14Nov

Los Angeles’ Investment in Collective Visioning Sets Trajectory for Leading Edge Innovations

November 14, 2023 F4ICA 0

Setting a shared vision to advance work individually and collectively

At the beginning of the Fund for an Inclusive California’s work with the LA-based Community Advisors, they raised the need for a planning retreat that would bring groups together and build relationships to coalesce in a broad, shared vision for housing justice and equitable development.

We resourced and helped convene the LA planning retreat in late 2019 to set a shared north star vision for housing justice across 15 organizations that continues to guide Community Advisors today. As a result of this retreat participants agreed to take the bold step of creating a regional planning and coordination framework, the LA Housing Movement Lab, to analyze progress, campaigns and opportunities on an on-going basis.

The North Star process was really profound in the sense that we are working in a bunch of different spaces on a bunch of different campaigns, but there is a connective overarching objective that we’re building towards. It has created a mind-expanding experience in terms of how to build strategy.
Public Counsel, LA Community Advisor

By working together with the convening support of the Fund and their north star vision, they have been able to align on longer-term work, not just from campaign to campaign. This is a key strategy in longer-term power building. Each organization continues powerful individual organizational work that is relevant to their base, and builds under this shared vision.

“Not having to react in the moment with 15 different small policy proposals, but being ready to say what we need to decommodify housing, and having that at the start of the echo chamber, ready to roll, that was really, really helpful.”
– Strategic Actions for A Just Economy (SAJE), LA Community Advisor

Creating Leverage for Public Dollars and Policy: $14 Million for Community Land Trusts

In 2020, LA groups came together to advocate for Project Roomkey, which allowed Californians made vulnerable by the pandemic to access affordable housing in hotels and motels. In 2021, some of these LA groups established the Los Angeles Acquisition/Rehabilitation Working Group in partnership with Los Angeles Community Land Trust Coalition (LACLTC), affordable housing developers, Legal Aid Foundation of Los Angeles, and Enterprise Community Partners.

The working group secured $14 million in public funding to resource social housing strategies focused on community land trusts, received additional philanthropic funding and successfully advanced policy changes to work toward tenant ownership through the community land trust model.

Developing and Passing Landmark Policy: Measure ULA

Today, local advocates continue to advance their shared goal of decommodifying 20% of all housing stock in Los Angeles County by 2050. Measure ULA (ULA), an idea that was incubated in the Housing Movement Lab and delivered on by a strong coalition of homeless service providers, affordable housing nonprofits, labor unions, and tenants rights groups.

Community Advisors and their allies successfully drafted and passed this ballot measure during the November 2022 election cycle. Also known as the “mansion tax,” advocates estimated the one-time tax on sales of residential and commercial property over $5 million would generate $900 million annually in new revenue for supportive and affordable housing programs, including development, construction, acquisition, rehabilitation, and operation of housing. Funds will also help pay for programs that provide short-term emergency rental assistance, eviction defense, tenant outreach and education, cash assistance for low-income seniors and individuals with disabilities, and tenant harassment protections. Pending litigation efforts have forestalled the full implementation of ULA.

Los Angeles’ housing justice movement has a critical opportunity to make advances in spite of the lawsuits. Given that Mayor Karen Bass has committed a modest $150 million for ULA while the lawsuits are pending, advocates are now focused on how the city is allocating these dollars. With $10 million allocated for housing innovations, advocates have an opportunity to pilot models like community land trusts, as well as informing the guidelines with pro-social housing components, such as strong tenant management with city-owned properties.

“There is continued advocacy so the city sets a plan and that implementation is aligned with the vision. There is urgency to show that these are viable models…and how quickly we can show success.”
Community Advisor

Leading Innovations: Labor and Housing Aligning

Strong collaboration and connections between worker organizing and housing justice is also a distinctive feature of the Los Angeles landscape.

Community Power Collective’s constituency, all street vendors are tenants. The organization engaged in tenant organizing with street vendors as the pandemic worsened the living and working conditions of street vendors and their families.

ACCE members in Los Angeles are engaging workers on three fronts, including its partnership with SEIU in a campaign to hold the University of Southern California responsible for its expansion and efforts to gentrify neighborhoods and increase displacement of low-income residents living near the campus.

ACT-LA, Korean Immigrant Workers Alliance, and Innercity Struggle are building relationships with local labor unions and worker centers as their members increasingly identify the lack of affordable housing as their primary concern.

As with other regions throughout the state, Los Angeles renters are organizing to strengthen tenant protections and make them permanent. The Keep LA Housed Coalition continues to work towards strengthening the local ordinance that protects tenants from landlord harassment.

