Many Paths Home
By: Magnify Community
Tags: Nonprofit, Homelessness, Philanthropy, Housing Crisis, Silicon Valley

By Catherine Crystal Foster, CEO and Co-founder

Photo: San José Spotlight/Ramona Giwargis

As the year draws to a close, pinpricks of light and hope are starting to emerge, with the first waves of vaccination underway and the possibility of recovery visible on the distant horizon. At the same time, it will truly be darkest before the dawn for too many of our neighbors. With savings depleted and an eviction moratorium scheduled to terminate at the end of next month, more than 43,000 people in Santa Clara County alone could lose their homes — just as COVID infection levels are reaching new peaks. And, perhaps most important, a recovery that maintains the deep inequity and crippling housing crisis that defined our pre-pandemic “normal” is a loss for all of us.

But we are not powerless in the face of this pain. We each can take action on short-term relief and long-term structural change to keep our community sheltered and safe today and in the months and years ahead. Magnify Community has just produced a roadmap to help local donors find the way: Housing Justice in Silicon Valley: An Action Plan for Donors. Combining high-level guidance on interlocking strategies with well-documented analysis of the problem and its solutions, it offers every donor an entry point to make a meaningful impact in the near-term, mid-term, and long-term.

As the Action Plan lays out, the most urgent need today is rent relief. “Rent eats first,” as we often hear, and it has a voracious appetite in Silicon Valley, where a person needs to earn $132,000 just to rent an average two-bedroom apartment in San Jose. Vulnerable renters need cash, pure and simple, so they can remain in their homes and our community can avoid a massive wave of evictions. Destination: Home and Sacred Heart Community Service in Santa Clara County, and Samaritan House and the San Mateo County Immigrant Relief Fund in San Mateo County are effectively and compassionately providing rental assistance on a large scale, but the need far outstrips what they can supply. Local donors can help fill the gap and leverage additional governmental and corporate funding through their gifts.

It is far more cost-effective to families and to society — as well as more humane — to keep people housed than to shelter people once they become homeless. This is why smart short-term strategies also include funding the nonprofit legal assistance that low-income renters need to stave off eviction. Stand-out organizations like Community Legal Services in East Palo Alto, Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County, and the Law Foundation of Silicon Valley are among those who are keeping our neighbors housed, as laid out in the Housing Justice Action Plan.

Longer-term, the solutions include housing, housing, and more housing. This requires producing more affordable housing, preserving land and existing housing stock for housing, and engaging in the policy advocacy and organizing that makes all that possible and addresses the persistent inequities that deepen our housing crisis.

Local philanthropy plays an absolutely vital role in funding those solutions. Philanthropic capital can move fast, and serves as flexible risk capital, which is well-suited to fill gaps or provide up-front runway to accelerate affordable housing development. It also helps fuel the robust ecosystem of effective nonprofits throughout Silicon Valley that tirelessly work to protect renters, shelter and support people experiencing homelessness so they become stably housed, develop innovative financing models to build affordable housing, advocate for policy change, and more. Together, these strategies provide mutually-reinforcing investment opportunities.

The public health crisis we are all experiencing together underscores the need to shift from the “you or me” mindset that has characterized our region’s approach to housing, to a “you and me” mindset that is necessary to create a thriving, vibrant, and diverse community that works for all. Local giving is a powerful way to translate that mindset into action.

What we do today will not only provide shelter and hope in this dark time, it will change the course of our Valley’s future. Our housing crisis can seem like a labyrinth, but there are many doors in and many paths out, powered by generous philanthropy working in partnership with government investment. As we look expectantly to the flickers of light on the horizon, we can all take steps now to create a brighter present and a more promising future for everyone who calls Silicon Valley home.