Every community-based affordable housing organization eventually faces the same question: How do you help more families when the need keeps growing but your capacity doesn’t?

Walk through the hallways of the Robert “Bobby” Calvillo HomeOwnership Center at Affordable Homes of South Texas, and you will see portraits – not just of leaders and board members who have worked there, but of families and individuals, holding keys to a new home. 

NeighborWorks® America convened a Housing Supply Solutions Lab last week to provide affordable housing and community development practitioners in the network a chance to dig deeply into innovative building techniques, zoning and land-use reform, and attainability and affordability. The lab format allowed the participants a chance not just to listen, but to speak, learn and solve challenges together. They left the eight-hour session with new connections and new ideas. 

This past week has much of the nation focusing on weather conditions and forecasts. At NeighborWorks® America, Chief Operating Officer Lee Anne Adams is also looking at the conditions for the housing market, as NeighborWorks and the network focus on scaling solutions for the year ahead.

Elizabeth Velasco and her family started the new year in a new home of their own. The dream was made possible with the help of NeighborWorks Home Partners through a new loan product that offers mortgage-like financing for manufactured homes.

Velasco had rented a home with her family in Bloomington, Minnesota, for years. After a recent divorce, she started looking at homeownership options, including a sustainable manufactured home.

Any time of year that staff at Housing Partnership of New Jersey can get a client into a new home is the best time of year, says Stephanie Otaegui, program director for the housing counseling department. And during a season when people talk about hope is a good time to talk about their work.

In Tulare County in the Central San Joaquin valley, above the almond blooms and rows of orange trees, sits the Tule River Reservation. 

This week, NeighborWorks America welcomed more than 1,200 community development practitioners from across the country to the NeighborWorks Training Institute, the premier professional learning event for community development and affordable housing professionals in the country. The event was held in Philadelphia, known as the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection.