East Bay Housing Organizations began as a series of informal, monthly brown bag lunches. Affordable housing developers, architects, advocates, city staff, and community activists gathered to discuss how to advance affordable housing in Oakland.
For our 40th Anniversary in 2024, in the spirit of the year’s theme, Powerful Legacy, Powerful Future, we launched a monthly series of virtual Lunch & Learn events, where we learned from the past 40 years of successful advocacy to help guide us as we mobilize for future action. Now in 2025, we are excited to continue this series into a new year! This series is free and open to the public. RSVP for Zoom information.
Topics will be announced every quarter. Learn more about our upcoming Lunch & Learn events below.
Recordings and materials from each session will be made available shortly after each event.
You can (re)watch all of our webinars and download the materials from 2024 Lunch & Learns here.
Upcoming Events
May — Skipped for Affordable Housing Month!
June — Concord Naval Weapons Station
June 26th
Postponed! March — EBHO’s Strategic Plan: Progress Report
We need to postpone our March Lunch & Learn session, EBHO’s Strategic Plan: Progress Report, originally scheduled for this coming Thursday, March 27th. We apologize for any inconvenience, but rest assured, the EBHO team is looking forward to hosting this Lunch & Learn topic later this year. Keep an eye out for an announcement of the new date!
New date TBA
EBHO is just over halfway through the four-year period laid out in our Strategic Plan. Published in 2022, our Strategic Plan details EBHO’s strategic priorities and goals, providing a roadmap to guide us through the years 2023-2026.
This Lunch & Learn will serve as a space to showcase our accomplishments so far and identify areas of focus and our plan for the next two years. We would also like to hear from you! We invite members and attendees to share their input on which strategic goals they would like us to focus on in the coming years.
Past Events
January — Leadership Academy Turns 10: A Decade of Building Community Power
January 23rd
At East Bay Housing Organizations, we believe that the people most affected by affordable housing policy should be at the forefront of the housing justice movement. We launched the Leadership Academy in 2015, after hearing from resident organizers that they wanted to learn more about housing policy and organizing skills.
Many of our Leadership Academy alumni also participate in Residents United Network (RUN), a branch of Housing California that brings together people who live in or need affordable housing and who believe every Californian deserves a safe and stable place to call home. Through our partnership with RUN, Bay Area leaders have taken powerful action to make sure that our State Representatives vote for affordable housing.
In our first Lunch & Learn of the year, we heard from EBHO Leadership Academy staff and participants about the program, how to apply to join the 2025 cohort, and how to get involved with RUN.
February — Community Land Trusts (CLTs): A Community-Centered Permanent Affordable Housing Model
February 27th
Affordable Housing comes in lots of different flavors. Community Land Trusts (CLT’s) are one model that: ensures affordability in perpetuity, centers residents, and removes real estate from the speculative market.
Join EBHO’s Executive Director, Lindsay Haddix, in conversation with Asn Ndiaye, Executive Director of Northern California Land Trust (NCLT), and Matt Gustafson, Director of Strategic Development, and Resident and former Board Member, Regina Mouton, from Bay Area Community Land Trust (BACLT). We discussed how community land trusts work, the benefits of and challenges facing this model, how to find and apply for CLT units in the East Bay, and how you can advocate for more housing that is community-centered and forever affordable!
April — Housing Elements 102
April 24th
This Lunch & Learn is a followup to our Housing Elements 101 session in February 2024. This upcoming Lunch & Learn will dive deeper into Annual Progress Reports (APRs) and how to engage in advocacy.
After all our efforts advocating for local Housing Elements with strong provisions for affordable housing, tenant protections, and affirmatively furthering fair housing, it’s now time to make sure they’re implemented.
State law requires each jurisdiction to prepare an Annual Progress Report (APR) on the status of their Housing Element and progress in it’s implementation, using forms and definitions adopted by the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). In addition, the report must be considered at an annual public meeting before the legislative body where members of the public are allowed to provide oral testimony and written comments. However, understanding these reporting forms can be challenging.
You’ll gain practical tools on how to read and interpret these forms, as well as how to interpret the data the State posts in its Annual Progress Reports Dashboard.