NLIHC presented four awards during its 2013 Housing Policy Conference.
Nikole Hannah-Jones of ProPublica received NLIHC’s 2013 Media Award for her award-winning series, “Living Apart: Fair Housing in America,” an in-depth look at housing segregation and efforts to end it. Christine Allamanno of Gulf Coast Legal Services and the NLIHC Board of Directors presented her with the award. Ms. Hannah-Jones expressed her gratitude for the recognition and spoke of the importance of investigative journalism in advocacy. She said, “the best way to get journalists to cover housing issues is to bring forth stories that will raise our sense of outrage and that come with a human face. The stories that set a fire under us have to be counterintuitive, or at least make us think differently about a subject – in this case, the shortage of affordable housing – that we already think we know.”
Find the entire investigation on ProPublica’s website at http://bit.ly/YEQfCM.
The Public and Affordable Housing Research Corporation (PAHRC) received a Special Award for Outstanding Partnership in Affordable Housing Research in 2012. PAHRC, incorporated as a nonprofit in 2011, is dedicated to providing independent research and relevant data to support the efforts of the public and affordable housing industry and its stakeholders.
In presenting the award, NLIHC President and CEO Sheila Crowley described the partnership between PAHRC and NLIHC effort to create the National Housing Preservation Database, a comprehensive catalog of nearly all federally subsidized multifamily housing properties in the country.
The agencies and departments that fund these programs have data on the individual programs that they manage, but there is no central location where all of these data are integrated. Ms. Crowley noted that creating this type of resource has been a goal of NLIHC for many years and that PAHRC’s expertise and dedication made it possible to achieve this goal. The database was launched on November 29, 2012 at www.preservationdatabase.org and already has over 770 registered users.
Ms. Crowley said, “NLIHC thanks PAHRC for their dedication to this project and for their continuing efforts to improve this invaluable resource. We truly could not have done this without them.” The award was accepted by Michelle Gramley Kauk, the Director of PAHRC.
NLIHC’s 2013 State and Local Organizing and Resident Organizing Awards were presented on by NLIHC board member Daisy Franklin, and Michael Carbone, Executive Director of the North Dakota Coalition for Homeless People, an NLIHC state coalition partner, and last year’s State and Local Organizing Award recipient. Both served on this year’s selection committee.
The State and Local Organizing Award recognizes an NLIHC member organization for outstanding achievement for organizing activity at the state or local level that furthers the mission of NLIHC. The Resident Organizing Award recognizes the outstanding organizing, empowerment and advocacy achievements of an NLIHC member resident-led association that furthers the mission of NLIHC.
The Maryland Affordable Housing Coalition (MAHC) was awarded the fourth annual State and Local Organizing Award for its campaign to secure an increase of $17.5 million in state funding for rental housing through Maryland’s new Rental Housing Works Initiative. The initiative had great success in its first year and Governor O’Malley recently included $25 million for the program in his FY14 budget, a $10 million increase over last year’s budget request.
Accepting the award on MAHC’s behalf were Trudy McFall, MAHC President; Kimberly Fry, legislative consultant for MAHC; and Jonette Hahn, MAHC Treasurer.
The Central Advisory Council (CAC) of Chicago was awarded NLIHC’s second Resident Organizing award for its longstanding commitment to affordable and available housing for Public Housing residents and Housing Choice Voucher recipients in Chicago. For more than a decade, the Central Advisory Council has played an active role ensuring that tenants’ rights are fully protected, and has provided comments on Chicago Housing Authority’s Annual Plan, Moving to Work Agreement, and Housing Choice Voucher Plan.
Last year, the CAC submitted its 2012 Strategies and Recommendations Report to the Chicago Housing Authority. The housing authority used many of the CAC’s recommendations as it developed its new Plan Forward. The CAC also developed a 2013 tenant Resource Calendar and companion piece, the Tenant Resource Guide, and distributed them to more than 25,000 public housing and voucher households in Chicago.
Myra King, Chair of the CAC, and CAC Project Manager Willie Lewis accepted the award on the organization’s behalf.