[New Reports] Sharing What We’ve Learned: Eight Years of Building Community Power for Housing Justice
Building political power is a long game — a generations-long project seeded relationship by relationship. At scale, these relationships transform into resilient networks of trust, shared purpose, and deep accountability.
What we have witnessed over the last eight years at the Fund for an Inclusive California is a testament to the strength of community organizers, demonstrating what is possible when networked organizations are resourced to shift power and realize a collective vision.
The Fund for an Inclusive California is pleased to release four new briefs featuring stories and data that showcase the impact of $17 million in grants awarded to power-building organizations across the state. In particular, these briefs share the impact of Phase 2 of F4ICAs work, which ranges from 2023 to 2027, and complement earlier briefs released in 2022.
Based directly on the perspectives of our community partners, each brief provides a targeted snapshot of a specific region—the Bay Area, Central Valley, Inland Region, and Los Angeles—highlighting their unique strengths, distinct challenges, and material wins for housing justice.
Community Power: An Essential Ingredient in Lasting Affordable Housing Solutions
While traditional philanthropic housing solutions often focus on the “3 Ps” (Production, Preservation, and Protection), our approach centers on the critical missing element: the political power of extremely low-income communities to shape how housing is protected, preserved, developed and stewarded. Without organizing and power-building, even the most critical policies lack the sustained political will needed to endure. Building this power is the true key to fostering long-term community capacity to keep people housed.
Formed in 2018, the Fund for an Inclusive California was co-designed with community leaders who recognized that true housing justice requires more than just affordable homes. To maintain a lasting stake in their neighborhoods, communities must hold the organized power needed to shape local development—from tenant rights and public budgets to land use, taxation, and utility infrastructure.
In these impact briefs you will see that power building has a unique and potent role in what was possible in each region.
Highlights of the Regional Impact Briefs
As a statewide fund, our regional approach proved essential to fostering deep relationships and collective visioning. When organizations are adequately resourced, they can focus on collaboration rather than navigating conditions of scarcity and competition. The briefs illustrate what is possible when an interconnected ecosystem of organizations receive long-term, unrestricted support.
In the Bay Area, organizing has yielded successfully contested corporate landlord grabs, created networks of care to protect immigrant communities from overlapping threats, and expanded a tenant movement capable of winning renter protections and advancing community control.
In the Central Valley, organizing has strengthened coordination across vast geographies, built narrative power to shape the public discourse, and has seeded models of community-controlled housing solutions, rippling across cities and counties as they learn from each other’s wins.
In the Inland Region, organizations are in deeper political alignment and coordinated action, growing power for workers, pushing and pushing back against carceral and corporate grabs for their land and labor, and growing community ownership.
In Los Angeles, a shared long-term vision for the region set a path for unprecedented progress toward community ownership goals, shifting public understanding of both the housing crisis and permanently affordable housing solutions, reshaping what is politically possible in the state and country.
A Call to Action for Philanthropy
Together, we have proven what can be achieved when funders listen, co-create with, and trust community partners. In our current political context, these lessons are more vital than ever.
Housing remains consistently identified as the most pressing issue in California. As we enter the final year of this eight-year initiative amid a challenging funding landscape, we recommit to serving as a vocal advocate, funder organizer and partner to the housing justice movement.
We invite funders across California to view these briefs as a fresh lens for their existing portfolios:
- What is possible if funders actively supported regional collaboration and long-term visioning among grantee partners?
- How might power-building—this essential element of housing justice—be integrated into the other issue areas you fund?
- How can we self-organize as funders to support the powerful visions for housing justice that are emerging in regions and statewide configurations in California?
For funders committed to a just and vibrant California, this is a moment to learn from proven models and carry them forward. The well-being of our state depends on California funders taking up the mantle.
Please join us in sustaining this critical work and reach out to connect with ongoing efforts to learn and take action together.
Learn more about Fund for an Inclusive California and reach out to connect about housing justice or our community power and ownership work in partnership with organizations across the California.
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