The 2025 Housing California Conference brought together an impressive cross-section of advocates, policymakers, developers, and organizers—each committed to addressing the state’s ongoing housing crisis. As Partnership for the Bay’s Future (PBF) Policy Fund Fellows, we arrived in Sacramento with a unique perspective. Each of us is embedded in a partnership between a local government and community-based organization, working together to advance equitable housing policies that center community needs.
As Fellows, we came eager to learn, make connections, challenge assumptions, and find pathways for change—not just in theory, but to inform the policies we’re actively helping shape. We left inspired but also confronted with a hard truth: there’s no new money coming in 2025. With state budget cuts and many local governments already stretched thin, the most equitable housing solutions too often go unfunded. The pervasive funding crisis underscored nearly every discussion, reinforcing the need for innovation, coalition-building, and strategic solidarity to create lasting change.
The Crisis is Clear. The Path Forward? Less So.
One theme came through loud and clear throughout the conference: the housing crisis isn’t just about supply—it’s the result of systemic disinvestment, racial inequities, and economic structures that make housing unaffordable.
The Opening Plenary, “Solidarity in Action: Building Power to Transform Communities,” offered a striking overview of California’s demographic and economic shifts, including the growing racial wealth gap, the displacement of long-standing communities, and a rapidly aging immigrant population. Income inequality in California is greater than the national average, and housing costs are the primary driver.
Plenary speaker Manuel Pastor pushed for “Solidarity Economics”—an approach that centers mutuality and shared prosperity rather than individualism and trickle-down logic. But translating theory into practice is difficult without sustainable funding and political will. Many of the policies discussed throughout the conference—like streamlining development and incentivizing affordable housing in high-resource areas—fail to address the lack of investment in deeply affordable units.
When communities and governments collaborate intentionally, enforcement isn’t an afterthought—it’s part of the solution.
The gap in funding is a challenge in our Policy Fund work. For example, in North Richmond, the site team is supporting the redevelopment of the historic Las Deltas public housing site—a project grounded in the principle of right to return for displaced residents. It’s a powerful example of solidarity in action: a community-led effort to reverse decades of disinvestment and exclusion. But even with a clear vision, the project faces steep hurdles without reliable funding for deeply affordable units.
Conference sessions surfaced creative strategies to close financing gaps—tools like tax abatements, land write-downs, surplus public land, and CDFI coalitions. Equitable tax reform like corporate tax adjustments, mansion taxes, and closing Prop 13’s commercial loopholes, could also generate revenue. But most of these ideas remain politically unpopular or fragmented, echoing what we see in our local policy work. And while the message was clear (“organize!”), the path forward was undefined
The place-based community development and state policy strategy sessions stood out for their deep structural thinking. They called for public investment in historically disinvested communities, not just high-resource areas. These are principles we’re working to uphold through the Policy Fund—whether through right-to-return, tenant protections, or housing preservation strategies.
We were especially struck by the discussions on existing tenant protection laws and the persistent weakness of their enforcement mechanisms. Without legal assistance and proper oversight, even the strongest laws fall flat. However, our Policy Fund site team in Alameda County offers a compelling example of how enforcement can be built into the policy from the start. There, community partner My Eden Voice and the government helped pass a Just Cause ordinance for unincorporated areas—an important win against displacement. What makes this effort stand out is the County’s development of a rental registry and a requirement for landlords to file eviction notices. Partnerships with groups like ECHO Housing further strengthen the policy by offering tenant education and mediation services. It’s a reminder that when communities and governments collaborate intentionally, enforcement isn’t an afterthought—it’s part of the solution.
These discussions reaffirmed what we’re learning in our fellowships: real change in a resource-scarce environment requires both strategic policy interventions and strong partnerships. It’s not just about finding new funding sources, but about reshaping how we allocate existing resources to center housing as a human right.
Building a More Inclusive Housing Movement
Housing California did a great job of ensuring that diverse voices were represented. The panels featured perspectives from developers, community organizers, lawyers, and service providers, which added nuance to the discussions. The closing plenary, Solidarity in Action, was particularly impactful. The panel featured individuals who had experienced homelessness firsthand, reminding us that those most impacted by the crisis must be at the center of decision-making.
One major takeaway was the call to shift from a needs-based framework to a power-based one. This means moving beyond traditional engagement to actual power-sharing with unhoused and low-income communities. As one panelist put it: “Nothing about us without us.” If we are to create sustainable solutions, our institutions must actively build community power, not just respond to crises.
This call deeply resonated with us as Policy Fund Fellows. The Policy Fund is built around this very idea: that government agencies and grassroots organizations must co-lead. Each site team includes both community and government partners, working together to develop and implement equitable housing policies. Our role as Fellows is to help bridge the two—supporting policy design that’s informed by lived experience, and grounded in local realities.
Housing as a Human Right: How Do We Get There?
“Housing as a Human Right” was one of the most thought-provoking sessions, where advocates explored what it would mean for California to formally adopt housing as a constitutional right—an idea already embraced in places like Finland and Mexico. Here in the U.S., housing is treated as a commodity or privilege, rather than a basic need. Assemblymember Matt Haney’s newly proposed California Housing Justice Act (AB 1165) would require the state to establish a financing plan to adequately address homelessness and affordability. But its future remains uncertain.
