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During Building Boom, Chair of Housing Advisory Commission Urges Equal Opportunity for Contractors

NNPA NEWSWIRE — Workers of color “often don’t get rained up to be superintendent or foreman, they get dedicated to labor on-site,” Nate McCoy, chair of the Portland Housing Advisory Commission, said. “Construction has not done its best job in marketing itself as a career pathway for all communities. We’ve coined it ‘the FBI,’ because the way to get into construction is through your father or brother-in-law. Most of our businesses on the minority- or majority-owned side have been family-owned businesses. But I’m looking at affordable housing, knowing a lot of minorities live in it. They should see folks who look like them building the projects.”

Published

6 years ago

November 7, 2019

Oakland Post

Nate McCoy was re-appointed chair of the Portland Housing Bureau Advisory Committee by the City Council on Oct. 16. An architect with a background in construction, McCoy advocates for better opportunities for minority contractors. (Photo by Saundra Sorenson)

Nate McCoy wants the city of Portland to be more inclusive of minority-owned firms.

By Saundra Sorenson, The Skanner News

When the Portland City Council voted to re-appoint Nate McCoy as chair of the Portland Housing Advisory Commission earlier this month, it was largely in recognition of his focus on equity in access to affordable housing. But the additional two-year term also draws on McCoy’s specific area of expertise: equity in who is paid to build that affordable housing stock.

McCoy serves as executive director, operations manager and spokesperson for the Oregon chapter of the National Association of Minority Contractors (NAMC-OR), a trade association that advocates for minority contracting professionals. He told The Skanner that it can be hard for smaller, minority-owned firms to compete with larger, more established contractors, even at a time when commercial and residential development is booming. While many recognizable names in construction can boast more than a century in business, the NAMC-OR member with the greatest longevity is only 20 years old. “Mid-point” contracts, like those offered on affordable housing projects, have proved ideal for NAMC-OR members.

“I think just making sure that I’m always holding all of our programs and processes accountable, to make sure there’s always that equity, on how we’re thinking and making decisions, and I’m always that constant reminder at the Housing Bureau,” McCoy said.

The 12-member advisory commission is a public forum for housing policy in Portland, and includes community organizers, representatives from the real estate, legal, construction and banking sectors, as well as many who have worked in affordable housing. McCoy’s education in that field came early.

“I moved in seventh grade alone to three different apartment buildings, all due to price increase in rent,” McCoy, a Portland native, said. “That’s why I have a passion for housing, but also the business and workforce side. If you don’t have a good-paying job, you’re forced to be in those conditions where you can be displaced at any moment.”

A former construction coordinator for the housing bureau and for the Portland Development Commission, McCoy said he had long noticed the economic opportunities in an industry that too often operated as a “good ole boys club.”

Workers of color “often don’t get rained up to be superintendent or foreman, they get dedicated to labor on-site,” McCoy said. “Construction has not done its best job in marketing itself as a career pathway for all communities. We’ve coined it ‘the FBI,’ because the way to get into construction is through your father or brother-in-law. Most of our businesses on the minority- or majority-owned side have been family-owned businesses. But I’m looking at affordable housing, knowing a lot of minorities live in it. They should see folks who look like them building the projects.”

To that end, McCoy praised local pre-apprenticeship programs like Oregon Tradeswomen Inc. and Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center (POIC).

“They do great grasswork work of outreach in schools,” McCoy said. “Too often, it’s been the classic case of older white men telling students of color about the industry. The students have no representation. And no one wants to be in something where they feel they might be the only one. We’ve got to reflect diversity, and that means sending messengers that might look like some of the kids you’re trying to attract to the industry. We do a lot of that. I take a lot of kids to different housing projects as well as other just projects that our members are on, to make sure these kids can see professionals. Not just athletes, but professionals” in attainable careers.

Those careers offer the kind of upward mobility and salary that can lead to homeownership, which then opens up additional affordable units, McCoy added.

Getting Opportunities but Not Work

New NAMC-OR member Devin Coleman owns Aftermath Construction, a commercial and residential construction cleanup business that he established after years working as a safety manager and safety consultant for construction projects.

Coleman, who is African American, told The Skanner of his experience losing business with a large Boise-based contractor that had hired his firm in the past. Nothing had changed except for an in-person courtesy call between Coleman and the contractor’s higher-ups.

