Stephanie Watkins-Cruz (left), Renee Willis and Samuel Gunter discuss federal housing policy in Raleigh, N.C., May 28, 2026. (Photo: Greg Childress/NC Newsline)
America is experiencing a housing crisis that touches nearly every community and forces economically vulnerable citizens to make impossible decisions, Renee M. Willis, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said on Thursday.
“We’re talking about choices between rent or medicine, choices between transportation and rent, choices between child care and rent,” Willis said. “These are choices that no family should have to make.”
Renee Willis (Photo: National Low-Income Housing Coalition)Willis was keynote speaker at “Bringing It Home 2026,” an annual statewide conference that brings together service providers, industry experts and advocates to discuss housing solutions. The conference is sponsored by the NC Housing Coalition, the NC Department of Health and Human Services and the NC Coalition to End Homelessness.
This year’s conference comes amid much change and funding uncertainty on the federal level. Even after money has been appropriated, it’s often slow to come, said conference organizers.
Samuel Gunter (Photo: NC Housing Coalition)“It’s an existential crisis for a lot of organizations, some of which have ceased the work they do because they no longer have the money for it, have lost people or are not able to serve,” said Samuel Gunter, executive director of the housing coalition. “We’re in the midst of bigger economic pressures. We’re losing the reliability of federal resources that are targeted to the solutions.”
The distance between being housed and unhoused is shorter than most people imagine, Willis said.
“Often it’s a single crisis, a medical emergency, a job loss, divorce, domestic violence, a disability, natural disaster, a rent increase, a moment when the math simply stops working,” Willis said.
Willis pointed to her organization’s report titled The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes, which found that there is a shortage of approximately 7.2 million rental homes across the nation for extremely low-income renters.
There are 35 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households nationwide, Willis said. In North Carolina, it’s 38 affordable and available homes for every 100 low-income households, she said.
Low-income renters in North Carolina far outnumber affordable housing units
Another of the organization’s signature reports — Out of Reach 2025 —found that, nationally, a renter needs to earn $33.63 an hour to afford a modest two-bedroom rental home. North Carolina’s “housing wage” for a modest two-bedroom apartment is $27.14.
“The home healthcare aid, the childcare worker, nursing assistants, restaurant workers, school support staff, people whose work makes our community function every day, many of them cannot afford the communities they serve, not because they’re not working hard enough – because they are,” Willis said.
Willis noted that North Carolina’s minimum wage is $7.25 an hour. The federal minimum wage has been $7.25 since July 2009, marking the longest period in U.S. history that it has remained unchanged.
A group of state House Democrats have filed House Bill 1059, titled the Fair Minimum Wage Act, which would permit local governments to adopt a higher minimum wage of up to $15 an hour. The minimum wage would be adjusted automatically for inflation each year to reflect increases in the consumer price index. The bill would cap the minimum wage at $11 an hour for small businesses earning less than $400,000 a year.
A safe, affordable place to live is foundational, Willis said.
“It affects whether children can succeed in school, it affects health outcomes, economic mobility and whether communities grow and thrive,” Willis said. “And housing is increasingly being recognized as one of the defining issues of our time.”
Despite the many challenges around housing, Willis said she is hopeful because the nation has begun to talk about affordable housing in a positive way.
Willis noted the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, bipartisan House and Senate housing legislation designed to address the affordable housing crisis by increasing supply, reducing regulatory barriers and reining in large corporate investors in the single-family market.
“We’re seeing people engage, we’re seeing members of Congress engage because they see how housing and the lack of housing affects their communities,” Willis said. “I’m also encouraged by the growing recognition that housing must be central to disaster recovery. Here in North Carolina, you understand that reality better the most.”
Latonya Agard (Photo: screenshot from webinar)Dr. Latonya Agard, executive director of the N.C. Coalition to End Homelessness, agreed that funding unpredictability has been a big challenge for nonprofits that work with the state’s unhoused population.
“Finding affordable housing in a market that continues to soar has just been really hard on the programmatic level for people who are doing direct service,” Agard said. “I would say those are the things people are struggling with right now.”
Willis told the more than 400 conference attendees to stay the course because the work they are doing matters.
“Housing costs are too high and the system serving people experiencing homelessness faces enormous pressure,” Willis said. “But hope does not require certainty. Hope requires purpose. It requires persistence and it requires people to continue to show up even when the outcome is not guaranteed.”
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