Everyone deserves a safe, affordable place to call home, and Community Change is fighting for the resources and policies to make that right a reality.
We advance housing justice through two strategies:
- Increasing state and local revenue for affordable housing. In 1986, we launched the Housing Trust Fund Project to advance state and local initiatives seeking to create, expand, or protect housing trust funds (HTF) to dedicate funding for affordable housing. We operate as a clearinghouse of information on housing trust funds and provide technical assistance to HTF efforts in vastly different political and economic climates, offering ongoing assistance throughout these multi-year campaigns. Today, 800 housing trust funds in cities, counties, and states around the country direct $2.5 billion to affordable housing each year.
- Scaling and expanding resident organizing. Our theory of change is that the voices of people who have benefited from access to a safe, affordable home will transform the policy debate. Working in collaboration with partners, we developed a model of statewide resident organizing network to test this theory in California and Washington. Five years into the experiment, we have shown the power of resident organizing networks to win policy change, including historic funding and tenant protection wins . This model also creates an infrastructure for investment in the leadership of those most impacted by the lack of affordable homes. We launched a new resident organizing network in Oregon in 2019, and will launch a fourth in Louisiana in 2020.