Community Organizations and activist groups working on affordable housing:
Association of Neighborhood Housing Development: a membership organization of New York City nonprofit neighborhood housing groups engaged in community development and organizing throughout the city.
Community Voices Heard: an organization of low-income people, predominantly women with experience on welfare, working to build power in New York City and State to improve the lives of their families and communities; focuses on public education, grassroots organizing, leadership development, training low-income people about their rights, political education, civic engagement and direct-action issue campaigns.
GOLES (Good Old Lower East Side) is a neighborhood housing and preservation organization that has served the Lower East Side of Manhattan since 1977; focuses on tenants’ rights, homelessness prevention, economic development, and community revitalization.
Mutual Housing Association of New York: an organization that focuses primarily on meeting the needs of low and moderate income residents of New York through intensive housing counseling programs and innovative affordable housing development initiatives
Organizing for Occupation is a group of New York City residents from the activist, academic, religious, homeless, arts, and progressive legal communities who have come together to respond to the housing crisis; intends to create housing through the occupation of vacant spaces and to protect people’s right to remain in existing housing through community based anti-eviction campaigns; offers training, education and encouragement to individuals and organizations.
Picture the Homeless: an NYC grassroots organization, founded and led by homeless people, organizing for social justice around issues like housing, police violence, and the shelter-industrial complex.
Reclaim the City: a squatter/activist movement that uses direct actions to reclaim space, resources, and rights to participation
Right to the City: a national alliance of membership-based organizations and allies organizing to build a united response to gentrification and displacement with emphasis on housing, education, health, racial justice and democracy; builds power through strengthening local organizing, cross-regional collaboration, developing a national platform, and supporting community reclamation in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
Solidarity Economy NYC: a project that is collectively directed by a committed group of activists, artists, and community members, fiscally sponsored by the Sustainable Markets Foundation and related to the GEO (Grassroots Economic Organizing) Collective, the New Economy Network, and the U.S. Solidarity Economy Network.
Voices Of Community Advocates & Leaders (VOCAL-NY, formerly known as the New York City AIDS Housing Network – NYCAHN): a statewide grassroots membership organization building power among low-income people affected by HIV/AIDS, the drug war and mass incarceration to create healthy and just communities; focuses on community organizing, leadership development, public education, participatory research and direct action.
Research organizations and centers:
Data Center: an independent research organization for social justice movements and grassroots organizing; rooted in progressive social movements and grounded in values of justice and self-determination for communities, using research as a tool to centralize community power and transform society.
Furman Center for Real Estate and Public Policy: joint research center of the NYU School of Law and the NYU Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service; produces the NYC State of the City’s housing report
Joint Center for Housing Studies: collaborative unit affiliated with Harvard University’s Graduate School of Design and the Harvard Kennedy School; produces the State of the Nation’s Housing report with MIT
Policy Link: a national research and action institute advancing economic and social equity; focuses a good deal on housing
Pratt Center for Community Development: works for a more just, equitable, and sustainable city for all New Yorkers, by empowering communities to plan for and realize their futures; leverages professional skills – especially planning, architecture and public policy – to support community-based organizations in their efforts to improve neighborhood quality of life, attack the causes of poverty and inequality, and advance sustainable development.
University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives: an interdisciplinary program that pursues research, educational, and outreach around cooperative issues across multiple business and social sectors; addresses co-op development, finance, structure, and governance.
Alliances, Networks, Campaigns, Intermediaries:
Cornerstone Partnership: a national peer network of public and private homeownership programs that encourages practitioners to use “stewardship principles” and is funded by NCB Capital Impact and the Ford Foundation
Housing Partnership: New York City’s primary intermediary for the development of affordable workforce housing
International Co-operative Alliance (ICA): an independent, non-governmental association which unites, represents and serves housing, food, worker, consumer, and other co-operatives worldwide
National Association of Housing Cooperatives: a nonprofit national federation of housing cooperatives, mutual housing associations, other resident-owned or controlled housing, professionals, organizations, and individuals interested in promoting the interests of cooperative housing communities.
National Community Land Trust Network: provides training, advocacy and resources for its member organizations which nurture and sustain healthy and economically diverse communities by providing permanently affordable access to land, homes, and related resources.
National Housing Institute: The National Housing Institute (NHI), founded in 1975, is an independent nonprofit organization dedicated to fostering decent, affordable housing and a vibrant community for everyone.
Technical, financial, legal, and other service organizations:
Center for Responsible Lending: a nonprofit, non-partisan organization that works to protect homeownership and family wealth by fighting predatory lending practices with a focus on consumer lending: primarily mortgages, payday loans, credit cards, bank overdrafts and auto loans.
Center for Urban Pedagogy: an organization that uses the power of design and art to improve civic engagement; collaborates with designers, educators, advocates, students, and communities to make educational tools that demystify complex policy and planning issues, and has a specific project on affordable housing.
Common Law: aims to make clients more powerful by demystifying the laws and policies that affect their lives and making it easy for clients to participate in organizing efforts; provides legal services to members of grassroots organizations mobilizing around the social justice goals of low-income communities of color throughout NYC.
F.B. Heron Foundation: a private foundation with a community empowerment mission that focuses on asset building
National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions: provides financial, technical, and human resources to credit unions that serve low-income communities
Urban Homesteading Assistance Board: NYC’s leading supporter of low-income housing cooperative development and preservation, focuses on technical assistance and training for co-op members and policy advocacy
Urban Justice Center: supports NYC’s most vulnerable residents through direct legal services, systemic advocacy, community education and political organizing; comprises 10 project areas, one of which is community development and another being homelessness outreach
Magazines and journals:
City Limits Magazine: independent journal reporting on NYC civic affairs
Progressive Planning: the magazine of planners network
Shelterforce: the journal of affordable housing and community building
