The following is a transcript of the video above, from NPQ’s joint webinar with Shelterforce: “Housing as a Public Good: The State of Social Housing Today.” View the full webinar and read the full webinar transcript here.

Kristen Hackett: [To answer] the question of “How do we build broad support for the social housing movement or the housing movement in general?”—we have to think about who’s the base here.

And who are we eliciting broader support from? And I do think a lot of the times we’re thinking about nonprofit affordable housing developers and maybe some elected officials.

We need to listen to the perspectives of neighbors who are confronting this life-threatening experience of being unhoused.

But I think for me the base that needs to be activated and engaged are the neighbors who are most negatively impacted by the existing housing system or, as Tracy Rosenthal and Leonardo Vilchis say, the unhousing system.

We need to learn from the experiences and listen to the perspectives of neighbors who are confronting this life-threatening experience of being unhoused and those who are teetering on the edge of that experience.

And it’s really from that vantage point, I think, that we need to deliberate on our housing futures and the models that are needed. What’s really concerning to me right now is that the loudest voices on social housing are saying that we need to exclude some of these neighbors in order to pursue housing for all.

I want to go back to what [fellow panelists] are saying about successful models of social housing. I think the narrative around public housing is really negative. That this was a “failed model.”

That is a myth, because [the US public] housing program is almost 100 years old and is able to provide stable, affordable, long-term housing for people who would otherwise not be housed. It’s the only social housing program that’s really doing that. And the reason that that’s effective is because of the federal investment in that program.

Right now, if there were more federal investment in that program, the buildings could be renovated, the program could be expanded. With enough community power and agitation, I think, we are looking at reregulating public housing and expanding that program towards actually housing all people.

So, to me, the question is an organizing question, really.

We have to think about who’s the base here, and who do we really need to be activating, and who needs to be centered in the movement and defining the answers. And to me those are the neighbors that are most negatively impacted.