So hello, welcome to Island City Beat. I am your host Angie Watson-Hajjem. Every now and then on our podcast, we like to have people here in our community to talk about the work they're doing in the world. I have one of those people with me in our studio today, Sophia DeWitt.
Angie:She is from East Bay Housing Organization. It is a housing advocacy organization, and we're gonna talk to her about housing and how do we bring more housing to our communities. She's also a minister, I want to talk to her also about how the faith community could be a part of providing housing justice for our community. So with that, Sophia DeWitt, welcome to Island City Beat!
Sophia:Thank you, I'm so excited to be here.
Angie:Oh, we are so happy to have you. So first of all, for those of us who don't know about agency, what is East Housing Organization? What do you do? What's your mission? What's your work in the world?
Sophia:Sure. East Bay Housing Organizations, we're celebrating our fortieth anniversary this year. We're the leading affordable housing advocacy organization in the East Bay. So both Alameda and Contra Costa Counties. And we envision a racially and economically just East Bay where everyone has a safe, stable, affordable and accessible place to live.
Sophia:And in our advocacy, we focus our advocacy on housing for low income communities and communities of color particular because we know that those are the communities that have been hit hardest by, the housing challenges we have here in the Bay Area and, where the housing need is most acute. But we advocate for, stronger local policies that will make it easier, to produce affordable housing, including deeply affordable housing, preserve the affordable housing that we do have so that we're not losing it over time to the private market and, you know, making the hole deeper even as we're trying to fill the hole in, so to speak. Mhmm. And also, we work on, tenant protections, protecting tenants where they are in their homes right now so, they won't be subject to, landlord harassment or, unjustified evictions, and they can have housing security. So, we take what we call a three p's approach, focused on production, preservation, and protections for tenants.
Angie:Wonderful. Great work that you guys do. You know, all of us who live here, work in the Bay Area, the East Bay, Alameda, we know that housing has been this intractable problem here that we have not been able to solve. What do you think, as your role as a housing advocate, what are the main barriers, that keep our cities from having an affordable housing that you are so advocating for for us to keep for us to have to preserve?
Sophia:What what are some
Angie:of those major barriers? And then what also the other part of the question is, what are those solutions to those barriers? Sure. So,
Sophia:they kind of, pair together, if that makes sense, both, the barriers and also then the things we can do to help, provide solutions. So, biggest barriers, to, new affordable housing, production are, land, find finding the land to build, money, finding the resources to help get the building done, and political will. So having, folks that are in elective office having the will, to to advocate for affordable housing and and to get the job done. So with land, land is a finite resource. You know?
Sophia:We're not gonna be creating a lot more land unless 's a lot more volcanic eruptions, but there's not a lot of that in the Bay Area. So, you know, land land is finite. So especially with land that is owned by public entities, cities and counties, school districts. If, that land, if some of that land, those cities, counties, school districts don't want to use anymore, for their purpose and they declare it surplus. There is a state law called the surplus land act that says that those public entities are supposed to offer that surplus land first to affordable housing developers for affordable development.
Sophia:And so we we work one of our major campaigns is what we call public land for public good Mhmm. Just to make sure that that surplus public land is indeed used for affordable housing development or at least offered Yeah. And that that state law is followed. And we've done a lot of work on that particular state law. Mhmm.
Sophia:And then around money and resources, we need a lot more financial resources in order to help us be able to construct and rehab the units the homes that we need, for people who need them. And, we need money both for new the construction of new affordable housing, but also, to help with, the subsidy, or the financial support for the services that often go with affordable housing for for folks who might need not just an apartment, but also someone to help them with Social service. Job training, social services, other kinds of things. Right? That can help them be successful in their new home.
Sophia:And one of the key tools in terms of funding that has been successful over the last few years is local bonds for affordable housing construction. Unfortunately, this particular election, it was looking like, and we had worked extraordinarily hard with a lot of other folks in the affordable housing community to place a regional affordable housing bond on the ballot for November, and we were all geared up for that campaign. And due to some very complicated politics, that regional bond, would have covered the entire nine county Bay Area, and $20,000,000,000 was pulled from the ballot at the last minute, so we will not be voting upon that, this November. We're that's gonna have to wait for a future election because the system we currently have is very antidemocratic and unfair to allow, you know, just a third of the population to make the decision for the other two thirds of us about whether we can build affordable housing or take care of Take care of our roads. Take care of our roads and there.
Sophia:And the water the water infrastructure needs that we have in our cities. So that, like, for example, the Oakland Schools can fix the lead problem Yes. In a lot of their schools.
Angie:You know, one of the things that I like about your organization that you are really focused on empowering people to have a stake in their lives around housing and so forth. I want to talk to you about your Leadership Academy. Yeah. And how you have people go through that and really helping them to understand about their rights and helping to empower them to advocate for themselves. Tell tell us a little bit about your Leadership Academy.
Sophia:Been going on now at EPO for, I think it's twelve years. And it's a it's a education, training, and leadership development program targeted at or targeted for residents of affordable housing and also individuals who work for affordable housing developer organizations, maybe for example, in resident services and who so they're resident site staff. And and the program teaches a number of things or goes over a number of things in the curriculum, including the history of our current housing system, the history of housing discrimination, efforts to combat housing discrimination over the years, kind of how we got to where we are now. It teaches skills around community organizing and how to how to talk to your local representative. So folks practice they do a practice meeting with a with a city council member, and we actually have usually one or two, and usually Oakland City Council Members join for a particular day to kinda, you know, to do that mock meeting with with folks.
