California is in the midst of a decades-long housing crisis, which the pandemic has only made worse. There simply isn’t enough housing for the almost 40 million people living in the state, and attempts to remedy the problem have been slow. According to the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC), even as the state has worked to increase housing over the past decade, it isn’t enough to keep up with demand.
The Bay Area, in particular, has been heavily impacted. A report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition found that the Bay Area has a shortage of about 160,000 homes. Additionally, in 2017, almost 40% of all Bay Area residents were either cost-burdened or severely cost-burdened, meaning the amount they paid for housing exceeded either 30% or 50% of their household income, respectively. Black, Latino, Native American and mixed-race renters were most likely to be rent-burdened.
Philanthropy’s track record on addressing the Golden State’s housing crisis is mixed, but there are some bright spots. Recently, United Way Bay Area (UWBA) announced grants totaling $1 million to more than 20 local organizations working in this space as part of its new Housing Justice Initiative. The grants are meant to prove both immediate relief by increasing access to affordable housing, as well as support for longer-term efforts to address the root causes of the crisis.
“Our understanding is that we can’t fight poverty without addressing housing, so we are working hard to address the region’s lack of affordable and stable housing,” said Kevin Jenkins, UWBA’s Housing Justice director. “And we’re doing that by answering calls and questions from residents that need housing, funding organizations that provide direct services to housing-insecure residents, and advocating for policies that protect and expand housing.”
UWBA’s inaugural housing justice funding included three separate segments. Grants for the Housing Justice Initiative totaled $640,000; UWBA Ambassadors Community-Led Housing grants totaled $250,000, and Bay Area Affordable Housing Coalition grants totaled $110,000.
Funding for these grants comes from a $20 million gift from MacKenzie Scott, which she awarded to UBWA in 2020. UWBA also receives funding from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, the ECMC Foundation, the Siemer Institute for Family Stability, the Stupski Foundation, and the College Futures Foundation.
As one example of how Scott’s vast, no-strings-attached giving to local regrantors and charities is playing out, this funding highlights the adaptability of truly unrestricted support — organizations like the United Way can devote the money to whatever issues are most pressing in their regions. And while much of Scott’s support for big network organizations like the United Way, Goodwill, Easterseals and Boys and Girls Clubs of America has gone toward direct services and COVID relief, grantees can also use it to back local advocacy and organizing, as is happening at UWBA. There’s even a participatory element to some of this funding.
Programs, policy and public will
As an anti-poverty organization, UWBA expanded its work to include housing justice because, according to Jenkins, “Housing affordability is the No. 1 issue that puts and keeps Bay Area families in poverty.” According to UWBA, more than 32,000 people are currently experiencing homelessness in the Bay Area.
The work of UWBA’s Housing Justice Initiative is divided into several pillars: programs, policy, and public will-building. Funded programs include SparkPoint centers, which work with families on financial coaching, credit and debt counseling and repair, budget planning, job search assistance, vocational skills training, and benefits screening and enrollment assistance, among other services. In addition, UWBA runs the 211 program, an information and referral service available in six Bay Area counties, and the Emergency Assistance Network, which provides support for basic needs.
On the policy side, UWBA advocates for and supports policies that advance housing justice primarily at the state and local levels. That includes tackling the state’s complex zoning and building codes, which often act as barriers to housing construction. “We have to build more housing,” Jenkins said. “We have to be more creative with the way that we’re doing housing. So we can’t have the mindset of the 1970s, where if you build a house, you have to have two parking spots at a minimum. We have to rethink where we place housing, and it has to be a priority.”
In terms of public will-building, UWBA is working to ensure that Californians remain focused on the housing crisis. “I think with the pandemic and the other issues that have come up, what we’ve seen is that housing is no longer the No. 1 issue in people’s minds,” Jenkins said. “We’re working on a campaign to highlight that housing is still an important issue and to combat NIMBYism.”
NIMBY, which stands for ‘not in my back yard,’ is a term applied by some housing advocates to residents who oppose the construction of new housing in their neighborhoods. (See our recent coverage of who’s funding groups opposing NIMBYism).
