SV@Home is excited to convene our regional housing partners throughout Santa Clara County in celebrating Affordable Housing Month 2022! Full of in-person and virtual events, activities for all ages, and invigorating conversations, AHM 2022 brings our community together to learn, engage, and act on how we can work to make Silicon Valley a more affordable place to live for all of our residents.
Did you miss out on an Affordable Housing Month 2022 event?
Never fear! Going virtual has allowed us to record many of our events and partner events for you to view at your convenience. Check out some of these great events below:
Week 1
5/2/2022: How Your County is Spending Your Money on Affordable Housing (Catalyze SV)
Update on Santa Clara County’s investment in affordable housing through Measure A. This is a recording of the presentation by Catalyze SV, Destination Home, SCC Office of Supportive Housing, The Housing Authority, and First Community Housing with support from the Office of Supervisor Otto Lee.
5/2/2022: Subsidized Affordable Housing 101 (HAC- Housing Action Coalition)
Panelists discuss the opportunities and challenges involved in the permitting, building, and financing process, as well as what pro-housing neighbors can do to advocate for bringing more affordable homes to their communities and enacting pro-affordable housing legislation at the state and local level.
5/4/2022: Understanding Homelessness Intro Workshop (Destination Home)
A recording of our workshop providing an intro to the causes of and proven solutions to our homelessness crisis. To learn more and get involved, visit destinationhomesv.org
5/4/2022: Community Land Trust 102: Restorative Economics & Decommodifying Housing (South Bay Community Land Trust)
Community land trusts are a transformative strategy to taking land off the speculative market to provide permanently affordable housing and stable communities for low-income tenants and unhoused community members. Learn how you can be part of creating resilient futures for all!
5/5/2022: A Night of Food and Conversation with Chef Bryant Terry (SV@Home)
Bryant Terry is a James Beard & NAACP Image Award-winning chef, educator, and author renowned for his activism to create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system. Here, Chef Terry shares his story of activism, and connects food justice, racial justice, and housing justice with a joyful cooking demonstration.
5/5/2022: Housing Elements: Effective Message Training (NPH Northern California)
The Housing Elements cycle is here, but it can be a complicated, intimidating process for residents and advocates. This presentation will walk you through how to take advantage of this tool to effectively reach residents across the region and inspire inclusive action on Housing Elements.
5/5/2022: The AARP Livability Index – How Livable is Your Community? (AARP)
A discussion of AARP’s Livability Index: Great Neighborhoods for All Ages, an interactive online tool that evaluates the livability of neighborhoods across the United States and helps to identify gaps between what communities have and what their residents need to thrive.
Week 2
5/9/2022: Smart Parking and Mobility Strategies (Greenbelt Alliance, TransForm, & SV@Home)
Learn about the unseen impact of parking minimum requirements on housing affordability and climate. This one-size-fits-all type of policy can lead to bad land-use decisions, increased rent and home costs, and more GHG emissions from more cars on the streets. Watch the full conversation!
5/10/2022: BAHFA: A Regional Approach to Funding Affordable Housing (Enterprise Community Partners & NPH Northern California)
The Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) is a new regional authority created to address the Bay Area’s chronic housing challenges. Santa Clara County’s Measure A has successfully funded thousands of affordable housing units, and BAHFA could potentially expand on that success. Hear about what’s happening with BAHFA, what’s next, what it could mean for your area, and how you can participate.
5/10/2022: Meeting Families’ Needs: Including Child Care in Housing Developments (Low Income Investment Fund)
Including child care in housing has significant benefits for children, families, and communities, but it requires developers and child care providers to navigate new and often disconnected regulatory and financing landscapes. Panelists reflect on their experiences co-locating child care facilities with housing developments and offer recommendations to policymakers and practitioners on tools for meeting families’ needs in Santa Clara County.
5/10/2022: CA’s (NEW) Housing Accountability Unit & Why It Matters to People with Disabilities (The Kelsey)
The State of California created a new unit within the Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) that will help enforce state housing laws and regulations. Hear from HCD’s new Housing Accountability Unit to learn more about how YOU can help hold your local jurisdiction accountable for inclusive, affordable, and accessible housing!
5/11/2022: Cooperative Solutions to San Jose’s Housing Crisis (Somos Mayfair)
Learn about a community-driven process that led us to choose limited equity housing cooperatives (LEHCs) as a strategy to preserve our communities and protect against displacement, as well as an introduction to the concept of LEHCs and how they could thrive in San José. View in Spanish: Soluciones cooperativas a la crisis de vivienda de San José
5/11/2022: San Jose Virtual Affordable Housing Tour (County of Santa Clara Office of Supportive Housing and the City of San José’s Housing Department)
Learn more about affordable housing and permanent supportive housing, who lives in it, and what it looks like. Take a virtual tour of some of San José’s affordable and supportive housing developments.
