October 27, 2021

Housing Access & Affordability Speaker Series

Earlier this year, Tenfold was joined by an incredible group of housing experts to discuss timely and impactful housing topics that impact the way our community members access housing.  The Housing Access & Affordability Speaker Series was held virtually, which allowed us to attract talented speakers from across the nation, while allowing a lot of flexibility in how folks access this information. 

We started out the series by hearing from Dr. Tiffany Manuel (DrT).  DrT spoke with us about the importance of talking about housing in inclusive ways that will help our audience to understand how having housing that is accessible at all income levels will benefit our community.  If you missed DrT’s session, you can still view it here.

Richard Rothstein joined us to talk about his work, “The Color of Law.”  He traced how he became interested in learning about housing segregation, and discussed the federal policies that provided housing opportunities to white Americans, while excluding Americans of color from homeownership and wealth-building opportunities.  Rothstein also provided information about work to address the impact of these racist policies. Rothstein’s talk, as well as links to further information, is available here.

We closed out the series by hearing from Allie Cannington on the topic of disability-forward housing.   She talked about how we as a community can include individuals with disabilities in the planning, developing, and operating of housing, and how housing that benefits individuals with disabilities also benefits the wider community.  Cannington also shared resources and links to practical information for housing professionals.  Those resources and her talk are available here.

If you attended one of these talks, or if you watched a recorded session, we’d love to hear from you!  This feedback will help us to better understand what you found valuable in the series, and how we can plan for future events.  The survey is available here. The first 50 respondents will get a free copy of “The Color of Law” by Richard Rothstein.

This series is part of our Fair Housing Education and Outreach efforts.  We are grateful to our funders from the City of Lancaster, the County of Lancaster, and the Lancaster County Housing & Redevelopment Authorities, and the US Department of Housing & Urban Development for their financial support of this series.  If you would like more information on this series, or on other fair housing topics, reach out to Brittany Mellinger at  or 717-584-1803.