NLIHC’s Policy, Field Organizing, and Campaigns Team serves as the catalyst to advance housing policy on the federal level! Together, the team works with NLIHC members and partners to achieve the policy solutions necessary to prevent housing instability and homelessness, redress long-standing racial and social inequities, and promote housing justice. Get to know the team!
The Policy, Field Organizing, and Campaigns team crafts policy solutions, educates lawmakers, and builds authentic relationships with advocates and tenants nationwide to grow and mobilize the housing justice movement to take action. Team members recruit leading cross-sector partners to advocate for housing solutions, close the voter turnout gap, lift up solutions to homelessness, ensure a complete and equitable recovery from disasters, and more!
NLIHC’s Policy staff work with congressional champions, federal policymakers, advocates, and tenant leaders to design and advance solutions to America’s housing crisis, building the political will necessary for bold action.
The team knows the ins-and-outs of Capitol Hill, helps advocates navigate the shifting political landscape, and makes the case for housing solutions that center people with the greatest needs.
NLIHC’s Field Team is central to our organization’s success. By collaborating closely with NLIHC members and partners, housing advocacy organizers and coordinators support advocates working for housing justice in every corner of the country, and they know how these advocates can be most effective when fighting for change in Washington. Want to become an NLIHC member or get involved in our work? Start with the Field Team member for your state who can make sure you have the information and tools to take action!
Through the unprecedented Opportunity Starts at Home (OSAH) campaign, leading national and state organizations from many sectors – including the health, education, civil rights, food security, environmental protection, faith, municipal governance, child welfare, criminal justice, anti-poverty sectors – come together to advance federal policies that correct long-standing racial inequities and economic injustices by ensuring quality housing for people with low incomes. Partners engage in activities to expand the coalition, educate policymakers, and change the narrative around affordable housing.
Affordable homes are built with ballots every bit as much as bricks and drywall. Our Homes, Our Votes (OHOV) is a nonpartisan campaign to register, educate, and mobilize low-income renters and affordable housing advocates to vote. Our Homes, Our Votes empowers nonprofits, tenant leaders, housing providers, and other advocates to close the voter turnout gap between low-income renters and high-income homeowners, elevate housing as an election issue, and make clear that renters are an important political constituency.
The Disaster Housing Recovery, Resilience, and Research (DHR) initiative promotes pro-active approaches to addressing climate change-influenced disasters and climate resiliency to ensure that households with the lowest-incomes are able not only to recover fully and equitably after disasters but that they are protected from the impacts of disasters even before they occur. We leverage disaster research and advocacy to tackle these dual challenges in the pursuit of housing justice. The NLIHC-led Disaster Housing Recovery Coalition (DHRC) provides advocates and organizers in disaster-impacted low-income communities with best practices, advocacy support, and technical assistance so that they can fully recover and be more resilient to future disaster impacts.
Led by NLIHC, the National Alliance to End Homelessness, and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Advancing Homelessness Solutions initiative gives advocates the resources and tools they need to promote Housing First and ensure everyone has a safe, stable, affordable home. The initiative breaks down silos between homelessness and housing advocates, shares best practices, and builds political support for proven solutions to homelessness.