The National Alliance to End Homelessness is Non-Partisan But it is Not Neutral
Release Date: 04/13/2026
We wanted to have not just a building but a beautiful space where our neighbors could come and be seen, valued and heard
Power Station
The story of Washington DC’s Ward 8, Ward 7 and Anacostia specifically is often told, largely by people who don’t live there, in terms of deficits, both in resources and the community itself. The truth is entirely different. It was home to the Nacotchtank’s indigenous settlements in the 1700s, white Navy Yard workers in the late 1800s, when Black people were barred from living there, and became a hub of African American arts and activism, post white flight, in the 1960s. And while the community has been historically underinvested, its people are resilient. Even today, for example, there...
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The reality is that 40% of our homeless youth here in DC identify as members of our queer and trans family
Power Station
Carlos Toledo, executive director of the Wanda Alston Foundation knows that the organization he leads, and the community it serves, are on the federal government’s target list, but he will not allow the opposition to steal his joy. Instead, he stays laser focused on advancing his nonprofit’s mission: providing housing, social services and a pathway to financial independence for homeless youth, primarily Black and Latino, who are queer and trans. Many of these young people have been rejected by their families, the first step into homelessness and interaction with the criminal justice...
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They are chasing the tail of the dragon to make it harder to vote
Power Station
The dizzying assault by this administration on our constitutional right to vote is memorialized in The Save Act, which has so-far failed in the Senate, and in state houses bent on disenfranchising Black Americans. My guest this week, Alex Ault, Senior Policy Council at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, expects to see more versions of legislation marketed by the White House and members of Congress as voting security, a solution to a problem that does not exist. He points to the influential community, this nation’s 8,000 poll workers and election officials who have argued,...
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I am an accidental Asian American activist
Power Station
A conversation with John Yang, President and Executive Director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice reverberates with facts and feelings. To start, we talk about the recent Supreme Court hearing on birthright citizenship, an outcome of President Trump’s preoccupation with erasing this foundational constitutional right. As John explains on this episode of Power Station, this impulse is rooted in the desire to control who should and should not be considered an American. We are seeing this play out in real time in immigration sweeps and detention centers across the country. And while we do not...
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The National Alliance to End Homelessness is Non-Partisan But it is Not Neutral
Power Station
The data is unimpeachable. Homelessness is a national crisis and the numbers of people struggling to live without permanent housing is growing. The latest (2024) data from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) finds that 771, 480 people are currently unhoused, and 17,500 more are joining those ranks each week. As decades of research and people with lived experience tell us, ending homelessness requires a massive increase in the affordable housing supply, policies that position low-income renters to stay in the housing they have, and the resources needed by on-the-ground...
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It is a beautiful story of how the people, in the end, are going to find the cure to their own disease
Power Station
There is a paradigm shift underway in how nonprofits are advocating for and with people diagnosed with shattering neurogenerative conditions. It starts with treating patients as experts, identifying their priorities for research and leveraging their abilities to forge powerful relationships in Congress, with federal agencies and at all decision-making tables. I AM ALS, a nonprofit founded by Brian and Sandra Wallach after Brian’s diagnosis at age 37, is reinventing the playbook for how to approach finding a cure and treatment for a condition that is both devastating and 100% fatal. Brian and...
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This would be the largest housing supply bill in a generation
Power Station
We have reached a hopeful moment in the decades-long and hard-fought campaign for a housing policy framework that acknowledges the need for all Americans to have a safe and affordable place to call home. The national conversation about the housing affordability crisis is finally catching up to the mission that the National Low Income Housing Coalition was founded, in 1974, to advance. The Coalition advocates for and with lowest-income renters, who are the most severely cost-burdened tenants, and ensures that their voices are centered in policy debates. Congress is on the cusp of passing the...
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Shifting mindsets and winning small victories on the way to the generational project that is narrative change
Power Station
A conversation with Dr. Tiffany Manuel, is illuminating, gripping and if you are engaged in meeting material human needs and advancing social justice, it is an instructive and energizing call to action. In this episode of Power Station, Dr. T shares how the practice she founded, TheCaseMade, empowers nonprofit leaders to reimagine how to be impactful changemakers in a profoundly divided America under an administration that is aggressively dismantling civil and human rights. She brings her academic grounding in the social sciences and deep experience in the nonprofit housing and...
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Building relationships makes it possible to know what business owners are experiencing
Power Station
It speaks volumes when an urban planner, an expert in housing, community and economic development who has served in leadership positions in the federal government, national nonprofit intermediaries, and in a community-based Latino serving organization decides that his passion lies in working at the hyper-local level with communities that are often underserved and underestimated. Manuel Ochoa, my guest on this week’s episode of Power Station, launched Ochoa Urban Collaborative in 2019 to support the change making aspirations of marginalized communities in the US and globally. He shares his...
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Our communities don't need saving, they need investment, trust, and the rights tools to shape their own futures
Power Station
We are all shaped by the neighborhoods we grew up in, from the cost and conditions of our housing to the bonds we formed within them and whether we had access to parks and grocery stores. And the data bears out that zip codes are more effective predictors of our well-being than our own genetic code. Improving neighborhoods that have been battered by extractive public policies, poverty and unsound housing conditions has been the cornerstone of the community development sector for decades. The sector has progressed in its technical ability to finance projects perceived as risky and at its best...
info_outlineThe data is unimpeachable. Homelessness is a national crisis and the numbers of people struggling to live without permanent housing is growing. The latest (2024) data from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) finds that 771, 480 people are currently unhoused, and 17,500 more are joining those ranks each week. As decades of research and people with lived experience tell us, ending homelessness requires a massive increase in the affordable housing supply, policies that position low-income renters to stay in the housing they have, and the resources needed by on-the-ground homeless service providers to meet human needs and strengthen communities. And a culture shift is underway. Policymakers and the public are increasingly aware that homelessness is the outcome of broken systems and not of personal failings. On this episode of Power Station I talk to Ann Oliva, the incomparable CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness about leading, with the long view, in unstable times. She shares how the Alliance deploys policy advocacy, research, capacity and movement building to make possible a future where all of us are housed. As Ann says, the Alliance is non-partisan, but it is not neutral.