BRAND West Webinar 1: Rethinking Rental Policy

The need for rental housing reform is urgent. A staggering 22.6 million renters in the U.S. spend more than 30 percent of their income on rent and utilities and with a housing shortage of at least 4 million units, affordable options are slipping out of reach for many more. 

As part of Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham’s WGA Chair initiative, Building Resilient and Affordable New Developments in the West (BRAND West), WGA convened national housing experts to discuss strategies for addressing these growing challenges.    

For this webinar, WGA was joined by Benjamin Preis, the Director of the National Housing Crisis Task Force and a Senior Research Fellow at the Nowak Metro Finance Lab within Drexel University's Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation; Cheryl Cohen, the Housing Division Administrator at the Montana Department of Commerce and the Executive Director of the Montana Board of Housing; Megan Yonke, the Senior Housing Policy Advisor for the Office of Colorado Governor Jared Polis; and Robert Henson, a Senior Housing Policy Specialist at the National Council of State Housing Agencies.