Debates have recently emerged about the role housing justice organizations play in solving California’s housing crisis.¹ Some argue that funders should align their investments with a singular, “pro-housing” view.² These debates often lean on a false binary framing justice-oriented organizations as anti-housing and YIMBY or "abundance" advocates as pro-housing. As a housing justice organization, we offer a different view.  

The key question is not whether to increase housing supply. It is how to do so in a manner that also serves, and doesn’t harm, communities most in need. There are details and nuance to these solutions that cannot be reduced to a binary – involving policies such as inclusionary zoning coupled with higher density zoning, especially in previously exclusionary areas, a permanent source of funding for affordable and supportive housing, rent control and preservation strategies, neighborhood and place-based work to preserve ethnic enclaves, and work to remove homes – the places where we rest, raise our families, and build our communities – from the speculative market.

What do housing justice organizations like The Public Interest Law Project actually do?

Over the past three decades, the Public Interest Law Project has worked to expand housing opportunities across California. Our approach has been to partner with local groups representing those who been historically excluded from planning processes of the past. To support those groups, we authored California’s Housing Element Manual, advocated for inclusive housing policies and tenant protections, supported nonprofit developers facing NIMBY opposition, and authored and enforced legal requirements that open cities to higher density housing. This work advances our mission to promote racial and economic justice for and with low-income people and communities in California and to build a society with affordable housing, sufficient income, supportive services, food security, and health care, free from forced displacement and all forms of discrimination.  

Background and history.

Housing justice advocates have a long history of driving legislative reforms requiring cities to plan for and fund affordable housing, unlocking opportunities for higher-density development across the state. Such advocates have long supported both higher density zoning and the fast-tracking of affordable housing development to counter notable, persistent, and powerful biases against the residents of affordable housing. We have brought suit against exclusionary cities,³ ensuring they both plan for and fund high density housing.⁴ In Los Angeles, advocates successfully fought to remove the ability of a single councilmember to veto an affordable housing development,⁵ and continue to fight for approval of a development in Venice, California that would create over one hundred affordable homes for formerly unhoused people.⁶

Framing housing justice organizations as anti-housing both overlooks this history and overlooks a key fact: markets allocate within the systems they inherit. In housing, the market has been shaped by decades of racialized housing policy. Power and influence remain concentrated in largely white, affluent, opportunity-rich single-family neighborhoods, while low-income communities and communities of color are disproportionately zoned for multifamily housing or industrial or commercial uses. Housing justice organizations bring deep institutional memory of how narrowly production-focused policies, when implemented without equity safeguards, can produce unintended harms—including speculation, displacement, homelessness, and unsafe housing in lower-income communities of color.

History illustrates these risks. Seventy-five percent of those displaced by the urban renewal programs of the past were people of color.⁷ These same communities are primed for “predatory forms of rental entrepreneurship today.⁸  

History has also shown us the need for strong, simultaneous policies that ensure affordability and protect tenants—particularly in a housing market dominated by concentrated investor ownership. Without these types of policies, the impact of current deregulatory efforts is uncertain. Why?  Because zoning reforms are necessary, but not sufficient.  History has shown they can have unintended public health consequences,⁹ often need to be coupled with public subsidies,¹⁰ and can even be in some places, have actually been associated with property value increases and housing construction stagnation.¹¹ One thing is clear: deregulation is not a silver bullet.¹²

In the late 1990s, PILP and partners brought suit against the City of Benicia for failing to comply with state housing element law. A narrow focus on housing production alone would have overlooked the significant health consequences of developing on toxic sites. Through our advocacy with local groups, land was rezoned for safe housing built away from these hazards. Three decades later, we continue to confront similar health risks as we fight to mitigate negative health outcomes associated with poorly planned development.

Two truths.

Cases like these reflect two essential truths.  

First, growth and equity can, and must, come together.  

