REFLECTIONS ON THE 2026 MIDTERMS:
What Will We Make Of It?
Yesterday, nearly 300 of our members and partners gathered in Washington, DC for the 2026 NAAHL/CAHL Policy & Practice Conference – our largest to date. The energy in the room was something I won't soon forget. Lenders, investors, practitioners, policymakers, and advocates from across the country, together on a day that felt particularly significant. I am grateful to everyone who made the trip and to our sponsors, board, and the NAAHL team whose work made it possible.
We will have a recap of the conference soon, but I want to share the reflections I offered on Thursday that I'm still sitting with in these days following Tuesday's midterm election.
We are on the cusp of a new chapter in American politics. What will we make of it?
In this historic midterms, Americans delivered a loud and clear message: it’s time for change.
I would argue though that this is not a come back. This is a mandate on all of us to deliver that change. To put the down the division and the charades of Washington, and to get to work on real solutions that solve real problems for every day Americans.
Affordability – and housing affordability specifically – is at center stage in a way we have never seen before.
The affordable housing crisis that many of us have been talking about for decades has broken out of the data points and the advocacy echo chambers and into the kitchen table conversations across rural America.
It’s on the anxious minds of the next generation skeptical if they will ever own a home and our aging adults worried about how they will afford to make necessary repairs to their own aging homes.
It’s on the minds of everyone from teachers to technicians losing hours of their day to long commutes because they can’t afford to live where they work.
It’s on the minds of hospital executives who see that housing insecurity is a significant indicator of who repeatedly walks into the ER, and mayors whose communities have been ravaged by the latest flood or fire and have a long road of recovery and rebuilding ahead of them.
And it has resonated in the halls of Congress.
This year, Congress passed the most significant housing legislation in a generation—the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act.
It was bipartisan, historic, and long overdue. A collective victory we have celebrated together this year, but far from the end of the work.
The next two years will not be easy, but we have an opportunity to shape the next wave of policymakers into affordable housing champions.
Not every race has been called yet, but we know that there will be dozens of new members in the 120th Congress. For some, this will be their first time in public office. They’ve been pediatricians or pastors. And now they must understand how the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit works. Simple, really.
No, the challenge before us is far from simple though the message and the solutions need to be just that – simple. We can’t get lost in the litany of acronyms or alienating concepts of academia or industry jargon.
The messages must be clear:
People deserve and need a functioning federal government. A federal housing agency equipped to serve the housing needs of renters and homeowners – not just in urban communities, but rural and suburban and Tribal as well.
When we talk about supply, it’s not just about building new housing, it’s also about saving the supply we already have and not losing it to ending affordability terms or just deteriorating conditions.
And that whether you’re talking about new production or preservation, housing development is a math problem and the math ain’t mathing. Developers want to help communities but they aren’t magicians.
We have to say the scary stuff out loud too: the consequences of the pandemic are still playing out. When people don’t pay their rents for years and the costs of maintaining a property become insurmountable, mission-driven owners will go out of business and no one wins.
When we pile on every bell and whistle and create hoop after hoop for builders to jump through, prescribing every policy outcome we can imagine and piling every social problem onto that math equation, nothing gets built.
We need simple, meaningful, consistent federal policy to provide relief to every day Americans' wallets, drive innovation at the state and local levels, and put an end to the wasteful pendulum of Washington politics.
And if we really want to reverse decades of neglected housing needs – if we really want to be responsive to Tuesday – we need public private partnerships to unlock capital to the scale that communities need.
And this is the network that knows how to do that. This is the network that knows what works and knows what it will take to unlock more.
It is through the partnerships of NAAHL banks and CDFIs that our members in one year alone, delivered more than $96 billion in financing for affordable housing and community development, touching all 50 states.
As we look ahead, NAAHL will continue to be a leading voice on affordable housing and community development in Washington, known for our strategic, rapid response policy team and as an honest broker on legislative & regulatory issues.
Because regardless of who holds the gavels in the new Congress, the fundamentals don’t change for us. Affordable housing is a nonpartisan priority that benefits from bipartisan champions.
With our growing research Center and new fellows, we’ll be incubating bold, federal policy solutions to unlock greater supply and affordability for renters and homeowners – what we’re calling the Next Playbook – and releasing additional Hill-friendly, solutions-oriented resources that inform innovative and actionable strategies.
Not just an inside-the-Beltway player, NAAHL will be strengthening its advocacy and impact with a field engagement strategy, connecting with key state and local practitioners on critical federal policy priorities and elevating economic and community impact stories ground-up.
And through creative, multimedia communications strategies, NAAHL strives to break out of the echo chamber, reach more audiences, and engage new champions on why affordable housing matters, how it works, and what communities nationwide need to know.
None of what NAAHL does is possible without our Board, our NAAHL team, and each of our members and partners. Thank you to each of you who has been putting in the work building towards this moment, this movement.
Again, we are together on the cusp of the next chapter in American politics. And what will we make of it?
This is the network – and you all are the practitioners, policy experts, partners, and leading affordable housing lenders and investors – that will determine the path forward.
Thank you.
Sarah Brundage
President & CEO