Sophia:They also learn about, research skills and, everyone like, they break into smaller teams and they do a project, something they wanna research around housing justice or, solutions. So, yeah. And the program is eight weeks long, eight eight Fridays. And once folk have graduated from that, then they're eligible also to join our resident and community organizing program committee, which is a committee of affordable housing residents and others, you know, directly impacted by housing needs, that works on advocacy, for better policies, particularly in the city of Oakland, which, you know, EPHO was founded in Oakland, and it's our core city, although we work in many other cities across the East Bay now. But the folks in the RCOP committee do advocacy in Oakland.
Sophia:We are looking to expand that program and those advocacy that advocacy work with residents into other parts of the East Bay, especially also into Contra Costa County into some key key jurisdictions.
Angie:This has been wonderful, Sofia. I've learned so much about your organization and what you do. Last thing I wanted to ask you about for those people who have been listening to the podcast and who may be in desperate need for affordable housing, are there any tips that you can give people? Any places that you can send them to that might be able to help them increase their chances of getting, you know, housing that they need.
Sophia:Well, maybe maybe I'll talk about first, like, of our past campaigns and then some of our current current campaigns as well. So in the past, you know, we were we were very involved in just the just cause for eviction work in Oakland, which occurred in way back in in February. So, you know, we've been doing this for quite a while. We've been engaged, here in Alameda, in recent years in the in the various, sort of competing tenant measures that have been on the ballot in 2018, '20 '20, etcetera. We were supporters of measure z.
Sophia:That
Angie:didn't pass.
Sophia:That did not pass, unfortunately, but maybe it'll come back at a future time. So, you know, those are some of the things we've done in the past. Currently, right now, we were just involved in a successful effort to get just cause for addiction passed in the city of Antioch out in Contra Costa County. And, we've been working for the last couple of years to get, a package package of tenant protections passed the Alameda County Board of Supervisors for the unincorporated parts of Alameda County, mostly mostly in in South Alameda County where currently there aren't any Yeah. Existing tenant protections.
Angie:Definitely about, like, San Lorenzo.
Sophia:San Lorenzo, Hayward Acres Yeah. Castro Valley, etcetera. Yeah. Yeah. And that suite of protections includes or would include just cause for eviction, anti harassment ordinance, and and also some rent stabilization.
Angie:Excellent. Great. Thank you for that information. I'm sure a lot of people are finding it very, very helpful. Yes.
Sophia:If folks are, in need of housing immediately and looking for resources, one of the best resources, and it's a relatively new resource, as a result of the work of some of the pilot project work of the Bay Area Housing Finance Authority, which was also supporting the regional bond, which we mentioned earlier has been removed. But they've been doing some pilot projects, and one of them is called, the doorway housing portal. So, if folks have access to the Internet and you just go into Google and type doorway housing portal, it'll take you there. I think the web address is doorway.us. But, but it's designed to be, a website where you can look for affordable housing listings across the Bay Area.
Sophia:You can you can tell the website which counties you want to look for listings in. You can and you can select all nine Bay Area counties if you wanna look across the Bay Area or just one or two if you're more selective. And then tell it, you know, like, what's the maximum rent you can pay? What bedroom size are you looking for? And it will, let you know if there are any available listings.
Sophia:And if there aren't any available listings that directly match what you're looking for right then, you can also sign up for notifications if and when a listing comes up that does match. And then the other resource is to go to our website at www.ebh0.0rg and click on the resources tab. Go down to looking for housing, and you'll, find a digital copy of our resource guide, which includes, the names and telephone numbers of all of the affordable nonprofit affordable developer organizations in the Bay Area, most of which are our members. We're a membership organization. And folks can call and inquire if there are openings.
Sophia:They can get applications. And I and I know that's more that's more tedious than, hopefully, going to the doorway portal and and getting some listings right there. But but it is another way to, to try to access, housing resources.
Angie:Excellent. Great. Thank you for that information. I'm sure a lot of people are very, very helpful. Yes.
Sophia:Yeah. I just before we close-up, I wanna, give a plug for people to consider becoming a member of that poll, and that can be done very easily and for as little as $5 a year. We don't, you know, we don't want finances to be a barrier to anyone, but that enables people to to access any of our our programs and also our policy committees where we do the work, that we do on housing advocacy, in different cities. We have an Oakland Berkeley Committee, a regional committee, a faith based committee. We got a number of committees. So folks can can mix and match, pick and choose what they most are interested get engaged in some of our policy work, and also be notified of any of our educational sessions as they come up.
Sophia:Most of the events of Affordable Housing Month, with just a couple of exceptions, are free and open to the public. And you can find the full event calendar at our website, which is:
Sophia:https://ebho.org/our-work/affordable-housing-month/
Angie:That is wonderful. Sophia, it has been a great joy talking to you talking to you about your wonderful organization, East Bay Housing Organization. Thank you for the work that you guys are doing in this in our county, in our cities. It's so important.
Sophia:Thank you so much. I really enjoyed talking to you.
Angie:All right. And thank you for joining us here at Island City Beat. Until next time. I'm your host, Angie Watson-Hajjem Go out and make it a wonderful day. Goodbye.