At the county level, the coalition continues to advocate for a Tenants Bill of Rights. In collaboration with statewide partners, ACCE Los Angeles, Inner City Struggle, and L.A. Voice strongly advocated for and mobilized their members to secure the passage of SB-567, the Homeless Prevention Act that closes loopholes to prevent unjust evictions, provides mechanisms for accountability and enforcement, and gives residents and cities the power to sue landlords who illegally evict or raise rents.

Leading Innovations: Community Ownership and Control

By gathering and setting an aligned vision, partnerships are underway that are at the leading edge of housing justice innovations in the state, all coming from Los Angeles.

Community Power Collective has partnered with Fideicomiso Comunitario Tierra Libre to acquire and jointly operate buildings. This partnership seeks to build the organizing capacity of its residents to advocate for policies that will advance community control of land and housing at the city and county level.

The Social Justice Learning Institute (SJLI) has secured capital to purchase land and develop 120 units of affordable housing. SJLI seeks to practice a collective ownership model so that residents will become 50% owners of the project. This project aims to “show the city of Inglewood that you can create 100% affordable housing and it will not create a ‘ghetto.’”

Little Tokyo CDC provides technical assistance and capacity building to expand community ownership models through partnerships with community land trusts. Little Tokyo CDC is committed to partnering with local base-building organizations so that BIPOC communities can learn to “develop on their own.”

07Dec

A Reflection on Rest

December 7, 2022 Jazmin Segura 0

21Sep

[VIDEO] F4ICA Statewide Convening: Gathering and Grounding In Community-Led Strategy

September 21, 2022 F4ICA 0

Representing the diverse communities and interests across the five California regions of the Fund, the eight member Strategy Working Group shared an initial draft of the strategic plan which was a product of several strategy meetings, going through notes from 40 one-on-one meetings with Community Advisors, one cross-regional Strategy Conversation, and a series of conversations with each of the five regions in the F4ICA. At this statewide convening, the Strategy Working Group shared how they integrated the information and analysis as well as the logic behind the draft plan and framework. They reflected how this process has been a powerful example of community and philanthropic partnership that centers the voices of those base-building organizations.

It was affirmative for our team to hear direct feedback and guidance from Community Advisors who have been partners for years, and who we continually center in decision-making for the fund. Community Advisors and members of the Strategy Working Group expressed feeling seen and heard in the strategy documents as well as process.

They said we would drive the strategy creation. Lo and behold, that is actually how it is,” one Strategy Working Group member shared. Another Community Advisor shared, “This strategy document shows you have really been listening to us around how we think about our work and what we aspire to do.

The cultural opener, Felcia ‘Fe’ Montes of Mujeres de Maiz, as well as our emcees Derek Steele of Social Justice Learning Institute, and Dana Ginn Paredes, F4ICA Lead Consultant, set the tone for the day. We were able to breathe collectively and acknowledge the land we were on and call in the original caretakers of the land.

This convening powerfully advanced the strategic planning conversation. Community Advisors and key funder allies became clearer and more aligned around the vision for F4ICA 2.0. There was general resonance with the draft framework, goals, and strategies shared on F4ICA 2.0. A few of the main approaches that we all dove deeper into include:

— The broad category of Community Driven Affordable Housing Innovations including the various sub-components such as social housing, community land trusts, and TOPA / COPA.

— Continued capacity building and infrastructure building work, particularly at the regional level, with civic engagement and communications capacities named as important focus areas

— Discussing housing work intersectionally, particularly incorporating criminal justice and climate intersections.

We are excited to share more about the strategies the Strategy Working Group, Community Advisors and funder allies discussed, including leveraging foundation influence in public and philanthropic spheres as we finalize and adopt the approved plan in late 2022.

Professor Ananya Roy from UCLA Luskin Center for Democracy and Power ignited folks’ desire to build relationships with academia and figure out how to bridge those connections and use academia as a tool for their own campaigns. In her inspirational keynote she shared research and examples of power building and efforts on the horizon of housing justice.

The term “racial banishment” stuck with us as she explained that we are past gentrification, and are at a place where city officials and police are making staying in place illegal by so many means. Professor Roy and Community Advisors shared how urgent, and life and death, the situation is around housing for low-income people of color in California. They foreshadowed the need for more direct action as well as use of eminent domain and occupations to stop business as usual of evicting, incarcerating and banishing people from their homes and communities. Funders need to wrestle with how they support communities they work with in these moments.

