To know why what you do matters, it might help to remind yourself of what housing means.

Merriam-Webster: Housing is defined as a) shelter, lodging; and b) dwellings provided for people.

Housing is also an industry sector. It's a community of people who plan, legislate, entitle, invest in, design, develop, engineer, build, market, sell, or manage, or rent homes as a livelihood and as a value-generating enterprise. Housing can operate off a kitchen table, in a pickup truck, a garage, a double-wide, or a sleek urban office highrise.

They say housing is a people business. People, and land, and money, and time, and materials make it happen, and some of those people do extraordinary things to make it happen. Just the same, people can get in the way of it happening, and go to extraordinary lengths in their push against it.

But even when that push against it makes land, money, time, talent, and other resources harder to secure and invest, people figure out ways to work around those obstacles.

Still, we are mistaken if we think housing is no more than an industry of going-concerns interacting in the built environment. Homes are not merely structures, homes are where we live. The street, a grate, a bench, a shopping cart, a pocket park, a car can be home, and is for too many.

Housing is a mirror to society. When it comes to housing data, we don't get to count only the ones we want to count when it comes to who has access to it and who doesn't. Those people priced out of housing access today count. Those who don't have it, and don't even aspire to have it, count. People who make up the unmet need, who for one reason or another, don't have the means or wherewithal for shelter, safety, health, sanctuary, count.

Housing, too, is a story about how society behaves toward the people who make it up. It's not simply a horizontal and vertical phenomenon in real estate. It happens across the dimension time--yesterday, today, tomorrow. It can improve, or it can stagnate. For people in housing, our children's children are as important a stakeholder as a board member, investor, lender, supervisor, etc.

The job of so many of us in housing is to expand the universe of people its resources of real estate, money, talent, time, and materials reach. It's not to accept a status quo of who counts today in housing data, but to extend the number of people housing includes and gives access to.

The young child of one of our children. He or she is housing data that counts.

Housing puts us in the business and livelihood we're in. Not the other way around.

These thoughts are thoughts of gratitude to the men and women--the people--who make housing a people business. Ones who count those whose needs for shelter, safety, and sanctuary housing does not meet today, because it's too expensive, or it will cause too much disruption to ones already living in a place, a home.

These thoughts arise in this moment of urgency as officials on Capitol Hill push levers and switches of taxation and Federal funding that can impact lives of people housing counts and doesn't count.

They also arise in this time of profound encouragement from getting to work in and cover a community of people who commit their lives and careers to extending housing's net to people not usually counted.

One example, and there are so many, Toll Brothers regional president and BUILDER Hearthstone Humanitarian Award winner Chris Gaffney will join thousands of executives and advocates across the country who will be sleeping out tomorrow night in the streets [for Chris, in Philadelphia] in solidarity to raise much needed money for the kids of Covenant House.

Chris relates this story about a child of one of our children.

"Recently, my daughter went with a delegation and visited Covenant House in Guatemala. While there she was able to work with and help many girls/kids some of who were only 14 &15 years old. I will share a story in her words which underscores once again, 'why we do what we do' !

“On Thursday I met a 14 year old girl who was the life of the party, who spent the full 30 minutes in our workshop being sassy and silly and cracking jokes. On Friday she found me and handed me this perfect little soul, her 10 month old son. Nothing can prepare you for the moment you realize that an amazing beautiful child is handing you HER OWN child. She wasn't ready to be a mother, she didn't ask to be a mother and it certainly hasn't been easy, but she still finds it in her to joke and laugh and most importantly, love. Amigas por siempre mi cariño, love you forever “ --Erin.

So proud of Erin and so proud of that little girl. I am so happy Covenant House is around to provide a safe haven for all these kids.

We also look west, to where people like last year's Hearthstone honorees, DeNova Homes' Dave and Lori Sanson, and their associates and colleagues support the amazing work HomeAid Northern California does--800 beds, 365 days--for veterans, the temporarily homeless, and others in need of shelter.

And we're so happy and proud that you and people like Chris Gaffney and the Sansons are ones who make housing the people business it is. You are why those who still struggle as part of housing's "unmet need" matter, because they count.

If you want to nominate someone you know who works in housing for the 2018 BUILDER Hearthstone Humanitarian Award, please contact BUILDER's Jennifer Goodman at [email protected].

And, thank you.