SV@Home’s inaugural Common Ground Housing Summit brought together a full room of housing advocates, developers, community leaders, and elected officials to celebrate our 10-year anniversary and help shape the work ahead.

This milestone was also an opportunity to express our deep appreciation for our founders: Leslye Corsiglia, Shiloh Ballard, and Kevin Zwick and others critical to SV@Home Home’s creation like Kathy Thibodeaux, who were all in attendance. Their vision, dedication, and belief in a more affordable Silicon Valley brought SV@Home into being. They recognized the need for an organization dedicated to advancing affordable housing through policy and advocacy, and they invested their time, relationships, and resources to make it possible. We deeply appreciate the foundation they built and are honored to carry that work forward.

Throughout the Summit, participants brought celebratory energy, thoughtful questions, practical ideas, and a shared commitment to a more affordable Santa Clara County. Across the conversations, we heard a clear call to align around housing priorities, strengthen partnerships, and secure sustained investment in affordable homes.

Three takeaways will guide our follow-up:

• Set our goals to match the scale of need. Our plans for housing production, preservation, and protection must reflect the housing, resources, and capacity our communities need.
• Turn relationships into coordinated action. Bringing partners and unlikely allies together helps us identify barriers, develop solutions, and build the support needed to advance housing policy and funding.
• Invest in leadership for the work ahead. Experienced and emerging leaders bring knowledge, relationships, and perspectives that strengthen affordable housing advocacy.

Common Ground reinforced SV@Home’s role in leading the collaboration needed to create the conditions for more affordable homes. Our next step is to translate the ideas and connections from the day into shared priorities and concrete action.

Thank you to our founders and to the speakers, participants, sponsors, and partners who made this first Summit such a meaningful gathering. Your commitment has sustained this work over the past decade and will help shape what we can accomplish together in the next.