We gained valuable insights and grounding in the regional context across all five geographic areas where we have focused. The conversations around community-driven affordable housing innovations and funder organizing resonated across regions and with funder partners.

We facilitated full group and break out sessions to gather information on the strategies put forth by the Strategy Working Group – to ground them in the lived experiences and context of each region and for funders aligning with this work. In regional groups, Community Advisors voted on which strategies and outcomes were high and medium priority. This prioritization exercise illuminated how regions feel about the relative priority of these goals as well as which strategies and outcomes are most important in which region. The Strategy Working Group is also looking for themes across the regions to inform the final goals, strategies, and outcomes of F4ICA 2.0.

There is enormous potential for F4ICA in our next phase, grounded in the experience and relationships of our last five years of work. The statewide convening filled us all with great hope and put us on a path to ensure that the next iteration of the fund is completely supportive of what front line communities are asking for. The second phase is taking shape – with fuller details ready to share in December and into the new year.

We’re full of gratitude, excitement and determination to see through this community-driven vision and strategies for permanent affordable housing, stewardship, and thriving neighborhoods across California.

01Feb

Funder Session: Ceding Power to Community Organizations to Achieve Systems Change [VIDEO]

February 1, 2022 F4ICA 1

11Dec

Invest in Equity to Meet California’s Housing and Community Needs

December 11, 2021 F4ICA 0

Fund for an Inclusive California supported the funding of our campaign to end financial speculation in land and housing,” said Rae Huang, Senior Organizer with Housing Now!. “Our coalition members often ask: what can we do to transform the situation we’re in? Communities are looking for bigger structural changes, and one path is to follow the money to understand where the power lies. We want to reclaim our own land, and create housing for ourselves, our families, and our neighbors.

California has the opportunity to lead the nation in housing justice and thriving communities. For this to become a reality, we at F4ICA are committed to joining with fellow funders to strengthen statewide leaders’ capacity for advocacy paired with increased investments in stronger local organizing infrastructure that will add up to a powerful and lasting statewide coalition that works to meet the needs of communities across the state.

^{¹ These principles were adapted from a sign-on letter to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins, and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon; dated June 17, 2021.}

11Dec

Los Angeles Moves Toward Its Housing Justice North Star

December 11, 2021 F4ICA 1

All poor, working class, and people of color in LA County live in high quality housing that is affordable and within stable, healthy, resilient, accessible, and vibrant communities.” The vision includes the need to address root causes: “to transform the causes of the housing affordability crisis, it will be necessary to craft, refine, and advance scaled strategies to decommodify housing.

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, these established relationships and existence of the north star positioned LA groups to respond with greater coordination and a bold, big-picture vision to increased health, economic, and housing challenges.

The working group secured $14M in public funding to resource social housing strategies focused on community land trusts, received additional philanthropic funding, and successfully advanced policy changes to work toward tenant ownership through the CLT model.

Many of these groups also joined in a recent 2021 campaign to ‘Keep LA housed’ which included advocating for the extension of COVID-19 eviction protections and urging the County Board of Supervisors to enact debt relief for renters hit hard by multiple crises.

Moving beyond the immediate response to the current crisis,” said Cynthia Strathmann, SAJE Executive Director and an F4ICA Community Advisor, “we are expanding just recovery efforts and leveraging relationships between F4ICA grantees to develop communications and organizing infrastructure. These relationships enhance our organizing and communications capacity and strengthen our ability to run a well-developed, collective campaign to de-commodify housing.
“A lot of the conversation we had at the cabin retreat still stands but is even more important now,” reflected Laura Raymond, ACT-LA Director and an F4ICA Community Advisor. “We are building a long-term movement and staying grounded in grassroots community needs, while working towards the north star around housing and transit justice.

We directed funds to Community Advisors and their organizations to ensure they had necessary resources during a time of heightened need and urgency. The Fund recognized the importance of convenings, facilitating relationship building, and activating pooled funding to ensure leaders and organizations successfully scaled organizing, advocacy, and power building.

We will keep listening to Community Advisors and share our lessons with philanthropic peers across LA and statewide.

¹ Final Report, Fund For An Inclusive California Los Angeles Grantee Cohort Planning Retreat, December 2019.