“Everything just stopped,” Coleman said. “We lost all of our business, just because they met me. And I’ve had that happen several times. When people talk to me on the phone, they hear a British first name, Irish last name, and then when we meet, they do a double-take.”

Coleman emphasized the value of employing a diverse work crew. For him, that includes the White project manager he often asks to take the lead on communication with clients.

“It’s not that everybody’s racist, but the powers that be, they’re very selective,” Coleman said. “They can give you opportunities, they can ask you for bids, but they don’t give you work. It’s in the rhetoric you hear: ‘It’s just not a good fit,’ or ‘They’re just not seasoned enough.’”

Beyond the Buzzwords

Much of McCoy’s work has focused on building strategic partnerships with larger construction firms.

“The first thing is having a shared value around what diversity, equity, and inclusion really means, not just as buzzwords,” McCoy told The Skanner. “People love to put those buzzwords on proposals, and I think it really starts with intentionality around the relationship, around retention. Are you really advancing these people or just bringing them in, and they find themselves struggling and isolated and taking themselves out of that equation?

“What we try to do at NMAC, we bring all of our members and partners together, build a relationship, and make sure no one feels uncomfortable about asking those questions: ‘How do you guys do equity and inclusiveness on your side?’ A lot of it is just being real with people.”

And that is important, because for McCoy, collaborations between NAMC-OR members and larger partner agencies are key.

“The way you cut into that is to see if people have shared values of partnering together,” he said, giving as an example the “added value” when smaller minority firms partnered with Andersen Construction in the recent Grant High School renovation. “That allows smaller firms to build their systems quicker, to train their younger junior employees and their project managers. We stress that to our (partners), we incentivize them to do that on major projects, because they’re growing other entities that will be viable in the minority contracting community.”

He argues it is in the construction industry’s best interest to be more inclusive.

“The construction industry here is booming, the amount of people they’re able to attract in is not even starting to scratch the surface of the need,” McCoy said. “And when you’re more inclusive and diverse, your bottom line increases versus decreases. (The larger contractors) don’t want to feel like they’re bringing someone along to diminish their profits. We’ve been able to show that in multicultural partnerships, that does occur in a positive way.”

Strength in Partnerships

For a case study in diverse collaboration leading to a successful affordable housing development, McCoy points to the Magnolia in the Eliot neighborhood. McCoy served as construction manager on the project, which was helmed by Innovative Housing, Inc.

“A White-led nonprofit does affordable housing, they do it well, and they do have a lot of minority goals they put and apply on their projects,” McCoy said. “I just remember really trying to incentivize this nonprofit to go high and go bold with minority inclusion. We hit a 30% goal.

They’ve gotten more projects as a result of hiring more inclusive contractors and making sure they’re challenging their projects to go further and go bigger when it comes to diversity.”

Phase two of the development is currently under construction, and amenities include a ground-floor makerspace that will be open to organizations like Oregon Tradeswomen, Inc., as well as tenants themselves.

“That’s the North star for me,” he said. “Going back, I was one of those young people in affordable housing 8 project, I had nothing like that. I couldn’t walk down to that unit to my ground floor to do something crafty with my hands. I can’t name another project in the state that has that.”

He also praised the King + Parks development at the corner of Northeast Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Rosa Parks Way.

“Talk about inclusiveness. Here you have (Portland Community Reinvestment initiatives Inc.), a culturally specific housing provider, led by black and brown people as developers, and then they partnered with a major developer (Colas Construction). It was led and finished with a lot of minority inclusion.”

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Poll Shows Support for Policies That Help Families Afford Child Care

BLACKPRESSUSA NEWSWIRE — New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

Published

24 hours ago

March 2, 2026

Oakland Post

By First Five Years Fund

New national polling shows persistent voter concern about the affordability and availability of child care for working parents, alongside broad support across key demographic groups for federal child care policies that help families afford care.

The national survey was conducted by UpOne Insight on behalf of the First Five Years Fund from January 13–18, 2026.

Key findings include:

• Parents need help: 80% of voters say the ability of working parents to find and afford child care is either in a state of crisis or a major problem.

