After nearly nine years as President and CEO and a total of twelve years at the organization, today is my last day at NLIHC. Since announcing my departure three months ago, I have been overwhelmed – in the best possible way! – by an outpouring of love and support from so many of you. My heart is full. Thank you.
Leading NLIHC has been a joy, challenge, and honor. I am tremendously proud of the success we’ve had and the progress we’ve made.
Over the last nine years we, together:
- Expanded and strengthened the movement for housing justice to include powerful new partners from the health, education, civil rights, anti-hunger, anti-poverty, local government and other sectors, through our Opportunity Starts at Home campaign.
- Advanced equitable and just disaster housing recovery and rebuilding, creating a powerful movement of over 900 state, local and national organizations working together on Disaster Housing Recovery, Research and Resilience.
- Had historic success in elevating the affordable housing crisis and solutions in the last two presidential campaigns, through Our Homes, Our Votes, achieving the first ever dedicated national debate questions on affordable housing, and ensuring that most candidates responded throughout their campaigns with comprehensive solutions centering people with the greatest and most urgent housing needs.
- Prevented continuous efforts by the first Trump administration to gut essential housing programs and policies, achieving increased federal funding for rental assistance and other programs, and successfully Keep(ing) Families Together.
- Led and won a major national campaign for Rent Relief Now, achieving over $100 billion in federal housing and homelessness resources and an emergency national eviction moratorium during the pandemic. Together, these resources and protections saved lives and kept millions of households who otherwise would have lost their homes stably housed.
- Led the End Rent Arrears to Stop Evictions (ERASE) campaign, working closely with the Biden administration and all stakeholders to ensure historic Emergency Rental Assistance resources reached the most marginalized and lowest income renters in time to prevent their evictions.
- Supported state and local efforts to achieve over 300 essential new tenant protections and launched new efforts to support state and local partners to advance innovative solutions to strengthen tenants’ rights, prevent evictions, and promote housing stability for renter households with the lowest incomes.
- Mobilized, through the HoUSed campaign for universal, stable, affordable homes, to advance the long-term solutions and anti-racist reforms needed to achieve housing justice.
- Urged and supported the housing field to center racial justice through our Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Anti-Racism, and Systems Thinking (IDEAS) initiative.
- Amplified and supported the crucial leadership of impacted people through multiple initiatives, including co-creating and co-leading The Collective, a cohort of powerful tenant leaders shaping and deepening NLIHC’s work to achieve housing justice…
…and so much more!
Looking back, I’m heartened not only by what we accomplished, but by how we did so – by expanding our movement, building capacity for impacted people and other partners, never wavering from our focus on ensuring people with the lowest incomes and those most marginalized have decent, accessible, and affordable homes, and – always – working in coalition with impacted people and thousands of organizational partners from across the country.
Our work over these last nine years has exponentially grown and strengthened the NLIHC team and our partners. NLIHC and our collective movement for housing justice are – by every measure – stronger than ever and poised for further success. Now is the right time for a new NLIHC leader to continue working with our exceedingly skilled and dedicated team and partners.
Certainly, there are significant challenges ahead. The next few years will require an aligned and powerful housing justice movement, capable of both defending critical programs and making significant advancements towards housing justice. NLIHC and our partners are built for this moment. If you’re not yet a member of NLIHC, I urge you to become one today.
While I’m not going far and will always be tightly connected to NLIHC, it’s time now for me to say farewell, and thank you. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to know, learn from, and work with so many of you. I deeply appreciate your tremendous partnership, contributions, and leadership. Please stay in touch! Beginning on January 7, you can reach me in my new role as President and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits at [email protected].
I’m delighted to now pass the torch to Renee Willis, NLIHC’s interim President and CEO, who I’m certain will be highly effective and successful in leading NLIHC as the board of directors conducts its national search for a permanent successor.
I am, as always, optimistic and confident – both in NLIHC’s future and in our country’s ability to end homelessness and housing poverty, once and for all. Until then, I’ll be with NLIHC in the struggle for housing justice.
Onward,