Here is our Summer newsletter!

Read more about Fair Housing, Healthy Homes, and Rapid Re-housing.

Welcome to the Greensboro Housing Coalition blog.  GHC is a non-profit housing advocacy organization in Greensboro, North Carolina.  This blog will provide information on our projects and housing issues in Greensboro and Guilford County.  We’ll also post information about fair housing, healthy homes, homeownership and foreclosure prevention, homelessness, and sustainabiltiy and energy.

Join us for weekly updates and a weekly question, puzzle, or bit of trivia.

GHC’s 2008 bus tour is now on YouTube.  Click here to view. HouseCalls describes the connections between health, energy, and housing and outlines the steps in GHC’s Healthy Homes Initiative. To diagnose health risks in a home, click on VisualAssessment and to see the impact community-wide, click on HealthRiskMap.

The 2009 Housing Summit was a great success. Over 300 people gathered at Revolution Mills Studios to discover ideas and inspiration for transforming the housing crisis into opportunities for fair, safe, sustainable housing for all people in our community.

Speakers: Dennis Quaintance, our hometown role model for showing that sustainable practices and profitable business go hand in hand, started the morning off by emphasizing that claims of “green” companies need confirmation by third parties to ensure that they are not simply cashing in on a popular idea. (See Quaintance-Weaver for more information.) Tom Low, architect and principle director of town planning for Duany Plater-Zyberk in Charlotte, discussed Light Impact. Light Impact refers to a green approach to neighborhood design that creates compact, walkable, mixed use neighborhoods that incorporate state of the art management of storm water and drainage systems (a major consideration in city planning). (See more at this link.) Jehan Benton spoke about the Jordan Institute Study, which concluded that providing the chronically homeless with subsidized housing and a strong support team helps them maintain housing, and actually saves community tax dollars. Elon Law students presented their report on racial disparities in Greensboro housing opportunities. They looked at strategies other cities have implemented to address these inequities, and made recommendations about which ones might work in our city. (Click here for the presentation.)

Martin Eakes, founder of the Self-Help Credit Union and a tireless advocate for fair lending practices, provided an insightful overview of how the housing crisis developed, and summarized the problems with subprime loans. He preached (his word!) both government and individual responsiblity, and while he made it clear that we are in deep trouble, his ultimate message was one of optimism and opportunity. (Click here for his presentation.)In his words this period of, “shared suffering and self-sacrifice can heal us.” (For more information see Self-Help Credit Union and the Center for Responsible Lending.)

Awards: So many people and organizations are doing wonderful work to help stabilize housing for those struggling with foreclosure, unfair housing practices, and homelessness. GHC presented four awards in recognition of outstanding efforts. The awards and winners were: for Organizing Stakeholders, Operation Greensboro CARES ; for Getting the Message Out, Guilford Department of Public Health; for Expanding Resources, WE! Winter Emergency Communities; and for Changing Legal Systems, Marlene Sanford, TREBIC.

Discussions: One of the greatest strengths of the Housing Summit is the diversity of the participant. Table discussions about ways to improve housing generated a wide range of bold ideas and innovative collaborations. We are compiling all the suggestions to give to the city for its 5-year Consolidated Plan and to use as GHC develops our own Action Plan.

Thanks to everyone who participated.

And thanks to Revolution Mills, Catering, Student interns, and registration volunteers.

Congratulations to: Greensboro CARES, Marlene Stanford, Liz Seymore, and Paula Cox.

Congress is considering legislation to allow bankruptcy courts to modify loans as a last resort. The House approved H.R. 1106 “Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009″ and it now goes to the Senate for debate and vote on S. 61.  Contact your Senators, thank your Congressional representatives.