Inclusive Communities Project

The Inclusive Communities Project ("ICP") promotes fair housing by working to address historic policies and practices that limit choice and access to affordable housing for low-income families. ICP's programs and services are designed to educate, advocate, and empower families participating in HUD's Housing Choice Voucher Program. 

Housing is foundational for individual life outcomes and an important driver of quality of life. Policymakers widely understand that housing location significantly determines one's health and well-being. Compelling research suggests that zip codes are the single most important predictor of life expectancy in the United States, and the location of housing determines ready access to employment, fresh food, recreational facilities, quality education for children, and essential municipal services. Simply put, where one lives matters. For almost 20 years, ICP has created programs that have expanded housing opportunities for low-income individuals and families and addressed the barriers that denied them access to low-poverty, healthy communities. Over the last 12 years, ICP's advocacy has resulted in over 6,500 new units of low-income affordable housing in healthy communities in the DFW metroplex.

The economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to bring broad public awareness to the importance of stable rental assistance to landlords and renters as millions of Americans struggle with the rising housing cost. Unfortunately, this problem is a way of life for thousands of families with vouchers they cannot use because landlords refuse to accept the rental assistance offered through the HUD's Housing Choice Voucher Program. This type of discrimination is more prevalent in the lower-poverty areas that ICP targets. A 2020 survey sponsored by ICP found that 96% of landlords with affordable units in Collin County refused to rent to families with Housing Choice Vouchers, and there were as many as 18 cities within the Dallas Fort-Worth Metroplex with no units available to families using housing vouchers. ICP's Mobility Assistance Program (MAP) works to assist voucher holders seeking quality rental housing in low-poverty areas by providing families with housing search assistance and counseling. 

ICP fulfills its mission of creating and maintaining racially and economically inclusive communities through empowerment and education initiatives. The Voices for Opportunity & Advocacy Training initiative assists low-income residents in advocating for fair and affordable housing in their communities. Voucher holders, the Joppa Freedman's Town Association residents, Tenth Street Residential Association, and the Southern Sector Rising Coalition are a few of ICP's trainees. In 2022, ICP established a Client Advisory Board (CAB), which consists of current and past ICP clients, to represent voucher holders in public hearings and conversations with policymakers to shape the affordable housing landscape nationally and in their respective communities.