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Real Stories I Take Action I Stronger Communities
LIVED EXPERIENCE.
COMMUNITY LEADERSHIP.
MEANINGFUL CHANGE.
Community Voices centers the knowledge and experience of people directly impacted by housing and community challenges. We create spaces where real people can be heard, solutions can be explored, and stronger more equitable communities can grow.
Our Experience is Expertise.
FRom Experience to Impact
Every experience tells us something. Every barrier reveals something. Every voice can contribute to a solution.
Share
Your experiences
and expertise matter.
Connect
Join others working toward stronger communities.
Create Change
Help make lived experiences a part of the solution.
Bring Community Voices to Your Community
Community Voices is led by individuals who bring both lived experience and leadership experience to the work. We draw from our own journeys, the actions we have taken, and the results we have achieved to help others recognize the power of their experiences and turn their stories into meaningful action.
Through conferences, community conversations, resident leadership programs, and organizational engagements, the Community Voices team creates spaces where people can strengthen their voices, build confidence, and explore how their lived experience can contribute to solutions and create change in their communities.
Our lived experience shaped us. Our actions moved us forward. Now we use both to empower others.
Contact Us: 704-251-9202 or info@ahftc.org
FRom National Voices to community Stories
Stability Starts at Home: Community Voices was born from the national advocacy work led through the National Low Income Housing Coalition, The Collective, a cohort of tenant leaders from across the Country working to elevate lived experiences and expertise in housing policy conversations.
Your Voice, Your Story
Your story becomes part of a collective effort to build housing stability, awareness, and lasting change. Your story can be a few sentences, a paragraph, or longer. Feel free to share as much detail as you feel comfortable.
Stories shared through Stability Starts at Home: Community Voices serve as a national resource that tenant leaders, advocates, and community organizers can reference when advancing affordable housing solutions across the country. With participant permission, stories may be published on this website to help put real faces and lived experiences behind housing policy conversations. These collective narratives provide authentic examples of how housing instability impacts individuals and families and may be referenced by tenant leaders during regional advocacy efforts, policy discussions, legislative engagement, and congressional visits on Capitol Hill.
Community Voices exists as a shared space where real stories from real people help inform housing conversations, strengthen advocacy efforts, and ensure that national housing policies reflect the lived realities of the communities they are intended to serve.
One voice matters, but collective voices create Systemic change
Help put a face to housing challenges by sharing your story for publication. Use the form below to share a personal experience that illustrates what it's like to navigate housing instability.
Your story helps ensure that housing advocacy is guided not only by data, but by lived experience.
Meet the Community Voices Team
Kristal Thompson
Kristal Thompson is a nationally recognized housing advocate and speaker from Illinois whose work leverages personal experience with housing instability to drive systems change. As a member of The Collective, a national cohort of tenant leaders with the National Low Income Housing Coalition, she amplifies resident voices in federal housing advocacy. Krystal holds leadership roles with the Supportive Housing Providers Association, Kane County Continuum of Care, and PADS of Elgin, while also facilitating workshops that empower advocates through storytelling and peer leadership development.
At the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s 2026 The Forum, Kristal served as a featured presenter, training advocates on the SOAR Method of storytelling, equipping leaders to effectively lift lived experience into advocacy and policy spaces. In 2023, she received the Home Illinois Person with Lived Experience Recognition of Service Award in acknowledgment of her commitment to advancing affordable housing and strengthening community leadership.
To contact Kristal for speaking or training opportunities:
📧 thompson.kristal@yahoo.com
224-400-7284
Kimrâh Minuty
Kimrâh Minuty (she/they) is a disabled artist, writer, and housing justice advocate whose work centers lived experience, disability justice, and storytelling as tools for systems change. Drawing from personal experience with chronic illness, disability, and housing instability, Kimrâh uses art and narrative to illuminate how structural inequities impact disabled, chronically ill, and unhoused communities while advancing more human-centered housing solutions.
As a member of The Collective, a national cohort of tenant leaders with the National Low Income Housing Coalition, Kimrâh helps elevate lived experience in national housing advocacy efforts. They also served as a presenter at the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s 2026 The Forum, equipping advocates to use storytelling and disability justice frameworks to strengthen housing advocacy nationwide.
To contact Kimrâh for speaking, training, or collaboration opportunities:
📧 connect@kimrahminuty.com
Mary Hunter
Mary Hunter is the Founding Executive Director of Affordable Housing For the Carolinas and a national housing advocate dedicated to advancing community-led solutions to housing instability. Having personally experienced being unhoused following Hurricane Harvey while living in Texas, Mary brings lived experience alongside more than a decade of professional leadership across nonprofit and government sectors. Her work centers innovative, community-driven programs that strengthen housing stability and empower underserved communities throughout the Carolinas.
Prior to founding Affordable Housing For the Carolinas, Mary served as Community Engagement Supervisor at Habitat for Humanity of the Charlotte Region, where she launched Affordable Housing Awareness Month and expanded community led engagement initiatives across Mecklenburg and Iredell Counties. Mary is a member of The Collective with the National Low Income Housing Coalition and served as a speaker at the 2026 NLIHC Forum, contributing to national conversations on storytelling, advocacy, and community-led housing solutions.
To contact Mary for speaking or partnership opportunities:
📧 info@ahftc.org | 704-251-9202