ways, and that we can’t say it isn’t without trying to make it so.”
