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Housing Washington 2009
Housing Washington 2009 | Featured Speakers | Success Stories
Change Begins at Home
Donna Brazile, Harris-Lacewell and Sims spoke movingly of their personal roots and the experiences that have informed their outlook and philosophical approaches to solving the myriad social and economic challenges that we as a nation currently face.
Donna Brazile and Housing Finance Commission Chair Karen Miller
Donna Brazile, a native of New Orleans, reflected on her experiences pre- and post-Katrina. During her talk on “How the New Administration Can Give Back Hope,” she urged conference attendees to join with her in participating in a climate of civility, healthy debate, accountability, and positive leadership in working toward affordable housing imperatives.
Melissa
Harris-Lacewell and
Housing Finance Commission Executive Director
Kim Herman
Melissa Harris-Lacewell shared her personal history of growing up in a mixed-race family, noting that her “roots” include Spokane, as her mother had been raised there. Her address, “Housing Fairness and the Politics of Change,” focused on the diverse meanings that citizenship holds for people of different races and cultures in the U.S. Harris-Lacewell explored citizenship through the lens of disaster: How widely divergent reactions to Katrina across our country revealed equally divergent values and prejudices, and the challenge this poses in terms of addressing inequities and moving forward with a new social contract.
Housing Finance Commissioner Faouzi Sefrioui and Ron Sims
Keynote Speaker and hometown favorite Ron Sims is currently Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD). A former three-term King County Executive, Sims mesmerized the audience with a high-energy narrative that weaved politics and idealism into his Spokane childhood story of material hardship and dedication to family. He shared an inside look into the Obama Administration’s commitment to Change at HUD: Setting a high bar in responsiveness and reduced bureaucracy—and setting priorities that will make a difference in furthering affordable housing.
Sustainability Continues as a Key Conference Focus
Michelle
Kaufmann
Michelle Kaufmann, architect and founder of Michelle Kaufmann Designs, returned to Housing Washington by popular demand. In her talk on “Prefabricating Sustainable Communities,” she urged her audience to continue to rethink current housing construction paradigms and push for changes that encompass green and sustainable design, and healthy environments. She described her experiences with factory pre-fabrication of modular designs, and presented a rich visual display of thoughtful, sustainable homes that push the envelope in quality control and higher efficiency in construction, and sustainable energy solutions.
As with the 2008 conference, a number of Housing Washington 2009’s sessions and workshops responded to the growing interest and focus on sustainable design and construction, along with green building techniques in affordable housing. Other sessions focused on federal and state policy trends and impacts; tapping federal financial incentives for building affordable housing; and current national and state efforts to expand and support a broad spectrum of affordable housing strategies, including community land trusts and manufactured housing. But that’s a relatively small slice of the topics that were covered this year. You can access a complete listing, along with PDFs of most Speaker Presentations, on the Housing Washington website.
Housing Washington 2010 will be held at the Tacoma Convention Center in October 2010. We invite you to engage in the conversation. You can get started today by sharing your ideas [conf@wshfc.org] about the topics you’d value learning about, and the speakers you’d most like to hear. See you in Tacoma!
11/05/2009