The 25^th Annual NAHT Conference to Save Our Homes was a complete success! 

The first day of the conference started off yesterday with registration, snacks and reuniting with old friends.

Sunday morning began with our Group Awards Ceremony. Organized tenant groups from around the country were recognized for their struggles to save affordable housing, improve conditions, fight for their right to organize and more!

“Everybody in here pays taxes to live in housing that is safe, sanitary and affordable housing, and we’re not gonna stop fighting til we get it!” -Latresa, tenant leader in Atlanta, GA fighting for improved living conditions in her home!

“Management tried to individuate us. I ain’t bowing down to nobody. I’m a resident and I deserve the best.” -Linda from Chicago

“We wanna make sure no one loses their home in the RAD process.”

After the awards ceremony, we were joined by two keynote speakers, Diane Yentel of the National Low Income Housing Coalition and Molly Parker, investigative reporter from the Southern Illinoisan who reports on subsidized housing condition issues.

The NAHT Conference boasts 20 tenant-led workshops on a variety of topics. Tenant leaders from around the country led discussions on Section 8 contracts, how to start and sustain a tenant group, REAC reform, how to win repairs, security with justice, fair housing, resident ownership, gentrification and displacement and many more. We got the opportunity to talk to each other, learn from each other and left feeling empowered to take what we learned back to our buildings.

Every year, NAHT meets with top HUD officials to press our agenda on tenant involvement in the REAC inspection process, management oversight process and funding for tenant organizing. Thank you to all HUD officials who attended! See our proposals here!

The final day of the conference is our legislative advocacy day! In the morning, tenants presented our legislative agenda, which a can be found here, which includes tenant empowerment and REAC reform provisions, to legislative aides from Congressional offices from both the House and the Senate.

Then we got visits from several special guest allies!

Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) believes in the power of rent withholding to enforce housing standards and so do we! Our bill would strengthen rent withholding for HUD tenants by withholding HUD’s portion of the rent when tenants go on rent strike in substandard buildings!

Congresswoman Nydia Velazquez (D-NY) longtime supporter of NAHT, spoke on the importance of full funding for public housing, project based Section 8 and other HUD programs. It should be the mission of our nation to take care of the most vulnerable!

Congresswoman Maxine Waters (D-CA) met with NAHT yet again and encouraged us to keep fighting, keep voting and keep speaking up for ourselves. Thank you for your long time support of tenant organizing, safe and healthy housing and tenant empowerment!

“We have to make sure we’re preserving the affordable housing that exists and we have to raise the living conditions. We have to empower tenants and residents to move us in the right direction.” Congressman Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) is on board! Thank you for meeting with us!

All in all, another great NAHT Conference is on the books. Thanks to all the attendees, volunteers and presenters for making our 25^th Annual Conference a success!

NAHT Statement on the Murder of George Floyd
and the Movement for Racial Justice and Change
6/5/20

As a multiracial organization of working class tenants in privately-owned, HUD assisted housing, NAHT’s elected all-tenant Board condemns the abhorrent murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Stephon Clark, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others before them. These murders at the hands of racist police and vigilantes reflect the sordid 400 year history of white supremacy and violent racial subjugation that has stained our country since its inception. The systemic trauma this violence inflicts daily on all people of color, and the destructive sickness of racism that causes it, affect us all. This must end, and it must end now.

Join the fight to SAVE OUR HOMES and build the US tenant movement!

Meet with top officials from HUD! Take our message to Congress on Lobby Day!

Attend tenant-led workshops on topics including:

• How to Build Strong Tenants Associations
• How to Fight Management Harassment
• How to Fight Urban Displacement & Gentrification
• Next Steps in US & Global Tenants Rights Movements
• How to Respond to Expiring HUD Contracts
• How to Replace Substandard Management
• HUD's Rental Assistance Demonstration: Threat, or Benefit?

Due to COVID-19 precautions, the 2021 conference will take place virtually on Zoom.

Register here!

We mourn the horrific loss of life that occurred this past week in Philadelphia and New York City during two of the deadliest apartment fires in recent history.

On January 5^th in the Fairmount section of Philadelphia, a 3-story row house owned and managed by the Philadelphia Housing Authority caught fire, tragically killing 12 of the building’s 26 residents. Among those killed were 4 adults 8 children. While investigators are looking into the cause of the fire, severe overcrowding and inadequate fire safety measures contributed to its lethality. One of the two units in the building housed 14 residents and none of the building’s six smoke detectors were functional at the time of the fire, according to firefighters.

Later that week, on January 9^th, a fire broke out in Twin Parks Northwest, a 19 story 120-unit federally subsidized apartment building in the Bronx. According to investigations, a malfunctioning space heater was the cause of the fire. While flames did not extend past the apartment of origin and  the immediate hallway, smoke spread throughout the building, killing at least 17 residents and leaving 15 in critical condition. New York City fire code requires all apartment doors to be self-closing, in order to prevent the spread of smoke in the event of a fire. Although full investigations are still underway, Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro stated that the door of the apartment where the fire began did not close on its own, indicating that a maintenance issue likely increased the number of fatalities.

These tragedies point to a larger failure in the nation’s housing system. In the world’s wealthiest country, poor and working-class communities continue to suffer from decades of disinvestment in government owned and subsidized housing, which forces families to accept overcrowded, poorly maintained and dangerous living conditions in order to keep a roof over their heads. We at NAHT will remember the lives lost this past week as we work to make safe and habitable housing a reality for all HUD tenants.

In 2018, WinnCompanies, a for-profit affordable housing property management company overseeing $14 billion worth of properties across the country, was Boston’s largest landlord and one of the City’s most frequent evictors. Today, thanks specifically to the work of retired Boston legal aid attorney Jay Rose and more generally to the entire anti-eviction movement, WinnCompanies has adopted a ground-breaking eviction prevention program centered on early intervention and housing stabilization, with the intention of cutting eviction rates by 50% over the next 5 years.

A recent Shelterforce article outlines the basic tenets of the WinnCompanies’ Housing Stability Program. Often times, a property management company first engages with tenants who are behind on rent when they send a Notice to Quit, which details the amount of rent owed and the date at which that amount must be paid in full to avoid being served a court summons. In contrast, the WinnCompanies’ Housing Stability Program implements a series of preventative measures to stop tenants from reaching the point at which they receive a Notice to Quit or a court summons in the first place.

These preventative measures involve proactively informing tenants of the WinnCompanies’ Housing Stability Program and tenant support options when they first move in and each time they renew their lease, connecting tenants who have unpaid rent with a Housing Stability Coordinator to support them in recertifying and applying for emergency rental assistance as soon as they begin to fall behind, and removing threatening or punitive bureaucratic language from rent collection letters. Importantly, if a tenant experiences a loss of income, the Housing Stability Program enables a property manager to apply on behalf of the tenant to recertify the amount of subsidy benefits they receive retroactively, to the date the income is lost, rather than to the date the loss is first reported. If WinnCompanies does serve a tenant a court summons, the Housing Stability Program instructs employees to set the court date as far out as possible, giving tenants the maximum 30 days to negotiate a manageable payment plan.

Already, the WinnCompanies’ Housing Stability Program has begun to shape the conversation around effective eviction prevention nationwide. Read more about the Housing Stability Program and its impacts here!