Shelterforce

Fueling the Future of Community Ownership
2025-11-12 15:00 - 16:30 (America/New_York)
This Shelterforce webinar caps off our most recent Under the Lens series “Innovations in Community Ownership.” We’ll hear from folks who are implementing exciting new strategies for funding community ownership—both public and private—and for setting up the kinds of support ecosystems that will let these models thrive long term.

Learn about the power of Los Angeles’s Measure ULA, New York City’s take on a shared services model, cooperation between conservationists and affordable housing development in New York’s Hudson Valley, and more.

This free webinar will be moderated by Shelterforce’s Miriam Axel-Lute.

Speakers:

Deyanira Del Rio of NYC Community Land Initiative.

Roberto Garcia Ceballos of the Los Angeles Housing Training Hub.

Chris Brown of Hudson Valley Alliance for Housing and Conservation.

Fit to Live In: From Ordinances to Outcomes in Habitability
2026-02-11 15:00 - 16:30
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This event has concluded. Watch “Fit to Live In From Ordinances to Outcomes in Habitability.”

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Across the country, communities are grappling with how to ensure housing is truly fit to live in—not just on paper, but in practice. While habitability laws exist in many cities, enforcement is often inconsistent, under-resourced, and shaped by local politics.

On Tuesday, Feb. 11, join us for Fit to Live In: From Ordinances to Outcomes in Habitability, a free virtual conversation with organizers and policy leaders working on the ground to improve housing conditions—and navigate the real-world challenges of enforcement.

As part of Shelterforce’s Under the Lens series, Fit to Live In: Fixing Our Housing Stock, we’re taking a closer look at what it takes to turn housing standards into real protections for tenants.

Together, we’ll explore:

—Lessons from New Orleans, Las Vegas, and other local efforts

—Why habitability enforcement breaks down, even when laws exist

—How cities are working to improve housing conditions

The event, which will be moderated by Shelterforce’s Lara Heard, will include:

—Matt Kreis, general counsel at the Center for Community Progress.

—Y. Frank Southall, organizing and community engagement manager at Jane Place Neighborhood Sustainability Initiative.

—Ben Iness, coalition coordinator with the Nevada Housing Justice Alliance.

Making Homeownership Affordable: Bringing Fannie and Freddie Back to Mission
2026-04-16 13:00 - 14:00
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This live event has concluded. Watch the replay for “Making Homeownership Affordable: Bringing Fannie and Freddie Back to Mission.”

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Today in the United States, the average house costs five times what the average American earns in income and accessibility to homeownership is at 40-year lows.

How can policy change this picture? One underutilized resource are the government-sponsored enterprises that buy more than half of all home loans—namely, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These public-backed firms already have a public mission of promoting home affordability. It is because of Fannie and Freddie that the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage is a central feature of the U.S. housing market.

But, as a video released in March 2026 by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy shows, the financing that Fannie and Freddie provide today is skewed toward supporting predominately upper middle class suburban neighborhoods. Both low-to-moderate income urban neighborhoods and rural communities often remain underserved.

Can Fannie and Freddie be retooled today to better align with their missions?

In this webinar, co-sponsored by Shelterforce and the Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, we examine some of the steps Fannie and Freddie can take to make homeownership more affordable.

Moderating this webinar is Shelterforce‘s Strategic Initiatives Editor Steve Dubb. Our three expert panelists are:

George McCarthy is president and CEO of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, which he has led since 2014. He is a longtime advocate for housing affordability both from positions that he has held in academia and philanthropy.

Sara Morgan is president of Fahe, an Appalachia-based community development finance institution (CDFI). She has worked for over 25 years in Appalachia, helping to finance housing, infrastructure, community facilities, and community development.

Tony Pickett is CEO of Grounded Solutions Network, which supports community land trusts, deed-restricted housing, and inclusionary housing. He has over 25 years of real estate experience, with a focus on developing mixed-use, mixed-income communities.

This webinar will explore:

Why is housing becoming less affordable? What are the key drivers?

