Mobilizing Communities of Color for Housing Policy Change

Recent housing reforms in California are pushing local governments to be less restrictive of housing development. Alongside pressure from the state, civic mobilizing is also incentivizing some cities to shift their politics and policies. While primarily affluent jurisdictions continue to contend state law, some lower- and middle-income cities have leveraged it to pass stronger rent control and tenant protections in response to political pressure from local residents and activists. In northern Orange County (OC), a historically exclusionary subregion in Southern California, some racialized communities have reached a critical mass to exert political and economic influence in certain cities. In previous decades, communities in North OC organized to resist conservative and anti-immigrant policies. Displacement pressures and acute housing needs are similarly gathering increasingly diverse and mobilized residents clashing against the demands of wealthier and more homogeneous homeowners who feel as though their suburban life and property values are under attack.