Pandemic stalls affordable housing plans but creates opportunities for South Bay land trust Luis Moreno knows the struggle for housing in Silicon Valley. His aunt, a single mother with three children, was homeless for three years. “We weren’t really able to help her,” Moreno said. “Nobody in our family really had the resources to say, … Read more
It’s no secret that Oakland has seen massive rent hikes in the past several years. It’s also no mystery how it happened–when tenants were priced out of San Francisco, Berkeley, and other increasingly expensive Bay Area neighborhoods, rental occupancy grew feverishly in Oakland, and landlords and market-rate developers responded in kind. However, to date, East … Read more
Last month, the Challenge Grant cohort of housing justice champions from across the Bay Area came together to discuss their policy efforts in tenant protection and affordable housing preservation. This convening comes at the end of almost a year of working toward policy goals during an unprecedented time. When we started this work, no one could have imagined we would … Read more
East Palo Alto Considers Funding Community Land Trusts The East Palo Alto Challenge Grant has three main goals: (1) establish a sustainable funding source for housing preservation; (2) launch a preservation model centered on a Community Land Trust (CLT) to acquire, rehabilitate, and redevelop properties; and (3) design and support the passage of local preservation … Read more
America’s housing system was never just built to create housing. It was designed to maintain racially and economically segregated neighborhoods and it rests on a long legacy of inequity, specifically anti-Black racism. In this sense, our housing system isn’t really broken. Its weakness in this moment—in the pandemic—just shows that it’s working as designed. COVID-19 … Read more
Outreach for Equitable Housing Policies in Berkeley Anna Cash Berkeley’s Challenge Grant focuses on addressing systemic discrimination and displacement through two policy efforts we are excited to continue work on in 2021: a Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act (TOPA) and a housing preference policy. Key community partners in this work include East Bay Community Law Center, Northern California Land Trust, Bay Area Community Land Trust, … Read more
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