Key Players

A preservation campaign is complex. Very few organizations have all of the capacity required to carry out the organizing, legal, and other components. Building a preservation coalition will bring the needed skills and connections together.

• Resident Leaders and Associations
  Leaders within the buildings will do outreach to tenants, and conduct tenant informational meetings. They can form an organizing committee, as well as an official HUD resident council. HUD Resident Capacity Grants are available only to tenant groups. These groups will be central to the organizing needed for a successful coalition. The National Alliance of HUD Tenants provides peer support for groups organizing tenants.
• Legal Services
  Legal professionals will play key roles in both consultations and research, and as a litigation team if one is necessary. Look for opportunities to leverage pro bono legal support.
• Nonprofit Housing Agencies
  These organizations could purchase units that might be preserved through sale. They can also provide expertise on the financial and rehab aspects of affordable housing development.
• National Resource and Advocacy Organizations
  Groups with a national reach, like the National Housing Trust, National Housing Law Project, or National Low Income Housing Coalition, can carry out advocacy at national HUD offices. They have a wide store of information, research capacity, specialized legal resources, and existing relationships to draw on.
• Local Stakeholders
  These can include community groups, congregations, and service agencies. They can provide pressure locally to move preservation forward.
• Government Housing Agencies
  Government agencies can provide both funding and information to a preservation campaign.
• Elected Representatives
  Elected officials at federal, state, and local levels can enact policy that supports preservation, and therefore may be a target of tenant organizing. Congressional representatives can be particularly useful because the programs in question are federal programs.

Ingredients for Success

Network with Peers

One of the first things the National Housing Law Project does when a group calls for advice is connect it with organizations that have taken on similar projects. Groups who have faced similar situations, worked with the same HUD officials, or developed innovative responses can provide useful support and lessons.

Build Community Support

It will usually be important to build additional community support for a preservation effort, either to convince an owner to preserve the development or sell to a preservation purchaser, or to secure the additional subsidy funds necessary to make a transfer feasible.

Along with tenants and neighborhood residents, "the community" includes numerous organizations that can add the support of their constituencies or members to the effort, or provide additional connections into the local political structure. These include:

• housing and homeless advocacy organizations;
• nonprofit housing providers;
• social service organizations providing services to low-income constituents;
• neighborhood organizations;
• churches and faith-based institutions; and
• civic organizations working on anti-poverty issues.

Engage Local Government

In many situations, the support of local government is crucial. This could include city housing and planning staff, members of the legislative body such as the city or county council, and those with executive authority such as the mayor, city manager, or county executive.

Local government can:

• get information;
• provide funding;
• take regulatory action;
• enforce existing restrictions;
• encourage the owner toward a preservation plan by leveraging its discretionary authority over local approvals sought by the owner for other development or land use decisions; or
• advocate for preservation with the federal or state government.

It is important to start this process of communication early.

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