Post Type
State-Level Equitable Land Use Laws
About the Campaign
Achieving housing for all in California requires bold and transformative approaches beyond simply ramping up existing production models. This includes building social housing at scale; taking existing housing off of the speculative market and making it permanently affordable; expanding community land trusts and other forms of community-based housing ownership; and fully protecting all renters from untenable rent increases, unjust evictions, unsafe living conditions, and harassment.
The state’s housing affordability crisis is entrenched in structural and racial inequality and it will take much more than simple supply and demand to address it. Because of historical inequities, Black, Indigenous, and Latino people are more likely to be low-wage workers, more likely to be rent-burdened, and more likely to live near pollution. Black people represent only 6.5% of the state’s population but account for nearly 40% of California’s unhoused residents.
California’s efforts to increase housing production must advance, rather than undermine, affordable housing and the ultimate goal of an affordable home for every Californian. Housing production policies must be designed in a way that does not displace existing communities, undermine local policies that have been created with the input of marginalized communities, and protect and advance the wellbeing of the communities that they are supposed to serve.
Along with our allies, Public Advocates created the following five principles for equity in housing production, and work consistently to make sure state level legislation and administrative policies meet these standards:
- Protect low-income families vulnerable to displacement, particularly communities of color;
- Respect the voices of those who have been historically disenfranchised by safeguarding and strengthening public participation and self-determination in marginalized communities and for lower-income residents and people of color;
- Preserve and strengthen existing state and local policies that promote housing development for those most in-need at the bottom of the income spectrum, affirmatively further fair housing, and advance housing opportunities in all regions of the state;
- Ensure all policies that create value for landowners or developers recapture a significant portion of that value in the form of affordable homes for lower-income people and/or equivalent financial resources dedicated to affordable housing production;
- Ensure that land-use planning, siting, and investment decisions protect and advance public health, housing, and environmental justice and do not further concentrate polluting land uses in disadvantaged and BIPOC communities.