Building Power for Housing Justice
Californians are facing an urgent housing crisis. To take on this challenge, communities are uniting. Across issue, race, and region, powerful organizations and coalitions are centering the priorities and voices of local residents to rectify decades of disinvestment and racial discrimination in low-income communities of color.
Building Power for Housing Justice
Californians are facing an urgent housing crisis. To take on this challenge, communities are uniting. Across issue, race, and region, powerful organizations and coalitions are centering the priorities and voices of local residents to rectify decades of disinvestment and racial discrimination in low-income communities of color.
North Bay Organizing Project
Supporting a Community-Determined Vision for Thriving Communities
The Fund for an Inclusive California is a collaborative funding initiative co-designed with grassroots leaders to advance racial and economic equity by building the power of communities of color. We believe that the people who bear the brunt of unjust housing policies and the negative impacts of profit-driven development should have decision-making power to determine what development looks like in their neighborhoods.
For the last five years we have aligned an ecosystem of funders to support community-driven housing justice efforts across California. These efforts are growing community power and creating a state where resources and decisions are focused on the well-being of people that live there, rather than how much profit investors can extract.
Doubling Down on Power Building and Community-Driven Innovation
We are in deep partnership with community organizations in four regions across the state as well as state-wide networks. Over the last five years we’ve supported their organizing efforts and coordination, to build community power. With that power, they have changed policy and centered community priorities at the local, regional and state levels — with impressive and unprecedented wins. From first-ever renter protections and tenant unions, to influencing Covid-19 recovery dollars, and massive Measure ULA win in Los Angeles last fall.
Over the next five years we will raise $25 million dollars to support our community partners, with grants to support capacity building and community-developed and community-led strategic initiatives. In this phase we are doubling down on our commitments, with larger investments and a governing body made up of the community partners and funders.
Ultimately, our funding and sector organizing will help grow the organizing infrastructure in California to transfer power, political influence, and economic opportunity from the few to the many.
Priority Regions Supported by the Fund
Click each region to see our community partners. View full list here.
The Latest
Inside Philanthropy: With a Power-Building Approach to Housing, a Pooled Fund Evolves and Expands (January 30, 2024)
Announcing $1.7 Million in Grants in Our New Community-Designed Five-Year Phase
Trust-Based Learning & Evaluation: How to make equitable choices from the start
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California’s Organizers are Up to the Challenge
People of color, immigrants, and working class people are organizing across rural, suburban and urban areas, advocating for their right to have a place to call home and stay rooted in community.
Our work is guided by the vision and priorities of communities most impacted by unjust and racist housing policies. In fact, the strategies for our next phase of work were designed by a Strategy Working Group made up of nine Community Advisors, representing local, regional and state organizing efforts from across California.
At a state-wide gathering, community partners gathered to shape the next five years of the Fund. Hear from community leaders, organizers and funders about what this community-driven partnership and design has meant for their work advancing housing justice and equitable development in regions across California.
Our Priorities to Support the Housing Justice Ecosystem
Local & Regional Infrastructure
We are doubling down on local and regional infrastructure for organizing and power building. In service of both building local power as well as changing the balance of power statewide, we will continue to support growing the organized base and to link efforts across regions, and to the state level.
Intersectional Organizing
We support the holistic approach of intersectional organizing. Across the state, organizers are addressing environmental justice, immigrants rights, criminal legal systems and reentry work — all of these overlap with safe, affordable housing, tenant legal support against discrimination or unsafe conditions, and ensuring all residents have access to healthy living conditions.
Leading Edge Innovations
We are remaining at the leading edge of innovations in community ownership and electoral organizing.
We are expanding our tools to address systemic challenges with community-driven innovations. We will support organizations as they engage in legislative, administrative and electoral organizing, and invest in creative, community driven solutions like community land trusts, social housing,and cooperative land ownership.
Shifting Power and Resources
We are shifting more decision making power to our community partners. We have evolved from a funder-conceived effort to a codesigned partnership with community organizations, and now through the community-led process we will be moving forward with a revised governance structure that puts community at the decision making table with funders.
East Bay Alliance for a Sustainable Economy (EBASE)
A Growing Ecosystem of Funders Supporting Community Power
The Fund is a space for values-aligned funders to gather and support the movement for housing justice and frontline organizing—often in ways that are new or exploratory for their institutions. We are hands-on, organizing and growing the network of funders aligned to movement priorities. We are proud to have funder partners that are on board and are actively engaging new partners in this work
“Having a strong public foundation partner that is so deeply aligned with our values around racial justice and power building is unique, because it’s an opportunity to partner on not just issue areas but to fund in a way that sometimes we can’t fund it, or to experiment in ways that we often are not able to experiment in our own foundation.”
FUNDER PARTNER
Funder Partners
We are grateful to the funders who supported the establishment of the Fund in its first phase, with special thanks to those who have recommitted their support to our next phase of work in 2023 and beyond.
Get in Touch
We welcome you to reach out to learn more about the community partners, funding partners, and the work underway through the Fund for an Inclusive California. Email us as [email protected].
Community Power Collective
Local and Regional Infrastructure
Through funding and connections made through F4ICA, organizations in the Central Valley developed a powerful housing justice coalition of organizers, legal services and policy advocates. Together, they have secured multiple renter protections across counties, leveraged their regional efforts into statewide wins, and even connected to national efforts, participating in briefings with the White House Housing Summit on the importance of eviction prevention.
PUEBLO UNIDO COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION
Intersectional Organizing
Community Advisors in the Inland Region are responding to multiple, intersecting issues including displaced families, communities emerging from incarceration and undocumented immigrants who face unique challenges with housing access. They have emphasized the need for F4ICA’s continued support of intersectional work that connects the issues of housing, immigrant rights, and infrastructure for clean water and reduced air pollution.
LA HOUSING MOVEMENT LAB
Leading Edge Innovations
A hallmark of Los Angeles Community Advisors’ efforts is advancing a collective vision that employs their unique strengths toward a region that prioritizes people over profit. They have been at the leading edge of innovative community-led solutions including landmark policy wins like Measure ULA, leveraging millions of public dollars, expanding community ownership models, and unique partnerships with labor.
F4ICA 2022 Statewide Gathering
Shifting Power and Resources
The Strategy Working Group made up of nine Community Advisors led strategy development for this phase of work, including the Fund’s vision, values, and power building goals and strategies. This is one way we are furthering our practice of transparent, accountable, and movement-aligned philanthropy.