Affordable Housing Month

This past May we teamed up with our members to bring you a jampacked Affordable Housing Month calendar complete with 15 events.

Our calendar included days of action, an affordable housing grand opening, panels to hear from residents of affordable housing, and so much more!

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Affordable Housing Month Kickoff Celebration

On Thursday, May 4th, EBHO held our annual Affordable Housing Month kickoff celebration. It was a powerful night of celebration, education, and solidarity.

Thank you to all of our members and supporters who joined us, and to our EBHO staff, volunteers, partners, and community members for making this year’s celebration happen.

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This Year’s Honorees

Each year at our Affordable Housing Month Kickoff, we honor three individuals or organizations that are going the distance to create the world that we need. 

Congratulations to this year’s Affordable Housing Month Honorees!

Mike Rawson

Mike Rawson is a long-time public interest attorney and housing advocate. For over 25 years, he was the Executive Director of the Public Interest Law Project. Mike has touched many housing issues over his years as an attorney, including Housing Element Law, the Surplus Land Act, redevelopment and more.

Mike was also a founding member of East Bay Housing Organizations, going back to its early days as Oakland Housing Organizations. With his extensive knowledge and experience and his many connections throughout the State and across the country, Mike has been an invaluable resource and mentor for countless housing professionals and activists.

Cathy Eberhardt

Cathy Eberhardt enrolled in EBHO’s Leadership Academy in 2018 and has since been an active member in EBHO’s Resident Community Organizing Program and Oakland Committee since. She provided a key voice for residents of affordable housing in the process to update EBHO’s Strategic Plan in 2022.

Cathy also serves as the Vice Chair of the Oakland Mayor’s Commissions for Persons with Disabilities and is a member of the Oakland Just Cities Equity Working Group Committee, All Home Community Partners Council Committee, and EBALDC’s Resident Leadership Council. Cathy’s experience of being unhoused and living with a disability inspires her to fight for housing justice in every way that she can.

Raise the Roof Coalition

The Raise the Roof Coalition has been working in Concord since 2016, and Contra Costa County since 2020, to advocate for tenant protections, affordable housing, good jobs, and immigrant protections. In a tough suburban environment with a challenging City Council and Board of Supervisors, the Coalition has achieved real wins including the passage of a sanctuary-like policy in 2017; eviction moratoria in Concord, Antioch, Pittsburg, San Pablo, and the County in 2020; a rent registry in Concord and, most recently, a tenant anti-harassment ordinance in Concord. 

Raise the Roof has also drawn regional attention to the reality that Contra Costa County has the highest rate of evictions in the Bay Area and faced a 36% increase in homelessness and called for tenants’ right to legal representation in the courts. Raise the Roof advocated for County Measure X funds to be used to support tenant legal services. EBHO is actively working with coalition members on housing justice narrative shift, the Concord Housing Element, and the Concord Naval Weapons Station affordable housing advocacy.

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Relaunching the Study Room

The Study Room is an online learning portal to take a deep dive into learning about how our current conditions of housing inequity came to be and what we can do to build the world we need. Created by EBHO and rooted in East Bay examples, The Study Room shares information about the people, places, history, and terminology of affordable housing advocacy.

This May for Affordable Housing Month, we published an updated version of the Study Room!

The Study Room is intended to be a living, breathing document! If you have anything to contribute, please email sasha@ebho.org.

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