Housing justice organizations are needed now more than ever to advance development that strengthens communities and expands opportunities for those historically excluded from planning processes. In addition to removing barriers in exclusionary communities, we consider the full range of impacts - from adverse health impacts to displacement to evaluating whether community residents can afford to live in the housing that is built. As Mecke notes in Inside Philanthropy, increasing housing supply cannot come at the expense of social, environmental, and fiscal safeguards.¹³ We do not subscribe to a “growth first, equity later” approach because we have seen how that approach harms the communities we serve.  

Second, our movement’s history demonstrates the value of a big‑tent, multi‑pronged approach to housing policy – an approach that brings together diverse perspectives and results in better policymaking. Adequately addressing California’s crisis will require multiple strategies pursued together. California doesn’t need less nuance in its housing debates— it needs the will to deliver production and equity together, and the courage to reject false binaries.

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[1] Philanthropy Cannot Solve the Housing Crisis by Defunding Justice, Quintin Mecke (Inside Philanthropy, https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/philanthropy-cannot-solve-the-housing-crisis-by-defunding-justice)

[2] Philanthropy Needs to Pick a Side on the Housing Construction Debate, Ned Resnikoff (Inside Philanthropy, https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/philanthropy-needs-to-pick-a-side-on-the-housing-construction-debate)

[3] https://www.pilpca.org/postings/california-appellate-court-rules-huntington-beach-must-comply-with-affordable-housing-laws

[4] Landmark Victory for Affordable Housing in City of Clovis (https://www.pilpca.org/postings/landmark-victory-for-affordable-housing-in-city-of-clovis)

[5] Lawsuit Successfully Halts Illegal Pocket Veto Used to Block Supportive and Affordable Housing Projects in Los Angeles (https://rbgg.com/lawsuit-successfully-halts-illegal-pocket-veto-used-to-block-supportive-and-affordable-housing-projects-in-los-angeles/)

[6] Another Victory in Court Clears the Way for Affordable Housing in Venice (Los Angeles Post, https://lapost.us/?p=65863)

[7] Serial Forced Displacement in American Cities, 1916–2010, Mindy Thompson Fullilove and Rodrick Wallace (Journal of Urban Health, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3126925/)

[8] Inequality by Design: How Redlining Continues to Shape Our Economy, Amy Scott (Marketplace, https://www.marketplace.org/story/2020/04/16/inequality-by-design-how-redlining-continues-to-shape-our-economy)

[9] See, eg. Can We Deregulate Ourselves Out of a Housing Crisis, Urban Institute (https://www.urban.org/urban-wire/can-we-deregulate-ourselves-out-affordable-housing-crisis)

[10] See, e.g. Inequality, not regulation, drives America's housing affordability crisis. A new working paper released by the London School of Economics and Political Science advances an alternative to the ‘deregulationist’ view that regulations that restrict new supply are the primary cause of our affordability crisis. Affirming the inextricable link between wages and housing affordability, the authors state that “interventions focused on market-rate supply alone are unlikely to generate widespread affordability in any meaningful timeframe.” And see 2026 Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco letter (https://www.frbsf.org/research-and-insights/publications/economic-letter/2026/02/housing-affordability-and-housing-demand/) finding that “differences in income growth and its translation into housing demand – as opposed to differences in housing supply – can explain both higher average price growth and low growth in quantity in some metro areas relative to others.”

[11] Upzoning Chicago: Impacts of a Zoning Reform on Property Values and Housing Construction, Yonah Freemark (https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087418824672)

[12] What is deregulation?

In this statement, "deregulation" refers to actions aimed at easing local land use restrictions, streamlining or fast-tracking housing development approvals, and reducing or eliminating limitations on housing density. This includes increasing the number of housing units that can be built "as of right" (without needing discretionary approval) on a given parcel.  

[13] Philanthropy Cannot Solve the Housing Crisis by Defunding Justice, Quintin Mecke (Inside Philanthrophy, https://www.insidephilanthropy.com/home/philanthropy-cannot-solve-the-housing-crisis-by-defunding-justice)