Keep Expanding Your Huddle!

Does the title sound familiar? Good. I’ve written about the importance of building alliances before and have spoken about it often.

As housers, you all know that we’re a vital part of healthy communities, though one of many! We work and live alongside healthcare professionals and social workers, local and national elected officials, students and teachers, farmers and retail workers, firefighters and police, engineers and artists, and of course the many families, seniors, veterans and children who live in federally assisted housing.

Given that building communities together requires, well, a community, one of my priorities for NAHRO has always been finding our people — both the individuals and the organizations with whom we have shared goals. We’re stronger together, and together we’ll travel far.

Over the past month alone, I’ve been privileged to speak with and learn from people from different membership associations and professional groups. Thank you to the Stewards of Affordable Housing for the Future for a thought provoking retreat, to the North Carolina Housing Authority Directors Association for inviting us to their convening, and to Ireland’s The Housing Agency and Institute for Public Administration for sharing their local housing knowledge, strategies and tactics with us and hundreds more at the Housing Practitioners’ Conference in sunny Wexford. The collective knowledge, perspectives and dedication to affordable housing inspire me.

The NAHRO team has been working to enlarge our huddles as well. On behalf of NAHRO, we’ve presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Cardiovascular Healthy Cities Summit, at a lunch webinar for the National Association of Black Women in Construction, the Minnesota Multi Housing Association’s Working Together conference, at the National Affordable Housing Management Association and at the National Council for State Housing Agencies. And of course, NAHRO is a member of various affordable housing and housing-adjacent working groups and coalitions here in Washington, D.C.

When NAHRO’s huddle expands, so does yours. As we build connections and forge alliances, both our knowledge and our capacity to work on shared goals increase. We find partners to share the load, show us new points of view and sometimes walk with us down an entirely new path.

That’s why we’re bringing together housers, scholars, organizations and business partners for NAHRO’s 2026 Summer Symposium, which is happening from July 16-17 in Nashville, Tennessee. Over the course of two packed days, we’ll hear from award-winning economist Raj Chetty, take in three plenary and 14 concurrent sessions on everything from HOTMA to public relations, and get a first look at this year’s Secure Homes, Strong Communities report. Meet. You. There!