What does the history of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac teach us about the relationship between federal home financing and housing affordability?

How do the operations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac support housing affordability today? Where do they fall short?

What lessons, good and bad, did Fannie and Freddie learn from the 2008 housing crisis and the Great Recession that followed?

What is the role of risk assessment in housing financing? What do Fannie and Freddie get right and wrong about their assessments of risk?

What steps can Freddie and Fannie take to partner more effectively with community development financial institutions (CDFIs) on housing lending?

How can Fannie and Freddie boost their support for rural affordable housing?

How can Fannie and Freddie better support community land trusts, limited equity housing cooperatives, and other forms of community-owned housing?

How can housing activists help hold the feet of Fannie and Freddie to the fire? What can policymakers do?

What are the greatest areas of opportunity to expand housing access?

Whether you’re a housing justice advocate, nonprofit leader, philanthropist, policymaker, or community activist, this webinar will provide you with real-life examples and lessons learned that can inform work in your own community.

What Does a Solidarity Economy Approach to Housing Look Like?
2026-05-14 15:00 - 16:30
This event has concluded. Watch the replay here.

Today, affordable quality housing is often out of reach. Standard remedies tend to focus on tweaking regulations, zoning, and public subsidies. But what if systemic shifts are needed? That is a central claim of solidarity economy advocates.

In this free, 90-minute Shelterforce webinar, panelists will outline what a solidarity economy is, what its principles are, and ways these principles might be applied more broadly.

The event will be moderated by Steve Dubb, Shelterforce’s strategic initiatives editor. Our panelists are:

Miki’ala Catalfano, cofounder and executive director of Native Roots Network.

Kali Akuno, cofounder and codirector of Cooperation Jackson.

Alison Chopel, professor at the Graduate School of Planning, University of Puerto Rico.

Laboratories of Democracy: Emerging State and Local Policy Visions
2026-06-17 15:00 - 16:30
There is power at the local level. Join us as we build off our latest Under the Lens series to hear about a range of exciting policies and campaigns at the state and city level all over the country to advance affordable housing and community reinvestment—from legal strategies to tax policy, public banking, and strategic coalitions around regulatory reform.

The speakers for this free 90-minute webinar will be:

Sara Myklebust, Bargaining for the Common Good Research Director, Action Center on Race and the Economy

Trinity Tran, Executive Director, California Public Banking Alliance

Hanneke Van Deursen, Director of Housing Finance, City of Chattanooga

Lauren Strickland, Executive Director, Abundant Housing Michigan

Moderated by Miriam Axel-Lute, editor-in-chief of Shelterforce.

What Does a Good Housing “Impact Investment” Look Like?
2026-07-15 15:00 - 16:30
Impact investing has become a popular term in housing and community development—but what does it actually mean? More importantly, what does effective impact investing look like when the goal is creating and preserving affordable housing?

Join Shelterforce on July 15 for a conversation with community lenders, affordable housing practitioners, and investigative reporter Shelby King as we explore where impact investing succeeds, where it falls short, and what needs to change.

Panelists include:

Betty Francisco is CEO of Boston Impact Initiative, a place-based impact fund and CDFI that invests in businesses and real estate to build community ownership and worker power.

Kate Khatib, based in Baltimore, is co-executive director of Seed Commons, a cooperatively governed national CDFI loan fund that shifts economic power to workers and communities through community-based, non-extractive financial infrastructure.

Shelby King, based in Colorado near Denver, is Shelterforce’s investigative reporter, and has been writing about housing and community development since 2014.

Meridith Levy is executive director of Boston Neighborhood Community Land Trust, with a mission of stewarding permanently affordable, community-controlled housing.

David Lidz is asset manager at Rising Housing, which uses a worker co-op (called Waterbottle Co-op) to rehabilitate affordable housing in West Baltimore.

Moderating this webinar is Shelterforce strategic initiatives editor Steve Dubb. Steve has been a student, practitioner, writer, and editor in the field of housing and community economic development for over 25 years.
