North Carolina Housing Coalition

Regardless of the outcome of this year's election, in 2025 there is going to be a massive rewrite of US tax policy. Congress is already working in teams to draft recommendations for new tax policies, and there's good news for the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit: the representatives assigned to housing and community development tax policy are already co-sponsors of the Affordable Housing Credit Improvement Act. These Congressmen and -women are now asking for your help in persuading leadership to strengthen and expand LIHTC. They are asking for original, individual letters of support, and we want to ensure that Congressional leadership knows how much LIHTC impacts North Carolina. Learn more in this week's Housing Matters about how you can submit a letter and advocate for more affordable housing in NC.

Our NC Affordable Housing Conference is coming up on September 5-6, and early bird registration is now open! Every year at the conference breakfast, we give out our NC Housing Coalition Awards, honoring individuals, communities, and organizations who have done an incredible job as housing advocates. Award categories range from digital mobilization, grassroots mobilization, advocacy events, and more.

If you have done creative, impactful housing advocacy in the last year, using your voice to advance housing opportunities in your community and around the state, let us know. We would love to honor your work and lift it up as an example for others to follow.

For more information and to submit a nomination, go to: https://forms.gle/vr9SMUTmVtSsUobe6

There are a lot of questions about what the decision on Grants Pass v. Johnson means for unhoused folks here in North Carolina and across the country. Many of us are feeling discouraged, disheartened, and frustrated, but our mission hasn't changed. The work of making sure that there is sufficient affordable housing and appropriate supportive services is still out there to do.

Part of our jobs now is to make sure that the communities we live in understand that the types of policies that this Supreme Court decision allows - which only address the visibility of homelessness and ultimately makes housing more difficult to obtain for folks experiencing homelessness - are a waste of time and energy. We must continue to communicate with our federal, state, and local officials is that we don't want to waste our time, energy, and resources on these policies, because the solution to homelessness is housing and wraparound services for those that need it.

Our job hasn't changed in the aftermath of this Supreme Court case. We are still building broad coalitions that understand how transformative housing investments can be in a community to make it more equitable, inclusive, and affordable so that we can all thrive together across the income spectrum.

Get in touch with us to see how you can join us in this movement to connect with elected officials and help them understand the critical need for housing investments that transform our communities.

The 2024 Out of Reach Report has been released by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. This annual report does a great job of highlighting the gap between people’s wages and the cost of living in their area. The “Housing Wage” is an annual estimate of what a full-time worker would have to earn per hour in order to afford a modest apartment at Fair Market Rent without spending more than 30% of their income on housing. For North Carolina, the housing wage is $25.21/hr, increased from $21.54/hr in 2023. Check out this week’s Housing Matters for our deeper dive into the North Carolina data.

We're so happy to have seen 450 of you at last week's Bringing It Home conference! Thank you again to our partners: the ESG Office at NCDHHS, the NC Coalition to End Homelessness, and to our keynote speaker Marisol Bello, Executive Director of Housing Narrative Lab. We'll be sharing a recording of Marisol's keynote about the stories that we tell around housing and how to tell the kind of stories that break through some of the political challenges that we see on a day to day basis.

At the conference, we announced that we are going to be moving in with the NC Coalition to End Homelessness starting in October. We're excited to continue to work together and grow the kind of work that we do together for folks in need of safe, decent, affordable housing across the continuum of need. Our updated address is 3608 University Drive, Suite 201, Durham, NC 27707.

Our Policy, Advocacy, and Organizing Team was at the General Assembly this week talking to legislators about the state's housing need, budget appropriations, state coordination of housing resources, disaster recovery, and more. You too can use your voice to make North Carolina a more affordable place to live! Check out this week's Action Alert for talking points and housing asks that you can use to contact your representatives.

Executive Director Samuel Gunter and Director of Housing Policy Stephanie Watkins-Cruz were at the General Assembly yesterday talking to legislators about housing, housing resources, and coordination at the state level. The Coalition’s whole policy team will be at the General Assembly on May 22nd to connect with representatives in the building, share our policy agenda, and discuss bills that we are tracking. In collaboration with us, we’ll have advocacy actions for you to do next week following our visit. We need your voice to make sure our housing advocacy lands with legislators, so help us make an impact for housing at the General Assembly this short legislative session!