• This is an affordability issue: 82% believe federal child care funding will help lower costs for working families — including 69% of Republicans, 84% of Independents, and 94% of Democrats.

• And there continues to be strong support (62%) for the Child Care and Development Block Grant (CCDBG), a federal program that makes it possible for hundreds of thousands of families to afford safe, quality care for their children while parents work or go to school, including a majority of Republicans, 63% of Independents and 72% of Democrats.

• Support for funding child care programs remains strong: 75% believe child care funding should be increased or kept at current levels — including 75% of Republicans, 85% of Independents, and 97% of Democrats.

• 74% say funding for child care is an important and good use of tax dollars, including a majority of Republicans, three-quarters of Independents, and nine in ten Democrats.

FFYF Executive Director Sarah Rittling said, “Voters across the country are sending a clear message: federal child care and early learning programs work. These investments help parents stay in the workforce, strengthen families, and support healthy child development. They have also long had strong bipartisan support in Congress. At a time when affordability is top of mind for families, continued federal funding is essential to ensure child care remains accessible and within reach.”

First Five Years Fund works to protect, prioritize, and build bipartisan support for quality child care and early learning programs at the federal level. Reliable, affordable, and high-quality early learning and child care can be transformative, not only enhancing a child’s prospects for a brighter future but also bolstering working parents and fostering economic stability nationwide.

We work with Congress and the Administration to identify federal solutions that work for families with young children, as well as states and communities. We work with policymakers to identify ways to increase access to affordable, high-quality child care and early learning programs for children. And we collaborate with advocacy groups to help align best practices with the best possible policies. http://www.ffyf.org

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Trump’s MAGA Allies are Creating Executive Order Plan to Steal the 2026 Midterms

NNPA NEWSWIRE — The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

Published

4 days ago

February 27, 2026

Oakland Post

By Lauren Victoria Burke, NNPA Newswire Correspondent

A group of MAGA pro-Trump activists, who say they are working in coordination with the White House, are circulating a 17-page draft executive order that would claim without evidence that China interfered with the 2020 presidential election. Donald Trump lost the 2020 presidential to President Joe Biden by over 7 million votes. Since Trump lost to Biden in 2020, he has repeatedly claimed that the election was “stolen” without evidence. The report of a group of “Trump allies” preparing an executive order to give Trump power over elections was first reported by The Washington Post.

The lies around the right-wing campaign that pushed falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen was trafficked through right-wing media, particularly Fox News. Fox News was then sued for defamation for the claims by Dominion Voting Systems. Fox lost the case and had to settle for the largest defamation amount on record of $787.5 million in April 2023.

The document that could lead to an executive order proposes using the claim that China interfered with the 2020 elections as grounds to “declare a national emergency.” The move would be an unprecedented step that would grant Trump new authority over the voting systems in the U.S.

The story in The Washington Post arrives as Trump increasingly signals that he may take actions that would alter the result of the 2026 midterms. The Republicans are widely expected to lose as their approval ratings plummet as a result of a failing economy under Trump. Over 50 members of Congress have announced they will retire this year and not return in 2027.

The Trump Department of Justice, which now has a large image of Trump on the side of it, “sued five new states Thursday [Feb. 26, 2026] demanding access to their unredacted voter rolls — escalating a campaign that has been rejected by multiple federal courts and faces resistance from Republican-led states as well,” according to Democracy Docket, a group that works to protect voting rights.

Trump claimed back in late 2020, the last year of his first term, that he had the authority to issue an executive order related to mail-in voting for the 2020 elections — which he would then lose. But the Constitution states that control of elections lies with the states. As the GOP works to place hurdles in front of voting, Democrats worked to make voting easier.

In March 2021, President Biden signed an executive order calling on federal agencies to expand voting access as part of the Biden Administration’s effort “to promote and defend the right to vote for all Americans who are legally entitled to participate in elections.”

