We are putting the final touches on Moving Housing Forward: Seizing the Moment, our 42nd Annual Gala on June 12th at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. If you have not yet secured your ticket, there is still time to do so. I’m looking forward seeing the many of you who will be in attendance.
NHC has a vital role to play in federal housing policy both as a convener, and as educator and advocate. We are also a resource for members on the policy climate for both legislative and regulatory issues. But we don’t just focus on what’s happening in Washington.
As I noted in last month’s Under One Roof, we are intentionally making the Gala a national event by honoring and bringing together folks from different parts of the country. Likewise, we are planning events outside of Washington so that each year we can better connect to different regions of the country and make sure those working in housing can benefit from NHC’s resources and come to understand why we are a valuable organization to be a part of.
In what we hope will become an annual event, on October 20th we will partner with the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago to host a Regional Housing Forum. Our goal is to bring a diverse audience of housing professionals together from throughout the upper Midwest for a day of conversations about the region’s housing issues. We hope to highlight some of the great work going on in the region, present examples of best practices in other places that may be useful as well as increase understanding of the needs, challenges and opportunities that exist there for folks interested in increasing the supply of and access to quality affordable homes. We’ll have more information for you about this convening soon, and if you’d like us to do this in your part of the country in future years, please let me know.
In November we will host our Solutions 2014 in Oakland, CA. This conference focuses on housing issues most keenly felt at the regional, state or local level and will feature over 35 workshops covering a wide range of topics, from strategies to help neighborhoods recover from foreclosure to examples of how to increase affordable housing in high-opportunity areas. It will show examples of how to incorporate values-based messaging into housing discussions, as well as how to understand housing’s intersections with other important community issues like health and education. It will provide examples of how residents of affordable housing are being mobilized and empowered to participate in advocacy efforts for more funding and development, as well as tour the many wonderful examples of quality affordable developments in the Bay area.
All of this is just a portion of our effort to be an organization of value for those working to increase the supply and access to quality affordable homes. We thank you for your membership and financial support and hope you will let others know about why becoming a member of NHC will help them in their work.