Opportunity Starts at Home Hosts Immigration Advocacy Panel at 2026 NLIHC Housing Policy Forum 

By Ella Izenour, NLIHC Opportunity Starts at Home Intern and Julie Walker, NLIHC Project Manager, Opportunity Starts at Home 

The Opportunity Starts at Home (OSAH) Campaign will host a panel with OSAH national and state partners, “Immigrant Advocates are Housing Advocates: The State of Immigration Rights and Housing Justice,” at the 2026 NLIHC Housing Policy Forum in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, March 11. The session, which is closed to press, will take place from 3:45 to 5 pm ET at the Washington Hilton Hotel.   

Across the nation, communities, advocates, and service providers are struggling to meet the housing needs of immigrant families amidst an ongoing and worsening affordable housing crisis. Immigrant communities face unique challenges in obtaining affordable housing, as some newcomers struggle to secure and maintain the permits needed to legally work and many are ineligible for most federal benefits and too often met with hostility and discrimination in their new community.   

More recently, targeted attacks by ICE have created an increasingly hostile environment where many immigrants fear for their safety, making it difficult for people to stably work, pay their rent, and fully exercise their rights as tenants. While immigrants are often used as scapegoats by politicians, immigrants are in fact critical to the creation of affordable housing in communities across the United States. The panel will explore the ways that immigration impacts the state of affordable housing, best practices for prioritizing safety in political advocacy, messaging to counter anti-immigrant sentiments, and strategies for advocates to further safe, accessible, and affordable housing for all.