Dreaming of a Complete Housing Organization

No housing group can really advocate for everything we need to change the system. But can we dream?

Bigger Ideas 6 : Where We Go From Here 15

I’ve now been working in housing for more than two decades. In this time, I’ve worn a lot of different professional hats - organizer, researcher, writer, policy wonk, strategist, consultant. I’ve been a tenant, a homeowner, a landlord, and at times all of them combined. I’m also a volunteer housing activist, and a member of many different housing organizations - some as a citizen, some as a housing professional, and some as both. 

If you are interested in housing, there are a lot of different housing organizations to choose from. If you work in housing, there are even more. On the one hand, I love the organizational diversity of the housing space. California is an epically diverse state, and a massive state, and its housing organizations should reflect that.

But there is a frustration that comes with having so many different membership cards. I don’t just do it because I love housing, or because it is how I make my living. 

I do it because I don’t have a choice. 

In order to support all the changes needed in our housing system, I have to join a bunch of organizations, because none of the existing organizations in California housing even come close to supporting or caring about the full housing system. Even if more and more people recognize just how broad and complex our housing crisis has become, no organization seems prepared to step into the full void. Add all my membership cards added together and I’m still not coming close to a full spectrum housing perspective, or a complete housing organization as I have started calling it. 

One way to think about it: even the most mediocre of Housing Elements contains a wider range of housing policies than any single organization in the state cares about at any level. Now imagine all those ideas that won’t make it into any Housing Element because they are too innovative or too political or too radical, and you have a conundrum.

Our fragmented housing advocacy system 

There are numerous reasons why this is the case. 

First and foremost, the most powerful organizations in housing - by orders of magnitude - are the groups who represent members who have a very specific financial and professional stake in housing. Each of these groups - for-profit developers, non-profit developers, realtors, mortgage brokers, planners, architects, carpenters, electricians and many many more - have to put their members' interests first. (Professionals often have multiple different organizations representing them.) Regardless of subtribe, they have to focus first and foremost on the issues which they see affecting their members.

Other organizations and coalitions represent certain constituencies of housing - lower-income folks, tenants, people with disabilities or special needs, our unhoused neighbors, HOA residents, homeowners in generally wealthy communities - or advocate in their name. Still others, including many pro-housing or YIMBY organizations, primarily advocate around a slice of the housing problem - local land use regulations, CEQA reform, RHNA requirements, etc. - or around their particular definition of the ‘problem’. Now that everyone has finally discovered the housing crisis after two generations of largely ignoring it, you can add environmental groups, business groups and many other organizations who are now active on a piece of the housing problem - often because that piece intersects in some way with their issues and interests.

Some would argue that this is just an inevitable part of politics, at least in a fragmented society like we have in this county. I get that people are self-interested. People with an economic interest in something are even more self-interested. Don’t hate the player, hate the game. 

But I don’t think this is an inevitable part of housing politics. Other areas of advocacy - transportation and climate come to mind - have member organizations with more holistic approaches, or who at least give you a sense that they are truly open to being holistic. One of the hardest parts of being a housing advocate for me is how many housing professionals and advocates aren’t willing to even consider whole areas of potential change in the housing system. They have their space, and they are going to stick with it. Holistic thinking, whole system thinking, isn’t even remotely a goal. 

Too many players see housing as a zero sum game, or are ideologically opposed to other actors. This means they aren’t just fighting for their interests, but at times opposing other groups just on ‘principle’, or out of spite. They stick with their housing tribe at all costs, especially from behind the anonymity of social media. They will even hiss at longtime housing leaders, women of color who have given their professional lives to making housing better, when they have the temerity to suggest in public we aren’t going to win unless we build a larger coalition. These are the housers who have the classic academic malady - they’d rather feel right than win.

An underappreciated part of this challenge comes from professional political culture in California, a culture which sees relentless focus as the only way to achieve political wins. It’s driven by a lobbying and activist world which is reacting to and reproducing Sacramento political culture. We allow an endless stream of bills every year. Most politicians are not experts on housing, and thus you have to get their attention with a simple and narrow ask. Every group right now is trying to narrow its legislative priorities down for 2023, because that is what they are told to do by the professionals, because that is seen as the only way to get bills passed in this system. Legislative directors and housing lobbyists are some of the smartest people in housing, but they are on the hook for wins, not for seeing the whole picture. 

Thus we get thousands of groups asking for thousands of things, and nobody with a big picture plan or strategy, nobody with a housing plan that will actually change our system. With nobody thinking about the whole housing system, California is still light years away from transforming itself to house all 40 million of us more equitably, more sustainably and more affordably. We have hella folks who know how to play the game, but not how to change it.

Pathways to full spectrum housing

Don’t get me wrong - I am not imagining a housing world where I won’t have to carry multiple membership cards. Some sort of one-party housing regime is an even worse idea than the fragmented housing world we have now. 

