NCCEH News and Updates

One of Senator Dole’s D.C. staffers assigned to housing issues spent this week visiting programs in North Carolina. As part of Ryan’s time here, I set up appointments for him at Hospitality House of Boone, The Salvation Army of Hickory and the Catawba Continuum of Care, CASA, Housing for New Hope, and the Public Housing Authority of Durham. Amy Sawyer(the 10-year Plan to End Homelessness Coordinator for Asheville and Buncombe County) helped to set up appointments to visit with their Continuum of Care, Mountain Housing Opportunities, Homeward Bound, and the Asheville Public Housing Authority. These programs talked with Ryan about housing and service needs for our North Carolinian communities. As Senator Dole is a member of the Senate Banking and Housing committee, her support is key in securing needed changes in our federal programs! Participants of the tour highlighted the impact that McKinney-Vento Reauthorization and the creation of a National Housing Trust Fund would have here in North Carolina.

Many thanks to all of you who were generous enough to spend time to educate Ryan about your programs and the work you are doing to provide affordable housing and end homelessness!

If you’re interested in participating in similar tours with elected officials, please contact me to discuss possibilities!

The North Carolina Housing Coalition has published a guide to understanding affordable housing and outlines areas where you can make an impact as an advocate.

This Affordable Housing Primer is designed to provide important basic information and resources that individuals, particularly persons with disabilities, their advocates, families, and service providers, can use to increase understanding of the housing system and help meet their needs.

The guide includes 5 chapters:
*What is Affordable Housing?
*Rental Housing
*Fair Housing Basics
*Homeownership
*Affecting Housing Policy

The primer is available for download in .pdf and large print versions. To download the file, or to request a hard copy or braille version, click here.

Forty-four homeless advocates went to DC for the Annual National Alliance to End Homelessness Conference on July 9-10. Since 2004, NCCEH has organized capitol hill visits with North Carolina’s congressional offices. In 2004, NCCEH was the first homeless advocacy group to hold a reception for all of our delegation, hosted by Senator Burr (then in the house).

This year, Representative Price hosted a reception for NCCEH. Our reception focused on our experiences of homelessness. (We left the policy talk for the next day’s meetings) Read the rest of this entry »

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On June 15, we held a training on Fair Housing Law for Shelters. Ann-Marie Dooley, an attorney with Legal Aid of North Carolina shared valuable information with us.

Often, agencies providing shelter to the homeless don’t realize that they fall under the Fair Housing Law or the American Disabilities Act. But in fact, whether you are providing short or long term shelter, chances are one of these laws apply to you. Read the rest of this entry »

Thank you for visiting our new blog!

With so much good work going on across North Carolina to end homelessness, we’ve created this blog to keep you up to date with local news, progress on ending homelessness, best practices, trainings, policy changes and advocacy opportunities.

I also hope we can take advantage of your expertise and knowledge! Please take advantage of the comments sections as a place to ask questions, offer information or resources and tell us what is working for you!

Denise Neunaber
NCCEH Executive Director