By Renee M. Willis, NLIHC President and CEO
Dear NLIHC Partners, Members, and Friends,
This week, we will welcome advocates, tenant leaders, researchers, policymakers, and organizers from across the country to Washington, D.C. for the Housing Policy Forum hosted by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. At a time when the stakes for housing justice feel higher than ever, this gathering represents more than a conference. It is an opportunity to reconnect with one another, sharpen our shared strategies, and renew our collective commitment to ensuring that everyone has a safe, stable, and affordable place to call home.
Many of you reading this will be in the room with us next week. For those who won’t be able to join us this year, please know that this gathering is part of an ongoing conversation and a growing community of people committed to solving the nation’s housing challenges. We hope to make space for you at the 2027 Housing Policy Forum and look forward to welcoming even more voices into this work.
We come together at a moment when the need for stable, affordable housing has never been more urgent.
Across the country, families and communities are navigating rising rents, displacement, natural disasters, and policies that too often leave the most vulnerable behind. This is the moment we are meeting. Yet in every corner of the country, we also see something powerful: people organizing, speaking out, and refusing to accept that housing instability should be the norm.
That spirit is what brings us together.
The Housing Policy Forum is where tenant leaders bring the lived expertise that must shape policy. It is where researchers share data that help illuminate solutions. It is where advocates and organizers exchange strategies and strengthen partnerships that move our work forward. It is where our state and Tribal partners connect and share lessons from communities across the country. It is where policymakers hear directly from the communities most affected by the decisions made in Washington. And it is where the next generation of leaders—including our Generation Housing Justice fellows and members of the Collective—come together with experienced advocates to deepen their leadership and strengthen this work for the future.
Our work has always required courage—the courage to challenge systems that have persisted for generations, to speak about difficult truths in inequity, and to imagine a future that looks different from the past.
Few people embody that spirit more than Shirely Sherrod, whose lifetime of organizing and advocacy has inspired generations of leaders—including our entire Tenant Collective. Mrs. Sherrod, a longtime civil rights activist and author of The Courage to Hope, will receive this year’s Cushing N. Dolbeare Lifetime Service Award, the Coalition’s highest honor recognizing individuals whose work has helped transform the landscape of housing opportunity and justice.
Her story reminds us that meaningful change is built through persistence, courage, and the power of people working together. Her example also reminds us that lasting change requires action.
At the culmination of the Forum, more than 300 advocates will participate in Capitol Hill Day, meeting with congressional offices to carry forward the drumbeat of housing solutions. Together, they will share the stories, research, and solutions that must guide federal housing policy and call for the bold action needed to ensure that everyone in this country has a place to call home.
At its core, the Housing Policy Forum is about community—the community we build when people committed to solving the nation’s housing challenges come together with clarity, courage, and hope. In a moment like this, when the path forward demands both courage and persistence, it is community that will carry our work forward.
With gratitude and resolve,
Renee M. Willis
President and CEO
National Low Income Housing Coalition