Advocacy and More!

It’s April! I wish you all a happy Fair Housing Month and a happy Community Development Month – the Community Development Block grant (CDBG) program turns 50 this year! While we still have much to do on both fronts, these occasions call for reflection and celebration.  

I’d also like to celebrate our Washington Conference, which happened last week! Thank you to the more than 780 NAHRO members, partners and guests who gathered in the nation’s capital to work, learn and advocate together.

We’re honored to host such a diverse gathering of housing professionals, federal officials, commissioners and residents from across the country. We heard from important voices – including former NAHRO CEO and current HUD Acting Secretary Adrianne Todman and her team, USICH Executive Director Jeff Olivet and NAEH CEO Ann Oliva, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), PBS NewsHour co-anchor Geoff Bennett and many more. 

An especially huge thank you goes to the more than 250 advocates who went to more than 350 meetings with your elected officials and your staff! It was deeply moving to walk the halls of Congress and see you all telling your stories and sharing your truths. These visits and conversations are invaluable: you educate lawmakers about important housing and community development programs and the need for them, inform them about the positive impact of these programs on their constituents, and – perhaps most importantly – remind them that behind the numbers and statistics are individual names, faces, and stories. Your advocacy is powerful, and we thank you for showing up in force.

At the Washington Conference, we also celebrated some of the best among us. Congratulations to our twenty-three Awards of Excellence-winning agencies, our Advocacy Award winner and Legislative Network Chair Yvonda Bean, our Emerging Leader Award winner Chonda Tapley, and our Legislators of the Year, Representative Tom Cole (R-OK) and Representative Ritchie Torres (D-NY).  

Leadership

Some of the most important work happened before the conference even began. Our Board of Governors officially passed NAHRO’s new vision statement, mission statement, and five-year strategic plan. Thank you to President George Guy, Senior Vice President Sean Gilbert, Strategic Planning Advisory Committee Chair Jennifer Keogh and consultant Debbie Evans for spearheading this ambitious, fast-paced but still intentional and collaborative process. Thank you to our leadership as well for putting in hours upon hours of extra work on top of already demanding jobs to get this done. Thank you to our incredible staff for all of your efforts to get us to this point.  To all of the NAHRO leaders who put so much into this: I am so grateful for your dedication to NAHRO and the more than 26,000 housers and community builders we serve. 

Our new vision and mission statement are already on our website (check out www.nahro.org/about), and you’ll hear more about the strategic plan and its goals from President Guy next month. 

Chicago

Is it too early to be talking about summer yet?  We are gearing up for our Summer Symposium: The Past and Future History of Housing, which is happening in Chicago on July 11-12! We’ll celebrate the 50^th anniversary of the voucher program, visit the National Public Housing Museum, premiere the 2024 edition of the NAHRO 360 report, and more. Our team is working hard to finalize the full schedule, so keep checking for updates at www.nahro.org/summer for more details. See you there!