At our Annual Membership Meeting & Celebration, we shared a video of highlights from our work in 2021. Click here to view the video for yourself! Below, you can review some specific impacts we made in 2021. With more possible as we return in person, we expect 2022 to be a big year of advocating, organizing, and expanding our coalition to ensure every low-income person in the East Bay has an affordable, quality home where they can build connections and weather the storms of life.
EBHO’s Impact in 2021, by the numbers.
- EBHO hosted 18 online events above and beyond our regular member committee meetings
- 10 EBHO members attended Lobby Day and collectively they met with 15 different State Assembly Members, Senators, and/or their staff.
- Our staff and members took leadership in the Community Benefits Agreement process to ensure the city will keep a strong Affordable Housing commitment in negotiations with the Oakland A’s over the development of Howard’s Terminal
- EBHO collaborated with Everyone Home and St. Mary’s Center to create a leadership academy with leadership training focused on formerly or currently unhoused people. 2 EBHO staff and 3 EBHO members completed the academy.
- Over 100,000 People used our online resources to understand COVID19 Eviction Moratorium and Rent Relief Policies, how to find affordable housing, and emergency housing resources.
- EBHO created a Housing Element Working Group, where 42 members are working together on strategist to ensure affordable housing and affirmatively furthering fair housing are priorities in local housing elements across the East Bay.
- This year, we had a number of successes in our work to advance racial equity and Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing, including the adoption of the Equity Agenda in the Regional Housing Needs Allocation and the successful passage of AB1304, which requires cities and counties, as part their process of planning for future housing, to analyze patterns of racial segregation in their communities and explain how their plans would address those disparities.
- We advocated and educated for historically exclusionary communities to create homes that are affordable for low-income people in Livermore, Dublin, Castro Valley, Piedmont, Alameda, Concord, Pittsburg, San Ramon, and beyond.
A Letter from EBHO’s Outgoing Board President, Natalie Bonnewit
Dear Neighbor,
For the past six years I’ve had a front-row seat to EBHO’s vision of an economically and racially just world where housing is a human right and where everyone has an equal part in shaping the future of their communities. My name is Natalie Bonnewit, and I have had the privilege of serving on EBHO’s Board of Directors since 2016. My tenure as Board President ends this year and I write today to share some of what I’ve seen, to ask you to renew or join EBHO as a member and to donate to ensure our powerful work has a strong foundation for 2022.
EBHO is fabulous because of our community impact, but also because we make sure our own “house” is in order. Fiscally, operationally, administratively, EBHO has made great strides in our organizational infrastructure and fiscal systems over the last years so that we can support our team, and our members, even better.
As an organization that relies on both its organizational and individual members, you should know that EBHO is in great shape so that we can collectively work to preserve, protect, and create affordable housing opportunities and to continue building a movement that knows that housing justice is justice.
Every day, we see how vast income inequality and structural racism harm our communities. We know that housing that is affordable and accessible is necessary for our present and future. It is a political and cultural choice that so many of our neighbors are unhoused and destitute. As a movement, our job is to rectify these wrongs and it is EBHO’s job to harness our collective energy to help make this happen.
There are campaigns on the horizon that will need ongoing and sustained support. EBHO is a member-based organization, and your individual or organizational membership in 2022 will help ensure the work we must do can be done well. If you are in a position to make a donation, this is the organization I am putting my money on. I hope you will too.
With commitment,
Natalie Bonnewit, outgoing EBHO Board Vice President