2025 Affordable Housing Summit

Jacqueline Patterson is the Founder and Executive Director of the Chisholm Legacy Project: A Resource Hub for Black Frontline Climate Justice Leadership. The mission of the Chisholm Legacy Project is rooted in a Just TransitionFramework, serving as a vehicle to connect Black communities on the frontlines of climate justice with the resources to actualize visions.

Prior to this, she served as the Senior Director of the NAACP Environmental and Climate Justice Program for over a decade. During her tenure, she founded and implemented a robust portfolio which included serving the state and local leadership whose constituencies consisted of hundreds of communities on the frontlines of environmental injustice. She led a team in designing and implementing a portfolio to support political education and organizing work executed by NAACP branches, chapters, and state conferences.

In March 2024, Patterson was honored to be named as one of Time Magazine’s Women of the Year as well as receiving the Time Magazine Earth Award.

Mayor Kaarin Knudson is an architect, writer, and educator with more than 25 years’ experience in design, sustainability, and community building. Trained as a journalist before becoming an architect, her work has always focused on people and place. In 2017, after a decade in architectural practice, she organized the public-interest project Better Housing Together to address Lane County’s housing crisis. This work supported the creation of Eugene’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, Lane County’s first Affordable Housing Action Plan, and Oregon’s landmark middle housing reforms. In 2024, she was elected with 73% of the primary vote and 96% in the general election. 

Mayor Knudson teaches planning and urban design at the University of Oregon, and she speaks at regional and national conferences about sustainable cities, housing, and the work of guiding community change. She is co-author of the new textbook, The Sustainable Urban Design Handbook (Routledge). 

Jess Blanch is senior program director for Enterprise Community Partners in the Pacific Northwest market, where she provides catalytic funding and technical assistance to accelerate the development of affordable homes co-located with early learning and other community-serving facilities. She also assists community-based organizations build capacity, advises and partners with local jurisdictions on housing and community development issues, and advocates for policy and systems change that will create more resilient, equitable communities.

Over the course of her career Jess has been a designer, developer, researcher, and advocate working for affordable housing, social service and healthcare facilities, and community planning which benefits everyone, but especially our most vulnerable neighbors and our planet.  She is particularly passionate about equitable access to healthier building materials as an environmental and social justice issue.

Sarah Stein is a senior adviser on affordable housing and neighborhood stabilization on the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta's Community and Economic Development team. Prior to joining the Atlanta Fed, Stein was an attorney representing seniors and low-income Atlantans on housing matters with Atlanta Legal Aid. There, she spearheaded the Generational Poverty Law Project, developing educational and clinical programming to address long-term homeowner displacement and to help low-income families build generational wealth. She has research, policy and legal expertise in affordable housing, heirs’ property, community development, residential real estate finance, state and local government law, property law, property tax, estate and probate matters. Previously, Stein was a research fellow with Emory University. Stein holds a JD degree from the Emory University School of Law and an MA from the Emory University Laney Graduate School. She earned her BA in modern studies at the University of Virginia.

Judith Sheine is a Professor in the Department of Architecture at the University of Oregon and is an Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Distinguished Professor. Sheine served as UO Department of Architecture Head 2012-17 and, previously, was Professor and Chair of the Architecture Department at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, 2002-12. She is the Director of Design for the TallWood Design Institute, a collaboration between UO’s College of Design and Oregon State University’s Colleges of Forestry and Engineering focused on the advancement of timber manufacturing and design. Sheine was the UO lead for the EDA BBBRC award (2022-27) to the Oregon Mass Timber Coalition and is the PI on the NSF Engines Development Award: Advancing mass timber technologies (OR, WA). Sheine is also an award-winning architect whose projects have been published internationally, and she has been recognized as the leading authority on the work of R.M. Schindler; her publications on the architect include R.M. Schindler (Phaidon Press, 2001) and her most recent book, Schindler, Kings Road and Southern California Modernism (University of California Press, 2012), co-authored with Robert Sweeney.

Eric Kronberg is a zoning whisperer. He specializes in balancing and blending the often competing needs of urban design, architecture, and development in a potent cocktail for better places. He specializes in breaking down and demystifying regulations to find ways to make great projects possible while helping others navigate the redevelopment maze. He uses his skills for the force of good as a principal at Kronberg Urbanists + Architects (KUA), leading the firm’s skilled practitioners to help our development partners create better places for all. His seven years teaching for the Incremental Development Alliance motivated him to co-found Inc Codes, an incremental code reform company helping mid-sized cities take the next step towards better places.  All this work is directed towards making healthy neighborhoods -- places that are vibrant, lasting, AND inclusive. He recently joined the board of the Seaside Institute to help the leading think tank for the New Urbanism strategically focus on how to integrate attainable housing into our great, walkable places.

Jessica Goswick, AIA, CPHD is an Associate Architect and Building Performance Lead at Architects FORA, where she designs living-centered environments that empower communities, enhance health and wellbeing, and elevate quality of life. Her work is currently focused on the intersections of sustainability and equity in community projects and affordable housing. She aims to improve the impact that housing has on us and our environment by investigating and applying research-based approaches to the design process. Outside of practicing architecture, Jessica is a lecturer in the architecture department at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo where she teaches architectural technology fundamentals.

Nithya obtained her bachelor’s in architecture from Ramaiah University in Bangalore, India. After graduating, she worked on interior design, residential, commercial, and educational projects in India before moving to the States to pursue her master’s in architecture from the University of Illinois. Local culture, heritage, art, and architecture all inform Nithya’s designs. She was first introduced to affordable housing design and sustainability in architecture during her participation as a competitor and juror in the AIA COTE student competition. At Forge Craft, she strikes the perfect balance between her passion for designing for the people who will experience these spaces and sustainability within the built environment.