Your membership will be even more valuable in 2022 when the NHC Member Brief, access to our archives, including conference videos and transcripts, and event discounts become available to members only. Our last free Member Brief will go out in December, and our Solutions for Affordable Housing online convening on November 17, is already free to members who save $50 per registration. We hope that you will take the opportunity to join or renew your membership in NHC today.
Paid Full, Silver and Gold Members will also be invited to our 2021 holiday party, Celebrating Collaboration, held on December 15, 2021, from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm at the Andrew Mellon Auditorium. This limited event will allow us to safely celebrate the many ways we have all worked together through the darkest days of the pandemic and the historic opportunity for affordable housing funding – a task still very much underway. As past attendees at our Annual Housing Visionary Awards Gala know, the Andrew Mellon Auditorium has a capacity of 1000 and 40 foot high ceilings. We are confident that requiring proof of vaccination and optional mask-wearing when not eating will allow us to gather safely. This party is our way of saying thank you to Members of our Board of Governors, National Advisory Council, Gold, Silver and Full members. Only 250 tickets will be issued.
2021 was the most influential year for NHC in recent history. We succeeded in building a broad coalition to win passage of the $10 billion Homeowner Assistance Fund. Every major housing industry group, dozens of state and local organizations, and the country’s most progressive affordable housing advocates joined this initiative. The unprecedented ideological diversity of this group was a major factor in getting the Biden administration to include it in its American Rescue Plan proposal and successfully adding it to the congressional legislative package.
On June 18, the first federal Juneteenth holiday, members of the Black Homeownership Collaborative joined HUD Secretary Marcia Fudge; Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and Congressman Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) at Cleveland State University to launch the 3 by 30 initiative, a 7-point plan to sustainably create 3 million net new Black homeowners by 2030. NHC founded the Black Homeownership Collaborative, led by a steering committee of executives from the Mortgage Bankers Association, NAACP, National Association of REALTORS®, National Association of Real Estate Brokers, National Fair Housing Alliance, National Housing Conference and National Urban League with the support of research from the Urban Institute. Over 100 individuals from dozens of organizations developed the 7 Point Plan. See local news coverage of the event hereor read about it in Forbes here. We have also created a new website to support the initiative at www.3by30.org.
NHC also played a major leadership role in the effort to modernize the Community Reinvestment Act, forming a CRA Working Group that included dozens of community advocates and financial institutions. As one highly influential CRA regulator said, NHC “is an important voice in housing and community development policy, and has provided valuable feedback on the modernization of the Community Reinvestment Act,” including “valuable insights into the unique role and needs of affordable housing providers.”
Last, but by far not least, NHC played an important leadership role in fighting for enactment of the housing provisions in the Build Back Better bill. The bill contains over $150 billion in housing programs and billions more in critically important tax provisions, including the Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, enhancements to the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program, downpayment assistance for first generation homebuyers, and more.
I hope you will join us as we work to move all of these initiatives forward, and ensure that every dollar appropriated by Congress in this landmark legislation makes a difference in the lives of the millions of Americans who need it now.
Once again, your membership can be renewed – or initiated – at https://members.nhc.org/page/join-now. You also can reach out to Amanda Mitchell, Vice President of Operations at amitchell@nhc.org.