Low-income folks, people of color, tenants, workers and even neighbors need to be able to organize themselves to fight for their interests in any system. Professionals in the business will fight for their interests no matter what anyone says. Any more holistic vision must always be a coalition - fragmentation is part of the system, not some sort of failure. It’s like earthquakes and California - the only way is to deal with it and prepare.

The fact that I have the time and energy to see the ‘big picture’ is partly a result of my privilege - I have the time, education, network and most importantly REALLY GOOD HOUSING CONDITIONS to be able to think about the larger system. I can see that my housing future is dependent on others' housing future, both those that live in housing and those that build and maintain it. ¹

But that doesn’t mean we can’t take important steps to make our housing ecosystem better able to see the big picture. We can build a more holistic vision, one that insists that every housing organization - including those that represent the most vulnerable and exploited amongst us - look beyond narrow self-interest or what they think they can win. Very few organizations will ever get what they need or want unless the larger system changes - even the most powerful housing groups aren’t powerful enough to win on their own. That will require negotiation, compromise, or as I’ve discussed it elsewhere, a new social contract for housing in California.

There are also very specific actions that we can take, depending on our role in housing - i.e. depending on which membership cards you are holding.

If you are a legislator or leg aide, insist on fewer bills in 2023-24. Make sure that the housing committees can really examine the package of legislation we are putting together, not just each piece. Don’t hang your hat on winning bills, but on building coalitions that produce multiple bills that work together. Have faith that your constituents are smart enough to see this - do you know any voters who count the number of bills a legislator's name is on before they vote? Or are they looking for systemic change, for actions that add up to something bigger?

If you are professional and a member of a trade association or union, push your leadership and your leg staff to look at the big picture and pursue system-wide changes. Make sure your lobbyists are actually paying attention to membership, especially on issues of equity and justice. Look in the mirror as much as you hold the mirror up to others. There is no professional society in housing that can’t do better, even as they ask for needed changes to make it easier to be better. Make sure that your leg folks have at least one priority for the year that isn’t just about your people and your needs - a political tithe that sets the tone for other potential partners.

If you are a member of a housing coalition or organization, push your leaders to have a wider lens. Push your organization to be less ideological, and more focused on the full housing system, including issues beyond policy. Don’t immediately dismiss housing ideas that don’t fit your playbook or toolkit or whatever metaphor you use. Recognize who you actually represent, versus who you claim to represent, and then imagine a housing system where everyone is represented and folks find compromise if not common interest and purpose.

And if you are one of the handful of organizations in this state that have the potential to be a complete housing organization, take meaningful strides to make it happen. It will likely be a coalition, as a complete housing organization that is also just and effective will not try to speak for people, especially marginalized folks. Academia could also create a meaningfully complete organization, but it would have to fundamentally change how it sees itself, and get over that tendency to prefer being right over winning.

So what exactly is a complete housing organization? 

That is another essay all together, but since I know my housers love their P’s, here are my 10 overlapping P’s that any group trying to be full spectrum would have to include as pillars in their housing work:

1. People: Housing starts with helping people in their current and future housing. People make houses, and people make houses homes.

2. Protection: People need to be protected in their housing, whether from human or natural disasters. This need for protection is widespread and cuts across every line.

3. Preservation: It’s generally better to save a home than have to rebuild it. Preservation is change, not the opposite of change.

4. Politics: Electing better people + supporting pro-housing ballot measures + coalition building with key partners. Better politics = making more things possible in housing.

5. Policy: Better housing and land use policies - i.e. laws and regulations - at every scale. Rebuild our policy frameworks without mistaking housing policy for housing.

6. Programs: Better housing and land use programs - i.e. financing, technical assistance, etc. across different sectors. Sure, some of these come from policy, but they are not the same thing. Bureaucracies and organizations are their own thing.

7. Production: Working to rebuild the real estate industry, supply chain, incentive structures and the housing economy as a whole. Production is not new housing, or a number of units - it’s the entire industry that makes housing. 

8. Property: Changing who owns housing, and what it means to own, control and maintain housing. This is our biggest challenge, and both the nonprofit and for-profit sides of the housing industry need to change how they approach owning, control and maintenance.

9. Place: Housing is always somewhere, and that always matters. Yet respecting place doesn’t mean using place as a barrier to building.

10. Power: Housing should be about the power to house, not power over housing. Changing this means having organizations dedicated to harnessing power, not just confronting it.

I know that what I am hoping for is a lot to ask of any organization. Yet we are currently asking every jurisdiction in California to have a comprehensive housing policy. The least we can do is build a housing civil society that embodies the same goal. 

1. I also have no desire whatsoever to be part of a group that advocates for my class or tenure interests, and nobody wants a housing consultants group added to the current mix. White middle income homeowners organizing to protect themselves has proven to be awful for the world, for low-income folks and people of color, and I ain’t going there under any circumstances.