Dana Bourland on affordable housing advancing justice

Design the Future

Dana Bourland is committed to solving our housing and climate crises in ways that advance justice. Dana led the creation of the environment program at The JPB Foundation, one of the largest private foundations in the US. Before that, she helped create the Green Communities program (at Enterprise Community Partners), a set of criteria now required by 27 states.

Dana is also the author of a new book, Gray to Green Communities: A Call to Action on the Housing and Climate Crises, published this year by Island Press. Dana conceived it as a thank you to the imaginative, committed people working in affordable housing, but the call to action is clear, and it is for us all.

“Mainstream America doesn’t know what’s going on in affordable housing on the green building and equity front,” Dana says. “It is within our grasp to fundamentally change the course of human history -- if we address these two crises together. We can provide housing at the rate and scale we need and address climate action.” We can do this, she says, if we all show up in a way that is accountable to communities who have never gotten the resources that they deserve.