We all want to have a place to call home. A place we feel safe and comfortable. Stable housing is foundational to human dignity and agency within the economy.

It was an equity issue. Understanding what was going on at these property management companies and seeing how the system of affordable housing was set up revealed a lack of care for the time and energy of low-income people.

Poverty is cyclical. If your earnings fall below a certain level, the cost of living can make rising to stable financial footing next to impossible. To break this cycle there needs to be intervention or systems change, and that starts with gaining empathy and understanding into why and how it is expensive to be poor.

Noelle Marcus started Nesterly because she and her family have witnessed how difficult it can be to access affordable housing.