Silicon Valley At Home
SV@Home is the voice for affordable housing in the Silicon Valley. A membership organization, SV@Home works with a broad coalition of strategic partners to address the urgent housing need by boosting production of homes at all income levels, preserving existing affordable homes, and protecting the families in them.
Our Policy Roadmap lays out the key issues, priorities, and broad strategies that form a clear and coordinated path forward for the production, protection, and preservation of affordable housing in Santa Clara County. Annual Policy Roadmap Updates share some of the successes of the previous year and solutions moving forward to comprehensively address California’s housing crisis.
Values
We believe that:
Housing is a Human Right: Everyone who lives and works in Silicon Valley benefits when all people have access to a safe and affordable home.
Diversity Makes Us Stronger: By including the voices, perspectives, and lived experience from people of different incomes, backgrounds, and abilities, our work has more impact.
Centering Equity and Inclusion in our Work is Key: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion inform and shape our understanding of and approach to our community’s housing needs as well as our internal organization and culture.
Housing Policy is Not Just About Housing: Providing safe, secure housing improves educational outcomes, health outcomes, and job prospects while combatting climate change, taking cars off the road, and boosting our local economy.
Working Together in Partnership is More Impactful: Working in collaboration with other organizations and members of the community leads to better and stronger results.
SV@Home’s History
Other parts of the Bay Area have had long-standing nonprofit organizations that advocate for affordable housing, including the East Bay Housing Organizations and the Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County. In 2014, the South Bay did not have a similar organization in place working 24/7 to tackle the high cost of housing, the significant shortage of affordable housing, and rising concerns about quality of life. With funding from the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and Enterprise Community Partners, leaders from Housing Trust Silicon Valley, the Silicon Valley Leadership Group, and the Non-Profit Housing Association of Northern California created a stakeholder process to consider whether a more formal, consistent, and full-time effort was needed.
After a year of study, it was agreed that a new housing policy and advocacy organization would be formed, targeting Santa Clara County and its 15 cities. Based on stakeholder feedback, it was decided that this organization — coined SV@Home, or Silicon Valley at Home — would be broader than our regional partners, focusing on the housing needs of the wide range of people struggling from the lack of affordable housing, from those who are homeless, to those with fixed incomes, to those who work in our service or manufacturing sectors, to those who work for our leading employers. Additionally, it was agreed that SV@Home membership would be broad, including both nonprofit and for-profit housing developers, local government, nonprofit community partners, business and tech sector companies, and members of the community.
In May 2015, the new SV@Home Leadership Board, an impressive group of community leaders, met for the first time and appointed a new Executive Director. On June 25, 2015, the organization celebrated its launch, and in July, SV@Home opened its doors. On January 1, 2017, SV@Home became an independent organization, after initially being incubated in the Housing Trust Silicon Valley. SV@Home is a nonprofit organization under section 501(c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code.
