HAND Strategic Alignment

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Dear members, friends, and partners:

It is with great excitement, hope, and pride that we share HAND’s new vision and strategic direction for the future.

As we all know, our region is facing a serious and growing affordable housing crisis. Over the past 40 years, median household incomes in the Greater Washington region have increased by only 46%, while rents rose by 69% and home values increased by 144%.*

During the past six months, the HAND board and staff have undertaken a Strategic Alignment process to determine how we can leverage the power of our membership to make real and meaningful progress on this challenge.

We interviewed and surveyed hundreds of our members and we heard two resounding messages from you–

HAND’s high-quality trainings and cross-sector, cross-border convenings are what make our membership most valuable to you and the work that you do. Under the direction of our new plan, we will strengthen and leverage these unique offerings and continue to grow a diverse membership from the public, private, and mission sectors that work collectively to preserve and develop affordable housing.

And, you urged HAND to do more to leverage the power of our members to influence affordable housing programs and policy in our region. HAND accepts this challenge and is committed to taking bold steps – side-by-side with you – to build public and private will and to catalyze action that addresses our region’s affordable housing crisis in a meaningful way.

Creating this new plan is our first step in achieving our bold vision for the future, and we recognize that we have more work to do. Over the coming months, we look forward to sharing more information about how we will execute this strategy.

We can’t do this work alone, and we hope that you will join us in taking these steps forward to build and sustain communities where all can live and thrive.

Sincerely,

* Source: National Low Income Housing Coalition