Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of "Out of Reach"

Opportunity Starts at Home

This year marks the 30th anniversary of "Out of Reach," a report published annually by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC). NLIHC chairs and leads the Opportunity Starts at Home campaign. "Out of Reach" has become an indispensable, landmark resource to help people understand the affordable housing crisis and its solutions. Year in and year out, its findings are cited in the press, by policymakers at all levels of government, by academics, and by advocates. To commemorate the 30th anniversary of the report and to capture the history around it, we invited New York Times reporter Emily Badger to interview an esteemed panel: Peggy Bailey, Vice President for Housing Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; Shelia Crowley, former President and CEO of NLIHC; Erhard Mahnke, board member of NLIHC and Coordinator at the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition; and Andrew Aurand, Vice President for Research at NLIHC. The panelists share their thoughts on "Out of Reach," the history of how we got to today's current crisis, how policy changes have impacted access to affordable housing, solutions and resources that we already have in place but are underutilized and threatened, and what the next president should do in their first 100 days in office to significantly increase affordable housing for the lowest-income people.