We focus our policy work in areas where member organizations have strong expertise and a compelling business and mission interest. By actively engaging the nation's most successful nonprofits directly in policy development, our practitioner-based approach creates a laboratory of innovation that can inform federal policy making and implementation. Together, we have achieved major victories in key areas such as housing preservation, neighborhood stabilization, and new approaches to housing and community development finance that significantly impact the communities and the people we serve.
Our nation is at an important inflection point in housing and community development policy that will shape the opportunities and challenges our sector faces for years to come. We believe it is essential to advance policy changes that support a robust and performance-based community development and finance system. This new paradigm must foster the sustainability of highly skilled and specialized nonprofit intermediaries, lenders, developers, and long-term affordable housing owners as well as the ongoing preservation and improvement of the housing communities they own and manage. Recognizing the importance of a regional or metropolitan framework for promoting community and economic development, the nation should advance policies that help these key institutions break down silos by advancing affordable housing that is linked to the delivery of human services, job opportunities, smart growth, transit-oriented development, and environmental sustainability.
The Network has a policy office in Washington DC that works with policymakers and other national organizations to advance the agenda.
For further information, contact Paul Weech or Kristin Siglin.