Overview

Housing Security for All

The Greenlining Institute envisions an abundant future where everyone can live in a home that is affordable, safe, resilient to the impacts of climate change, and contributes to intergenerational wealth building. 

Unfortunately our nation’s housing crisis poses a complex challenge to the stability, health, and prosperity of all communities, especially communities of color. That’s no accident. It’s the inevitable outcome of deliberate policy decisions like redlining – the government-sponsored policy that pushed Black and brown families into segregated and environmentally hazardous neighborhoods. Politicians and financial leaders’ intentional disinvestment has led to a widening racial wealth gap and held back communities of color that are working to build families, businesses, and strong neighborhoods.

We’re working to build a different future, one where housing is a human right and contributes to healthy, resilient communities for all. 

OUR SOLUTIONS

Housing is a Human Right

In order to achieve this vision, we will pursue a housing platform that centers these values:

  1. Housing is a fundamental human right. Our work is not done until everyone is safely and affordably housed.
  2. Housing does not exist in a vacuum. It is connected to everything in our lives. Effective housing policy must build resilient, livable, and healthy communities, contribute to wealth-building, enhance mobility, and provide protection from the threat of climate change.
  3. Housing policy must be anti-racist. Our housing crisis is rooted in a legacy of racial injustice reaching from slavery through redlining and the subprime mortgage crisis, and to address it we must promote anti-racist strategies that acknowledge this history and proactively combat it.

Our Work

Advancing Housing Justice and Resilience

To realize this vision, we work with policymakers and our partners to increase the quantity of and access to affordable housing and break down racist barriers that have left out communities of color.

Our housing platform: 

  1. Acknowledges the legacy of racism and injustice in the housing market, and advances anti-racist policies that promote housing as a human right. 
  2. Invests in strategies to promote justice and resilience in the most impacted and vulnerable communities.
  3. Equitably increases access to capital, economic, and homeownership opportunities for people of color.
  4. Reduces barriers to climate resilient communities by increasing density in opportunity-rich neighborhoods and supporting all communities to become opportunity rich, working with communities/centering community priorities to rapidly build housing while maintaining strong environmental protections.
  5. Increases access to affordable housing by promoting the production of new supply, preserving existing affordable homes, and encouraging equitable land use to reduce the cost to build, meet community needs and achieve ambitious climate goals.