Concord Committee
EBHO has joined community partners in the City of Concord to advocate for affordable housing and tenant rights in Contra Costa County’s largest city. Our concord committee provides education, technical assistance, and advocacy on affordable housing.
As part the Raise the Roof Coalition, we advocate for strong expanded tenant protections and legal services in Concord and Contra Costa County as part of their Housing Elements and use of Measure X funds. Working with our partners in Concord, we have been a key stakeholder in the development of the Concord Naval Weapons Station (CNWS) for over a decade. In this process we have consistently pushed for 25% of the project’s almost 13,000 units to be affordable and sought to guarantee development near the North Concord Bart Station as soon as possible. For more information on our Concord work, please contact Policy Manager Megan Nguyen at megan@ebho.org.
Recent Impacts of our Concord work:
At the Concord Naval Weapons Station (CNWS), the City Council started and completed a new Request for Qualifications (RFQ) for a new Master Developer for the Base Reuse Project after parting ways with Concord First Partners at the start of the year. This was the main focus of the Concord Committee, and we are very excited to see the process moving forward again after a necessary step back from the previous term sheet, which compromised on several of our focus areas. We are continuing to work with the Committee and our partner organizations to ensure that the new term sheet is passed next year with strong commitments to transit-oriented development, labor equity, green space, and, most importantly, the three thousand units of affordable housing promised in the Area Plan.
EBHO also worked with the Raise the Roof Coalition to advocate on the City’s Housing Element. We met with staff, prepared letters, and gave feedback directly to the Council, and anticipate a compliant Housing Element soon which includes some of the changes we advocated for.
Finally, after seven years of work by the Raise the Roof Coalition, Concord is moving forward on a package of tenant protections. These are badly needed in a city whose residents are all too often at dire risk of displacement due to out of control rent and an unregulated eviction landscape. While the final measure has not come to Council yet, it will by the end of the year and a majority of Council has said they support RTR’s priorities.