Photo © Tony Powell. National Housing Conference 47th Annual Housing Visionary Awards Gala. Mellon Auditorium. June 6, 2019
This week, mask mandates around the country were repealed as a result of significant reductions in COVID-19 cases. The CDC reports that the case rate in Washington, DC for the week of February 20 was only 73.1 per 100,000, down from 864.9 at the beginning of January, with only one person per 100,000 admitted to the hospital. As a result of this encouraging trend, we are pleased to announce that the National Housing Conference will hold its Annual Housing Visionary Awards Gala at the Anthem Theater on June 14.
All CDC and DC Health Department guidelines will be followed. At this time, we expect it to be a mask optional event with proof of full vaccination required. We will be limiting attendance to 60 percent of the Anthem’s capacity to ensure there is plenty of room to get around. This will be a great opportunity for all of us to get together and celebrate our collective accomplishments over the past two years. We will also recognize the exceptional leadership of a few of our colleagues with the Housing Visionary Awards and the Carl A.S. Coen Sr. Award for lifetime achievement.
Full NHC members receive tickets according to their membership level. Individual tickets may be purchased for $1000, and several sponsorship opportunities remain available. We will also be selling advertisements in the Gala program book. This year’s book will include a comprehensive list of major housing legislation passed since NHC was founded in 1931, making it a valuable resource for any housers library. To discuss sponsorship opportunities and table or ticket purchases, please reach out to NHC’s Amanda Mitchell at amitchell@nhc.org.
Working together, we have achieved so much over the past two years. The enactment of more than $40 billion in Emergency Rental Assistance and $10 billion in Homeowner Assistance Funds has saved hundreds of thousands of families from losing their homes. $150 billion to address homelessness issues with legislation already passed on the House side, could have a longstanding impact far beyond the pandemic itself. As important, we have all worked together in so many ways, large and small, to help each other get through this horrific period of history to emerge stronger and more unified.
When the pandemic started, NHC created the COVID-19 Housing Resource Center (HRC) website to provide a dashboard where housers could find all of the information they needed, gathered from hundreds of curated websites and pages developed to address housing-related pandemic issues. Today, the HRC has more than 3,000 resources including more than 500 devoted to helping consumers find help in their communities. Over the past two years, more than 189,000 individuals have accessed this powerful tool where they have been directed to many of your websites.
The success of the site is a direct result of the incredible work you have done, and we are proud to help bring that work together in the same way we look forward to bringing all of us together. Collectively, we are so much stronger than any of us are individually. We are proud to help facilitate that cohesion as an integral part of our mission. And we are excited to join you at the Anthem on June 14 to celebrate and recognize each other’s accomplishments in person.