Programs

SV@Home hosts and organizes the annual Affordable Housing Month (AHM) for Santa Clara County in May each year. This public awareness and education program is an opportunity for our housing movement to shine by uniting, celebrating, and empowering our community of housers to manifest our shared vision of a Silicon Valley that everyone can afford to live in. AHM features over 30 events and activities rooted in housing justice with dozens of partner organizations. Whether you are a policy wonk, a community organizer, or just starting your affordable housing journey, there is an event for you.

Click here to learn more, host an event, or see a complete list of recorded events.

SV@Home is committed to creating and empowering our leaders of today and tomorrow by equipping them with the tools necessary to succeed in the affordable housing field. SV@Home’s Brick by Brick Institute offers a suite of programs in policy advocacy education and action, leadership development, and capacity building.

Brick by Brick Internships are designed for undergraduate students, recent graduates, or people with relevant experience looking to launch their careers and learn about local, regional, and state housing policy. Internships have traditionally been focused on affordable housing policy, social justice, and communications to support SV@Home’s policy and advocacy work. Click here to view SV@Home’s job postings and apply today!

Together with our local partners, SV@Home formed the Community Roots Collaborative (CRC) in 2024 to spur community-based development in Santa Clara County. Given that there are no community development corporations in our region, our goal with the CRC is to encourage, seed, and grow CDCs in our region by providing a cohort of partners exposure and education of the existing landscape of affordable housing and community development throughout the Bay Area. SV@Home provides a year-long lesson plan on community development, filled with expert speakers and presentations, facilitated discussions among community leaders, and exciting tours of established CDCs. In 2024, our CRC cohort visited and gained inspiration from the San Francisco Chinatown Community Development Center and the Black Cultural Zone Community Development Corporation.

To learn more and join the CRC, contact Kenneth Javier-Rosales at kenneth@siliconvalleyathome.org

Policy roundtables are invitation-only events where we convene for-profit and nonprofit developers, local elected officials, and city staff in separate meetings to facilitate connections, shared learning, and county-wide coordination around affordable housing issues among these key stakeholders. Roundtables are not meant to be exclusive but intended to create safe, collaborative spaces to gather critical, uninhibited, and diverse perspectives to solve our housing crisis.

Special convenings are held to address urgent or significant housing policy challenges or crises. As a distinguished, affordable housing-focused organization in Silicon Valley, SV@Home regularly responds to requests from city and county governments and other regional leaders to serve as the convener for thought leaders and key experts to develop actionable policy solutions to the most pressing housing issues. For example, in response to the COVID-19 health and economic crisis, SV@Home was asked to convene experts on affordable housing to prepare for regional economic recovery.

Every quarter, we hold informal networking mixers to bring together people from affordable housing and intersectional spaces throughout Silicon Valley to build new relationships and broaden our movements. We enjoy light bites, sips, and light-hearted conversations to build community and allow people to relax while holding meaningful discussions. At each Happy Housers event, we invite our community partners to co-host, showcase their work, and connect with our audience. We also have special guests, such as elected officials, who stop by to meet with the network of housers. To view upcoming Happy Housers events, click here.

Every fourth Friday of the month, SV@Home hosts a brown bag discussion that brings together and empowers the housing community to take action on critical housing policy decisions in Santa Clara County. We select a housing policy, plan, program, or current event each month and invite experts to give brief presentations. Then, we open a panel discussion, allowing our audience to ask questions, float new ideas, and identify areas for shared action. The topics vary widely, including engagement in the Housing Element update process, advocating for permanent supportive housing, and supporting local tenant preference policies. Occasionally, we discuss statewide housing legislation and election topics. To view recorded events, click here. To view upcoming Policy in Action events, click here.

SV@Home has two training programs in response to concerns we’ve heard from across our membership, including organizations and community members, neighbors, and advocates, and reinforced by our local research with focus groups. We are finding that the public is deeply concerned about homelessness and housing affordability, but they’re confused about what we mean when we talk about affordable housing. They’re not seeing a connection between building affordable housing and addressing homelessness or housing affordability. To address these concerns, we developed two trainings: Foundations of Affordable Housing and How We Talk About Affordable Housing. 

The Foundations training program empowers community members with specific core content to inform their understanding, response, and advocacy. A better understanding of what affordable housing is and how it meets our communities’ needs will build community support to advance our shared goals: building and preserving more affordable housing and preventing homelessness and displacement of our community members.

Our How We Talk About Affordable Housing program is a messaging training that equips advocates with the necessary definition, messaging framework, and responding techniques to engage in thoughtful conversations around the value of affordable housing.

To learn more about these trainings and how to bring them to your community, reach out to alison@siliconvalleyathome.org

SV@Home holds special educational and advocacy-driven events as needed to further our mission. These events will be promoted through our Newsletter (click here to subscribe) and our online calendar, click here.