Housing Touches Everything Progressives Care About. So Why Aren’t We Talking About It?
Session Type(s): Panel
Starts: Friday, Aug. 3 10:00 AM (Eastern)
Ends: Friday, Aug. 3 11:15 AM (Eastern)
A growing body of evidence demonstrates that safe, affordable housing contributes to increased educational attainment, improved health care outcomes, stronger economic mobility and productivity, less homelessness, and greater equity and civil rights. Yet despite this demonstrable impact, only a handful of progressive advocates have embraced housing as a key political and organizing imperative. That needs to change. And it’s starting to change. This session will make the case for why all progressives should be involved in housing issues, introduce federal and state opportunities to get involved, and provide an opportunity for questions that dive deep into the intersection between housing and why it should matter to all progressives.
Moderator
Chantelle Wilkinson
Chantelle Wilkinson works on the Opportunity Starts at Home Campaign as their National Campaign Coordinator. The Opportunity Starts at Home campaign was launched in March 2018. It is a national multi-sector campaign to generate widespread support for federal policy that protect and expand affordable housing. She previously worked in New York where she worked as a Budget Analyst for the state legislature. There she assisted with enacting housing and transportation policies. In 2016, she worked on the Breathing Lights Campaign with the Center for Women in Government and Civil Society. The campaign highlighted the issues of dilapidated vacant housing in the capital region of New York State and spurred collaboration from many sectors including the arts, community organizations, neighborhood ambassadors, project administrators, and government officials. Chantelle received her BA in Political Science with minors in Latin American/ Caribbean Studies and Spanish, and her MA in Public Administration, both from the Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the University at Albany.
Panelists
Allison Bovell-Ammon
Allison Bovell-Ammon is Deputy Director of Policy Strategy for Children’s HealthWatch. In her role, Allison leads the federal policy work of Children’s HealthWatch. She does this by working closely with other staff members and leaders to identify policy priorities, develop advocacy and communications strategies and foster partnerships for maximizing the impact of Children’s HealthWatch to inform policies that improve child and family health. Allison also works with members of the Advisory Board to advance the mission of the organization. And she co-leads with Dr. Sandel Housing Prescriptions as Health Care, an innovative project connecting high-health care utilizing families experiencing housing instability with services tailored to improve housing stability and health.
Previously, Allison was the Boston-Site Coordinator for Children’s HealthWatch where she supervised data collection in the Boston Medical Center Emergency Department before transitioning to the Headquarters team as the Research, Policy and Communications Coordinator. In that role, she coordinated the Healthy Families EITC Coalition and was the primary liaison for Witnesses to Hunger.
Mike Koprowski
Mike comes to the Opportunity Starts at Home campaign from Dallas, TX where he most recently worked as the executive director of Opportunity Dallas, an organization focused on building local coalitions to promote greater economic mobility by tackling concentrated poverty and segregation through housing policy. Prior to Opportunity Dallas, Mike was the chief of transformation and innovation in the Dallas school system, where he led the development and execution of the district’s Public School Choice initiative focused on socioeconomic school integration. Prior to his career in education and housing, he served in the U.S. Air Force, where he was the chief of intelligence for an F-15E fighter squadron while it was deployed to Afghanistan. He holds degrees from the University of Notre Dame, Duke University, and Harvard University
Lisa Bland Malone
Lisa Bland Malone is the Economic Programs Manager for the NAACP’s Economic Programs Department. In this capacity, she oversees all programs to ensure that they are aligned with the NAACP’s mission and goals.
She has spent the majority of her career working in the civil rights arena. Ms. Bland Malone has twenty five years of experience in public policy, federal and grassroots advocacy, programs, research and publications.
She attended Tufts University and completed coursework at the University of California Berkeley.
Andrenecia Morris
Andreanecia M. Morris serves as the Executive Director for HousingNOLA, is a 10-year public private partnership working to solve New Orleans’ affordable housing crisis. The 10-year Strategy and Implementation Plan, released in 2015, indicates the need for 33,600 additional housing opportunities by 2025.
Morris has spent her career working to create affordable housing in Metro New Orleans. Post Katrina, she has either directly implemented or advocated for programs that created 500 first time homebuyers, disbursed $104.5 million soft second subsidy for Metro New Orleans and provided supportive services for approximately 5,000 households—homeowners who were struggling to rebuild and renters who required wrap around services. Morris was lead organizer for the Greater New Orleans Housing Alliance (GNOHA) when it started in 2007 as a loose coalition of non-profits and community development corporations and, since its incorporation in 2012, Morris has served as GNOHA’s Chair. She also is vice-chair of the Housing Authority of New Orleans, co-chair for the Louisiana Housing Trust Fund Initiative and is a board member of the Friends of Lafitte Greenway and the Mid-City Neighborhood Organization.
In 2016, BIZ New Orleans Magazine named Morris one of the Top 10 Influencers in Real Estate and in 2017 Morris was selected to participate in an international workshop on forced eviction and urban displacement in South Africa. The Baton Rouge Chapter of The Links, Incorporated also named Morris a National Trend Louisiana Role Model in December 2017. Gambit Weekly named Morris New Orleanian of the Year for leading HousingNOLA’s efforts to change housing policy in 2017.
Other sessions: The Power Coalition: How Integrated Voter Engagement is Empowering Citizens in Louisiana
Agatha So
Agatha So is a policy analyst with the Economic Policy Project at UnidosUS. In her role, Agatha works to expand UnidosUS’s visibility, expertise and impact in housing policy, with an emphasis on fair housing, access to credit, language access, and issues related to the mortgage market and housing finance.
Previously, Agatha was an Open Society Institute–Baltimore Program Fellow, working on a project to increase access to affordable homeownership for Latino and immigrant families. With her previous employer in Baltimore, the Southeast Community Development Corporation, she coordinated the organization’s community outreach activities and neighborhood-based projects, and supported the housing counseling department.
Agatha is a member of Board of Directors of the Latinos Providers Network, Inc. in Baltimore, Maryland. She received a Master’s degree in Social Work from the University of Maryland School of Social Work and a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Simmons College, in Boston, Massachusetts. Agatha grew up in Syracuse, New York and currently lives in Baltimore.