Trump’s focus is clearly on altering the November 2026 midterm elections. Trump’s polling numbers and the elections and special elections that have taken place around the U.S. over the last year clearly indicate that Republicans are about to be hit by a blue wave of Democratic victories.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent investigative journalist and the founder of Black Virginia News. She is a political analyst who appears on #RolandMartinUnfiltered and hosts the show LAUREN LIVE on YouTube @LaurenVictoriaBurke. She can be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on twitter at @LVBurke

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PRESS ROOM: NBA Hall of Fame Nominee Terry Cummings Joins 100 Black Men of DeKalb County to Launch Victory & Values Initiative

NNPA NEWSWIRE — NBA Hall of Fame nominee and Basketball Legend Terry Cummings was administered the official member’s oath and ceremonially pinned during a special induction ceremony held on Friday, February 20th.

Published

4 days ago

February 27, 2026

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Cummings becomes an honorary member, joining other role model sports stars

NBA Hall of Fame nominee and Basketball Legend Terry Cummings has officially become an honorary member of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County, marking a powerful new chapter for the 100 Black Men and youth development across the region.

Cummings was administered the official member’s oath and ceremonially pinned during a special induction ceremony held on Friday, February 20th. The moment signified more than membership — it marked the launch of the organization’s transformative new platform, the Victory & Values Initiative.

The Victory & Values Initiative is a groundbreaking youth development program designed to empower elementary and middle school students through a dynamic blend of sports, mentorship, and STEM exposure. The initiative focuses on building health, discipline, character, leadership, and access to opportunity — creating pathways for long-term academic and personal success.

“This is about more than sports,” said Cummings during the ceremony. “It’s about using the platform of athletics to teach life lessons, create access, and build the next generation of leaders.”

The induction ceremony also featured notable guests including NASCAR’s newest Star Driver, Lavar Scott and NASCAR Director of Athletic Performance, Phil Horton, who joined Cummings for a powerful Victory & Values Town Hall discussion. The Town Hall was moderated by renowned Sports Emcee John Hollins and focused on leadership, resilience, discipline, and the importance of mentorship in shaping young lives.

A “Day at NASCAR” for 75+ Youth

Cummings wasted no time getting to work. On his first full day as an honorary member, he joined his new brothers of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County to host a “Day at NASCAR,” escorting more than 75 youth to a once-in-a-lifetime experience at EchoPark Motor Speedway (formerly Atlanta Motor Speedway).

The youth participants received behind-the-scenes access including: an exclusive tour of Pit Row, access to the Garage Area and exploration of the interactive Fan Zone.

The experience culminated with a surprise meet-and-greet and Q&A session with NASCAR Superstar Bubba Wallace, who shared insights on perseverance, preparation, and breaking barriers in professional sports.

The day served as a living example of the ‘Victory & Values’ Initiative in action — exposing youth to new industries, expanding their vision for the future, and connecting them directly with high- level mentors and role models.

Building Leaders Through Access and Mentorship

The 100 Black Men of DeKalb County – a chapter of the largest, national mentoring organization in the county – continues to expand its footprint with programs focused on academic excellence, economic empowerment, leadership development, and health & wellness.

The launch of ‘Victory & Values’ represents a strategic expansion of the organization’s impact

intentionally integrating athletics and STEM to engage youth at an early age while reinforcing core principles such as integrity, accountability, teamwork, and perseverance.

“Our mission has always been to mentor the next generation,” said Vaughn Irons, President-Elect of the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County. “With Terry Cummings joining the brotherhood, along with partners in NASCAR and professional sports, we are creating unprecedented access and exposure for our youth. Victory & Values is about turning inspiration into structured opportunity.”

By connecting elementary and middle school students to professional athletes, executives, STEM professionals, and community leaders, the initiative aims to:

Increase youth exposure to careers in sports business, engineering, and performance science
Strengthen mentorship pipelines
Promote physical wellness and mental resilience
Build character-driven leadership at an early age

Open Invitation to Youth and Families

All youth are invited to participate in the Victory & Values Initiative, along with the other countless, impactful programs offered by the 100 Black Men of DeKalb County.

Parents and guardians seeking mentorship, leadership development, academic enrichment, and transformative exposure opportunities for their children are encouraged to connect with the organization.

As NBA Legend Terry Cummings’ induction demonstrates, Victory & Values is more than a program — it is a movement designed to build champions in life, not just in sports.

For more information about the Victory & Values Initiative or to enroll a student, contact: 100 Black Men of DeKalb County at Phone at 404.241.1338, info@100bmod.org or Tee Foxx at 404.791.6525,