Inaugural Advocacy Summit Breakout Session Highlights

Inaugural Advocacy Summit Breakout Session Highlights

On November 7th, 2023, the Coalition for Home Repair held its inaugural Advocacy Summit in partnership with several regional and national organizations to discuss the importance of housing preservation. This panel discussion was then followed by breakout sessions where we solicited feedback from those who attended on the challenges their organizations face as it relates to housing preservation efforts for households with low to moderate incomes. 

After compiling the main discussion points of the breakout sessions, the recurring themes surrounding barriers and challenges to affordable housing preservation included:

• Lack of funding/resources (18 mentions):  traditionally under-resourced funding programs for home repair, lack of available funding that is sustainable to use, gap of funding between $10,000 grants and $500,000, etc. 

• Lack of staff/volunteer capacity (12 mentions): diminishing number of volunteers, lack of staff capacity, issues with volunteer engagement and recruitment, etc.

• Bureaucratic hurdles (7 mentions): application processing times, barriers with qualification criteria, too many bureaucratic hoops, etc. 

“[If resources were not a constraint, we would be] building and repairing at the actual scale of need, not just a few families per community, annually.” - Survey Respondent

In response to the challenges discussed, many also started having forward-looking conversations with suggestions such as: having listening sessions on the ground and co-developing talking points, enhancing outreach efforts to vulnerable populations, and creating a policy matrix and a housing flowchart. 

Thank you to everyone who has made insightful contributions thus far! If you were unable to attend this summit, we welcome any additional feedback you have for us to consider in our undertaking of developing a stronger advocacy platform that takes on a multi-sector, collaborative approach. Along with providing your thoughts, you may also opt-in to receive Advocacy-related updates. By opting-in, you will be the first to be notified of any Advocacy blog posts, Advocacy web updates (in the works!). You will also be able to join the Advocacy Taskforce and be informed of upcoming Advocacy Summits.

We hope you opt-in to Coalition emails so you can stay in the loop as we continue this exciting path forward!