11Dec

Bay Area Expands Housing Justice to Encompass Community Well-Being

December 11, 2021 F4ICA 0

We put tenants and community members front and center in our work,” explained Ysrael Quezon, Racial Justice Project Coordinator at FAJ and an F4ICA Community Advisor. “Young people show up to meetings and it’s them and their families getting displaced. This is why we address issues beyond housing. Youth and families struggle with their mental health due to worsening housing insecurity, so they’re getting involved to heal, organize, and build healthier communities.”
“F4ICA and its funding partners provided us flexibility as we deepened mental health and well-being programming informed by the community,” said Pamela Ignacio, Communications Coordinator at FAJ and an F4ICA Community Advisor. “This is a more supportive and sustainable way to invest in people – to hear from us first, learn about our needs, and identify opportunities for groups to partner with each other to build relationships and collective power.

FAJ’s efforts among the Bay Area’s Filipino community did not happen in isolation. Organizers across the Bay Area are increasing their focus on mental health and well-being, recognizing how the challenges communities face lead to very real and human consequences.

The Regional Tenant Organizing Network – funded and supported by us at F4ICA and led by local organizations – is redoubling its leadership development work, pairing recent organizers with seasoned leaders in mentoring relationships. 40 people have gone through this program run jointly with the UC Berkeley Labor Center. Organizers across generations require more support than ever to ensure their needs are met even as they fight for their community’s needs.

We are working to heed the call of base-building organizations urging philanthropy to invest significant resources in leadership development, mental health, and community well-being. The Fund is learning and applying lessons from the pandemic to ensure leaders and residents can sustain organizing and community engagement for the long-haul in a way that nourishes and recognizes them as full human beings dedicated to fulfilling a bold community vision for housing justice and equitable development.

¹ https://www.acbhcs.org/Providers/News/2020/FMHI-AC_%20Filipino%20Wellness,%20Outreach,%20&%20Engagement%20-%20Slide%20Deck.pdf

11Dec

Inland Region Powers Multi-Racial Organizing for Housing Justice

December 11, 2021 F4ICA 0

The Funding from F4ICA and others made it possible to engage in rapid response,” said Sonya Gray-Hunn, Lead Housing Organizer at COPE (Congregations Organized for Prophetic Engagement) and an F4ICA Community Advisor. “We’re moving housing advocacy at the state and regional levels and focus locally on direct services, to be able to stop evictions, utility shut offs, and other denial of rights and services.
“We’ve benefited from collaborative funding efforts of our region including through F4ICA,” reflected Tom Dolan, Executive Director of ICUC (Inland Congregations United for Change) and an F4ICA Community Advisor. “Looking ahead, we hope the collective foundation support for the Inland Region will sustain collaborative investments and enable groups to go deep in our efforts to realize long-term housing and economic justice.

For F4ICA, investment and lessons from the Inland Region have shown us that coastal and inland challenges are interconnected, as are opportunities for building toward our collective vision for housing justice and thriving, equitable communities.

¹ We learned from local partners that the extreme racism in the Inland Empire created a desire for some community members to distance their efforts from the term “empire.” Through discussion with our local community partners, we resolved to use “Inland Region” as the term to describe this region in our work.

² Funding Housing Justice for Thriving Communities, Fund for an Inclusive California. August 2021.

³ Los Angeles Times, Tens of thousands leave Los Angeles County for Inland Empire. February 8, 2014.

⁴ Los Angeles Times, ‘Crime-free housing’ deepens racial disparity. November 19, 2020.

09Dec

Central Valley Builds Power to Guarantee Homes for All

December 9, 2021 F4ICA 0

In addition to pushing for expansive eviction protections, Central Valley leaders launched the Homes Guarantee campaign in early May 2021 that “looks like every person across the Central Valley having a safe, secure, accessible, and deeply affordable home. It looks like racial equity, community ownership, and keeping families whole.”¹

Community Advisors across the region note that F4ICA’s investment of resources and convening infrastructure in response to their needs has helped groups build relationships and power to advance housing policy wins.

“There’s definitely been more collaboration across housing organizations in the Central Valley because of the Fund for an Inclusive California,” said Trena Turner, Executive Director of Faith in the Valley and an F4ICA Community Advisor.

Turner went on to put forward a clear call to action for the Fund and its peers in philanthropy.

We encourage you to develop strategies with your philanthropic peers not only to fund the organizing,” said Turner, “but to create lasting resources that will enable us to branch off into new areas and to push policymakers further in service to our communities. We also call on philanthropy to explore opportunities to leverage private resources to match public funds.

¹ https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/readers-opinion/article253224683.html

Stories

Setting a shared vision to advance work individually and collectively

Creating Leverage for Public Dollars and Policy: $14 Million for Community Land Trusts

Developing and Passing Landmark Policy: Measure ULA

Leading Innovations: Labor and Housing Aligning

Leading Innovations: Community Ownership and Control