Another session that resonated deeply was “Housing First,” which emphasized the importance of not just providing housing, but also ensuring that supportive services are adequately funded and workforce shortages are addressed. There is a clear moral and economic case for Housing First policies, but like so many ideas at the conference, the lack of sustained operational and service funding continues to be a major barrier to their success.
This vision of housing as a right resonates with us. Through the Policy Fund, we’re working on policies that aim to secure not just access to housing, but dignity, stability, and protection for communities who’ve long been denied them. Whether it’s preserving deeply affordable housing, advancing right-to-return frameworks, or strengthening tenant protections, the goal isn’t just to build more—it’s to repair harm, shift power, and codify housing as a public good.
That said, a constitutional amendment is a long road. What would it take in the meantime to align more of the housing field around this vision?
This brings us back to something we noticed throughout the conference: while there was a broad range of people—developers, community organizers, health professionals, and public officials—there were few intentional spaces to align across those roles. Session after session offered powerful strategies: place-based development, tenant protections, fair housing laws, new financing mechanisms. But we often left without clear next steps or pathways for collaboration. The challenge of siloing isn’t unique to housing, but it was especially visible here. How do we move from sharing ideas to actually coordinating around them?
That’s one thing the Policy Fund model tries to do differently. By bringing government and community partners together on shared teams—and embedding fellows to help bridge silos—we’re building infrastructure for alignment at the local level. The movement for housing justice won’t be won by good ideas alone. It will take structures that support trust, coordination, and power-sharing at every level of the system.
Enforcing Tenant Protections and Preserving Housing
Beyond financing new housing, we must also preserve at-risk tenants and housing stock. The “Enforcing Tenant Protections” session underscored the difficulty in holding landlords accountable, particularly in rural areas where enforcement mechanisms are weak. One alarming statistic stood out: 90% of landlords have legal counsel compared to only 20% of tenants. Several speakers emphasized the need for stronger Right to Counsel policies and more proactive tenant education.
Similarly, the session on Single Room Occupancy (SRO) Preservation highlighted the existential threats facing this critical housing stock. Many SROs operate at a financial deficit due to artificially low rents and rising insurance costs. While solutions like short-term operating subsidies and conversions to studio units were discussed, there was a palpable frustration over the slow-moving nature of policy responses.
This resonated deeply with our Policy Fund site team’s work in San Francisco, where they are supporting research and community engagement around the future of the city’s SROs. These buildings are essential to the city’s housing safety net, especially for low-income, immigrant, and formerly unhoused residents—but without more stable public funding and stronger tenant protections, they remain at constant risk.
One promising innovation came from a session on public sector support for preserving affordable housing, which featured a Fellow from PBF’s first cohort. The Housing Authority of the County of Los Angeles’ (HACLA) has begun using bonds to acquire housing and expand its publicly owned stock. In a landscape where Housing Authorities are chronically underfunded, we wonder how scaling this approach could transform public housing and even potentially advance the creation of social housing in California and beyond.
Looking Ahead: Making Housing California Actionable
Despite the wealth of information shared and relationships built at Housing California, one lingering frustration was the lack of clear next steps. With over 3,000 attendees, the conference presented an incredible opportunity to facilitate coalition-building and strategic coordination—yet many sessions ended without concrete action plans. How can we ensure that the ideas generated here translate into meaningful change over the next year, or the next decade?
Solidarity isn’t just about agreement—it’s about partnership, action, and the willingness to fight together for housing justice.
In many ways, the Policy Fund is already working to address the very gaps we saw at the conference. As a regional initiative spanning multiple Bay Area jurisdictions, the Policy Fund supports local government and community-based partners to co-create equitable housing policies—while learning from each other, sharing strategies, and coordinating around shared challenges. This cross-site learning and networked infrastructure is part of what makes the model powerful: it’s not just about innovation at one site, but about building collective capacity across the region.
For us, the key takeaways are clear:
- We need to coordinate more intentionally—across advocacy groups, policymakers, and developers—to push for long-term funding solutions.
- Coalition-building must extend beyond housing—engaging allies in transportation, labor, and climate justice to build political power.
- We must shift from engagement to power-sharing—centering impacted communities in decision-making processes.
- We must refine our messaging—leveraging stories and data to change the narrative around housing and build public will.
Ultimately, solidarity must be more than just a theme—it must be a practice. If we take anything away from Housing California 2025, it’s that we must move beyond silos, beyond reactive strategies, and into an era of collective action. The road ahead will be tough, but as one speaker reminded us: “We have to remind each other of hope.”
The conference was eye-opening, frustrating, and inspiring all at once. It reinforced how deeply entrenched housing inequities are, but also showcased the power of collective knowledge and advocacy.
As PBF Fellows, our work in the next year will focus on transforming insights into action—through local projects that are part of something bigger. The road ahead is daunting, but if there’s one thing we took away from this conference, it’s this:
Solidarity isn’t just about agreement—it’s about partnership, action, and the willingness to fight together for housing justice.
Now, the real work begins.
