NLIHC’s 2019 Annual Report, featuring the Coalition’s year of movement building for affordable homes for those most in need, is now available at: https://bit.ly/2ZnLZS8
“The year 2019 was one of numerous serious threats to affordable housing programs and the people they house,” begins NLIHC President and CEO Diane Yentel in the preface to the report. In facing these challenges, Diane notes, NLIHC found opportunities to increase public and policymaker awareness of solutions and achieve significant new breakthroughs in the national dialogue around housing. “The momentum is growing!,” she writes. “We will end homelessness and housing poverty in America, once and for all!”
Diane shares the threats and challenges of 2019, which included proposed draconian cuts to affordable housing programs and in benefits for the lowest-income people in subsidized homes, efforts to undermine progress to affirmatively further fair housing, and harmful policies to evict mixed-status immigrant families from subsidized housing and to remove protections for trans people in need of homeless shelters.
Despite these challenges, the year was one of substantial momentum-building and successes for NLIHC and our members and partners. Together, we maintained a virtually unprecedented 10% increase to HUD’s budget for 2019 and 2020, thwarted the proposed benefits cuts, and protected funding for the national Housing Trust Fund. We continued to build and lead the Opportunity Starts at Home (OSAH) multi-sector affordable homes campaign, with the campaign securing the introduction of two major bipartisan affordable housing bills in December. NLIHC’s Our Homes, Our Votes 2020 nonpartisan candidate and voter engagement project had a tremendous impact in 2019, getting all of the major Democratic presidential candidates to put forward comprehensive housing plans, virtually all of which were focused on the needs of the lowest-income people. NLIHC also led a successful campaign to get affordable housing addressed in a televised presidential debate for the first time in history. In addition to these and other initiatives, NLIHC continued to support our partners and members with cutting-edge research like Out of Reach and The Gap, our annual Housing Policy Forum and Capitol Hill Day, the Our Homes, Our Voices Housing Week of Action, Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition efforts, and much more.
Read about all these activities and more in the full report at: https://bit.ly/2ZnLZS8