A participatory approach
With its UWBA Ambassadors Community-Led Housing grants, which make up the second-largest tranche of its new housing justice funding, UWBA has embraced a participatory approach. Rather than choosing the grantees itself, UWBA assembled a committee of seven community members to select the recipient organizations. According to UWBA, the committee was made up of clients or former clients of UWBA’s programs who have experienced homelessness, fought evictions and have sought access to rental assistance programs, among others.
These grants are meant to increase access to stable and affordable housing, address the racial wealth gap, prevent homelessness, and support organizations that work in policy advocacy around housing justice.
Jenkins, who has personal experience with housing insecurity, said he understands the value of lived experience when it comes to addressing the issue. “We wanted to try something different that brought new voices to the conversation, so we turned to those people that have been affected by housing insecurity. We wanted to give them all the power of deciding which solutions would get funded,” Jenkins said.
In a press release, one of the committee members, Jamie Kearns, said, “Being asked by United Way Bay Area to help determine which incredible solutions to the Bay Area’s housing affordability crisis we should fund — it makes me feel like my voice and my experience really matters, and that I can be part of the solution to something that feels so painful and personal.”
The grantees the committee chose are: Adopt a Family of Marin, Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS), Community Action Marin, Covenant House California, District Council Contra Costa County Society of St. Vincent de Paul, Dixon Family Services, East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE), Monument Impact, Shelter, Inc., and Serenity House.
Providing assistance to achieve self-sufficiency
Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency, or BOSS, is one of the above organizations receiving money through the Ambassadors program. It’s a nonprofit organization based in Alameda County whose mission is to help homeless, disabled, low-income and formerly incarcerated individuals achieve health and self-sufficiency. BOSS also works to address the root causes of poverty and homelessness.
“We’re basically serving people at the bottom of the economic ladder and connecting them with resources and helping them overcome,” said Sonja Fitz, who serves as the development director for BOSS.
Founded in 1971, BOSS has a longstanding relationship with United Way, spanning more than 30 years. Recently, UWBA provided BOSS with funding through both the Housing Justice Initiative and the Ambassadors Community-Led Housing program, totaling $37,500.
BOSS is using the funds to support organizing and advocacy work to make it easier for people with criminal records to access subsidized housing, since many people with prior convictions are screened out of Section 8 housing eligibility. Its other advocacy work supports the movement to remove zoning restrictions on housing and to expand housing subsidies.
“It’s very expensive to do ground-up construction. Developers just have to raise money around it. Especially for very low-income residents, like people who are just on a fixed income. Even once you build the housing and put them there, the low rents that they’re able to pay don’t cover the cost of ongoing building operations,” Fitz said. “Subsidy has to be part of the equation. Funds for subsidies have gone down starkly for a couple of decades.”
BOSS is also using the funds to provide direct housing and rental assistance for unhoused families in Alameda County. The organization operates emergency shelters and permanent housing programs, and provides housing search and rental assistance. It also has programs that assist formerly incarcerated and justice-involved individuals as they look for housing and jobs.
Fitz commended UWBA’s effort to put decision-making power in the hands of community members through the Ambassadors Community-Led Housing grants. “They bring personal experience, insight, information, connections in the community that include decision-making in a different way and just makes them more realistic, makes the solutions they create more trusted by the community,” Fitz said.
BOSS’s programs rely significantly on lived experience. More than 70% of its staff — including 90% of staff members who work in reentry programs — have personal experience with the issues the programs address. In addition to UWBA, BOSS’s funders also include the William G. Gilmore Foundation, Sunlight Giving, the East Bay Community Foundation, the California Wellness Foundation, and Heffernan Foundation.
Back at UWBA, Jenkins hopes that these grants will not only support the work already underway around housing justice in the Bay Area, but that it will bring greater focus to the issue.
“We want to ensure that housing is a priority,” Jenkins said. “Affordability is a priority to us, and it should be a priority to all Bay Area residents, legislators, grantmakers, and that we work together to solve the issues around housing affordability.”