by Melissa Assion Germanese

Boston?s comprehensive housing strategy for the city, the Leading the Way program, was highlighted for its successes at a recent national housing conference.

The program was spotlighted as part of the Fannie Mae Foundation?s 2006 Annual Housing Conference, entitled ?Doing Well by Doing Good: Expanding Housing Opportunities, Serving Very Low-Income Families,? which took place on Wednesday, Sept. 20, in Washington, D.C. The conference hosted housing and community development practitioners, researchers, and policy-makers from across the country.

Under the Leading the Way program program, Boston works to preserve neighborhood stability, produce more housing, including affordable housing, retain affordable work force housing and expand programs to house the homeless.

Launched in 2001, the program has led to more than 7,900 new units of housing, 2,200 of which are affordable; the rehabilitation of more than 1,000 vacant public housing units; and the preservation of more than 3,100 affordable rental units from going to market rate rents.

In his keynote address at the conference, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who launched the three-year Leading the Way II plan in 2004, emphasized that tackling housing issues requires constant attention and flexibility to change course when necessary.

According to Menino, working on affordable housing is ?a lot of hard work,? but success requires partnerships, teamwork and the sharing of resources.

?Cities have to deal with the issues around affordable housing every day, when the federal and state governments don?t do their jobs,? said Menino.

Fannie Mae Foundation President and CEO Stacey D. Stewart also had a strong message when opening the meeting.

??We need action to address the housing needs of the very low-income,? Stewart emphasized. ?This is not just doing good ? it is good business.?

The conference featured sessions that focused on the challenges confronting very low-income families and invited attendees to explore the strategies, policies and programs necessary to meet these challenges.

In conference sessions, participants discussed how homeownership rates are at historic highs in the U.S., and most households can reasonably afford quality homes and enjoy safe and decent neighborhoods. Yet, hidden beneath this veneer of success is a more challenging reality ? a housing crisis for the nation?s very low-income households.

Participants also discussed how the consequences of this crisis reverberate throughout the entire U.S. economy. The quality of community life is impaired, economies sag, the environment is degraded and hard times for individual households become hard times for cities, regions, and states.

The conference explored how market-based solutions ? filtering, foreclosure interventions and nontraditional housing arrangements ? can be integrated with existing housing programs to expand the housing stock for very low-income households.

Details: For information on NLC?s programs that support city efforts to expand affordable housing, visit NLC?s website at www.nlc.org.