What’s ahead for the Fund for an Inclusive California

We believe that all people regardless of income have the right to a safe, healthy, affordable, and stable place to call home.

But in neighborhoods across California, and increasingly across the globe, housing is treated as a commodity – a tool for private capital, real estate developers, and speculators to extract profits and wealth away from communities, rather than as an affordable, safe, and stable place where all community members can live and thrive.

Private capital speculation and the unjust housing conditions in its wake are rooted in decades of neighborhood disinvestment, systemic racism, and anti-immigrant policies that particularly harm Black and Indigenous people and immigrant communities. While housing justice groups have made strides in the areas of tenant rights and affordable housing production, the influx of speculative capital and growth of profit-driven housing in communities of color and immigrant communities continue to undermine their political and economic power to determine what happens in their own neighborhoods.

The Fund for an Inclusive California invests in the leadership of communities directly impacted by unjust, racist housing policies to build their individual and collective power for housing justice and equitable development. We are a collective of funders who align our resources with community organizers and community-led coalitions across the state to ensure residents have the power to shape their own neighborhoods so they will access a place they can call home, and experience joy, equity, and well-being.

We are committed to pushing the leading edge of what’s possible in philanthropy in service to our bold, unapologetic vision for housing justice and equitable development. In 2022, the Fund will build on what we’ve learned in our initial three-year phase to deepen our investments in power-building strategies led by immigrants, Black, Indigenous, and people of color.

Building on our initial phase of work, we will deepen our support for organizing and leadership development models, pilot new strategies, and expand our set of strategic tools as we continue our commitment to power-building investments in communities with the most to gain from social, political, and economic development. The Fund will continue to align our philanthropic resources and networks, and amplify the leadership of Community Advisors whose vision we will follow as we plan for what’s ahead.

In 2022, we will convene funding partners and community advisors from across the state to assess our impact, scale and grow our resources, and move forward with plans to launch a 10+ year community-driven vision.

Transformational change takes time. We are making investments to build power in today’s communities and for generations to come. To ensure long-term systems change, we need to provide long-term, unrestricted, and flexible grantmaking commitments that invest in the leadership and vision of the communities most affected by housing injustice.

We have an opportunity to act boldly from a place of trust and solidarity, continuing to resource power building for racial and economic justice and long-term systems change.

We look forward to continued work with funding partners as we co-design F4ICA’s next phase with the Community Advisors, without whom housing justice and thriving communities will not be made real. We invite those committed to racial and economic justice to join us as we progress on our journey.