California YIMBY Education Fund

We also deepened the work of our educational coalitions and networks, including the Housing Working Group, which engages grassroots community organizations to advance racial equity in housing and educate elected officials about housing production, and the Alliance for Housing & Climate Solutions, a coalition of environmental, conservation, and pro-housing groups collaborating to address the intersection of housing, land conservation, and climate change. Our work in the research, policy development, narrative, and media spaces continued to shape the publics understanding of the housing shortage and affordability crisisbuilding support for what could be possible. California YIMBY staff were quoted or mentioned in more than 1,000 articles in media outlets from across the globe. We also helped shape editorial positions at major daily newspapers, including the NY Times, LA Times, Sacramento Bee, Orange County Register, SF Chronicle, Bloomberg, CityLab, Governing, The Economist, CalMatters, KQED, and LA Taco.

In 2022, the California YIMBY Education Fund continued to develop and broaden its platform as an educational resource on housing policy. Major accomplishments include hiring an inaugural Policy Director and Research Director to help lead the development of a cross-sector policy framework and think tank. As a part of these programmatic activities, we released a new report on strategies to combat Californias growing homelessness, including land-use solutions. This report was accompanied by an easy-to-understand animated explainer video. Our programmatic approach to working with traditional and online media is a crucial tool for achieving our educational goals by advancing a strong, research-backed, pro-housing narrative on various media platforms and outlets that reach millions of people across California and the United States.

In 2022, California YIMBY sponsored and helped pass major legislation in support of our mission of making California more affordable and accessible to everyone. Our successful legislative efforts include new laws that will eliminate parking minimums in transit-rich neighborhoods, fast-track affordable housing in commercial zones on transit corridors, support greater diversity in the construction industry, accelerate development of accessory dwelling units, help universities build more student housing; and advance efforts to repeal Article 34 of the California Constitution, which impedes the development of affordable public housing. Our legislative advocacy included developing tools and resources for activists and creating opportunities for them to directly lobby their elected officials via mechanisms such as signatures on support letters, calls and emails to legislators, and the California YIMBY Lobby Day, during which hundreds of community members from across the state of California met with their representatives and discussed priority housing legislation.In the lead-up to the November election, California YIMBY released our inaugural legislative scorecard, showcasing pro-housing leaders in the California state legislature. Seventeen Assemblymembers and Senators achieved a perfect vote score in 2022. California YIMBY also focused on expanding our coalition to bring in new allies and partners to achieve our agenda of housing abundance and affordability. These efforts included ongoing support for the Home Building Alliance (HBA), the Local Elected Official Working Group, and our Rapid Response Team, which engages grassroots pro-housing activists and local YIMBY chapter activists on our legislative priorities. We continued to deepen our working relationships with affordable housing, racial justice, and climate change organizationspaving the way for larger, more diverse, and more powerful coalitions and advocacy.