Mission & History

The Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development (ANHD) is the umbrella organization of 100 non-profit affordable housing and economic development groups, serving low- and moderate income residents in all five boroughs of New York City.  Since its founding in 1974, ANHD has been key in making NYC’s community development sector among the most effective in the US, providing comprehensive training, robust capacity-building and apprenticeship programs, and high-impact policy research. In the past 25 years, ANHD’s non-profit members have built over 120,000 units of affordable housing in our city’s most distressed neighborhoods. ANHD provides key support to strengthen the community development sector, with recent accomplishments that include:

• Shaped City housing policy: ANHD is a leading voice that introduced new policies on zoning and affordability that became central to the City’s current housing agenda.  Our multi-year work on Mandatory Inclusionary Housing, Permanent Affordability, and Anti-Displacement policy has helped shape the City policy landscape.
• Supporting Not-for-Profit Community-Based Housing Development: CDCs are central to New York City’s affordable housing development infrastructure because of the deep benefit they bring to the community and the taxpayer. ANHD’s research and advocacy bring the CDC voice to the City policy conversation.
• Equitable Economic Development: Over the past two years, ANHD expanded its mission to add a strategic focus on equitable economic development to every phase of our work.
• Winning Support for Quality Jobs in the Manufacturing and Industrial Sector: One of ANHD’s first Equitable Economic Development efforts was to build policy and community support to expand quality jobs in the light-manufacturing and industrial sector. This past year, New York City announced a major new policy initiative including a new program first raised by ANHD –  a $150 Million Non-Profit Industrial Space Development Fund to create new below-market industrial space.
• Cutting edge housing development policy research:  In 2015 alone ANHD published 20 reports and 50 blogs on affordable housing and economic development, with interactive mapping of NYC economic risks.  Impact included 100+ press stories that helped shape multiple City policies.
• Expanding funding for housing:  ANHD helped form NYC’s Housing Preservation Initiative to fund grassroots groups and was appointed by the City to coordinate 40 funded groups that in 2014/15 counseled 15,000+ low-income tenants, trained 28,000+, gave referrals to 5,000, and preserved nearly 2,000 affordable apartments.
• Creating the annual community development policy agenda: ANHD’s annual community development policy conferences are attended by 600 government leaders, housing developers, and bank reinvestment partners.
• Preserving affordable units:  ANHD works to ensure that City housing developments include units that are truly affordable for low-income residents, and remain affordable long-term.   In 2015 ANHD launched a citywide Anti-Displacement project to help gentrifying communities keep small businesses and affordable housing.
• Training the next generation of community development leaders:  ANHD’s Center for Neighborhood Leadership each year trains and places 14 unemployed adults at community non-profits, with 95% graduating into jobs or college.
• Training the next generation of community organizers: ANHD’s Community Development Fellowship partners with Morgan Stanley to match 9 graduate students with community groups. To date, 100% of the Fellows have graduated into jobs in the field – 40% are government jobs.
• Training the Affordable Housing Sector:  ANHD trains 800 community development groups in affordable housing, operations, tenant services and economic development. In 2015/16 ANHD added OSHA certification and a teaching partnership with Turner Construction.