Listening to the Leaders: A Report on the Fannie Mae Foundation Regional Issues Forums

The Fannie Mae Foundation and the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University convened a series of Issues Forums during the fall and winter of 2000-2001 to provide direction to the Foundation’s new Knowledge Access strategy. These forums were attended by more than 100 representatives from community-based development organizations, local government, intermediary organizations, foundations, institutions of higher learning, private developers, and others who create and implement housing policy and programs. These participants form an emerging network of committed leaders that will assist the Foundation in building community capacity and creating tools to address issues such as the sustainability of homeownership for low-income families, the impact of subprime and predatory lending, a declining supply of affordable rental housing, gentrification, current development and growth patterns/restrictions, the need to build nonprofit capacity, declining resources for housing and community development, useful coalition-building, and the necessity to develop tools that substantiate need as well as success in community development. The Foundation intends to use the information assembled from these forums to create and disseminate tools and strategies for practitioners and policymakers…