5/12/2022: Shared Housing is Affordable Housing (Roomily)
Roomily helps home providers find great housemates and turn their spare rooms into long term rentals. This adds more naturally occurring affordable rental housing to the market now. Home sharing can help alleviate the affordable rental shortage and usher in financial, social, and wellness benefits.
5/12/2022: Innovative Approaches For Truly Inclusive Development (SV@Home)
SV@Home’s Signature Event for Affordable Housing Month 2022 features an exciting panel discussion on how affordable housing development can invest in and transform communities, advancing a genuinely inclusive approach to strengthening underserved communities. We also explore how Community Development Corporations (CDCs) and place or community-based development can help achieve these goals. Watch in Spanish
Week 3
5/16/2022: Stories of Recovery: The Housing Needs of Mental Health Clients (Momentum for Health)
Momentum for Health exists to help individuals achieve mental and emotional health, discover and reach their potential, and fully participate in life. Learn more about the housing needs of people with mental health needs, and how safe, stable housing contributes to the wellbeing and recovery of mental health clients.
5/17/2022: Deep Dive on Affordable Housing: A How-To Guide for Advocates (SV@Home)
The first event in our new Deep Dive on Affordable Housing series! Our goal in this series is to empower housing advocates with the knowledge to engage in local processes and to more effectively counter narratives of exclusion. In this event, we talk about the ways government policies have contributed to the housing shortage and who is most impacted. Then, we look at the diversity of affordable housing needs, and the financial tools we have available to make it happen. Finally, we look at the process and timeline for affordable housing development, and identify the inflection points where you can engage most effectively. View in Spanish. Slides
5/18/2022: May’22 Biketivist Forum: The Intersection of Housing and Transportation (Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition)
Dive into the importance of affordable housing in land use and what impacts it has on different modes of transportation, and learn how a sustainable land use model can bring people out of cars and encourage the use of other modes. Land use/housing matters if we want folks to ride!
5/18/2022: Grand Opening of Calabazas Community Apartments & Groundbreaking for Kifer Senior Apartments (Abode Services)
Celebrate the grand opening of Calabazas Community Apartments and the groundbreaking for Kifer Senior Apartments! Calabazas is a permanent supportive housing community that offers 144 new studio apartments. Kifer will provide 80 units for senior residents. Both sites will provide affordable housing in the city of Santa Clara. For more info, visit www.abodeservices.org.
5/19/2022: Tackling the Challenge of Producing Deeply Affordable Housing (Housing Choices & Housing Leadership Council of San Mateo County)
Housing Choices convened a panel of affordable housing finance leaders to discuss strategies for increasing the production of Extremely Low-Income housing and to consider what it will take to house those most in need in the new Acutely Low-Income category (up to 15% of Area Median Income).
5/20/2022: Diversity & the Workplace (CoHo)
Diverse workplaces are linked to stronger engagement, lower turnover, greater productivity, and more robust innovation. But what happens when we – as individuals, companies, and communities – choose not to invest in inclusive and equitable work environments? How might we shape better work cultures that celebrate diverse life experiences, to reflect the communities we serve and house?
Week 4
5/23/2022: Housing, Race, & Homelessness: Ending Poverty in the Bay Area (NPH, SV@Home, EBHO, HLC, Generation Housing, Council of Community Housing Organizations, & Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI)
Ending poverty in the Bay Area will require innovation, partnership, and pro-active, anti-racist strategies. Join us as we come together to outline how we can build a future where everyone has a stable home that enables us to pursue our dreams, raise our families, and build the lives we want to live.
5/23/2022: The Missing Piece: How New Homes Can Help Save Our Schools from Declining Enrollment (SV@Home & Palo Alto Forward)
Most school districts across Santa Clara County have been losing students for years, even before the pandemic, leading to budget woes and the closure of neighborhood schools. New housing can actually help many districts with declining enrollment – avoiding revenue losses and associated staffing cutbacks and facility closures. Hear from top education leaders, and learn how to get engaged!
5/24/2022: Renters Empowered in an Electrified Future (Build It Green)
Cities across the Bay Area and all of California are rolling out roadmaps to lower their climate impacts and guide us towards an electrified future. But the electrification process can have an outsized impact on renters with low incomes, who already shoulder higher energy cost burdens and worse health outcomes. Hear a diverse panel to discuss opportunities for empowering renters in the electrification process and ways that developers, advocates, and policymakers can help.
5/26/2022: A Fresh Take on Housing Preservation Opportunities in California (Catalyst Housing Group)
In a state where over 30,000 homes are at risk of losing their affordability, housing preservation tools play an increasingly important role. This panel takes a cross-sector look at how these tools work today, and how they can be bolstered going forward.
5/27/2022: Policy In Action: Local Elections & Legislative Update (SV@Home & SV@Home Action Fund)
Learn about the SV@Home Action Fund’s work to further a pro-housing agenda through local elections and in state legislation. The SV@Home Action Fund (Action Fund) works locally and in Sacramento to further our housing policy goals. In this Policy In Action event, we’ll give you an update on both of those fronts.