Chamber Collaborates with other Advocates on Housing Summit

The San Rafael Chamber participated in a Housing Summit on June 27th at the Marin County Office of Education with over 30 other housing advocates in an effort to build a coalition and propel joint efforts for housing. Each organization alone is focused, and strong but together we could truly make a difference.

The Housing Crisis Action Group (HCAG) and the Marin Environmental Housing Collaborative (MEHC) convened these organizations and hosted the summit. Chamber President and CEO, Joanne Webster is a member of both the HCAG Steering Committee and the MEHC Board of Directors. The goal of convening these like minds was to identify the goals and activities of each group, share housing information and resources in Marin and leverage the intersection of agendas for more effective and efficient advocacy. The room of more than 50 people, through pre-event surveys and a group exercise, identified their top 3 priority housing goals:
Increase Affordable Housing, Protect Tenants' Rights and Create More Transit-oriented Development.

The advocates then broke out into focus groups facilitated by HCAG and MECH leadership  to identify at least one achievable objective for each of the three housing goals accompanied by strategies to achieve those objectives.

The next steps include reviewing and refining strategies to address each goal, identifying how groups can work together to more effectively and efficiently implement strategies,preparing public education outreach materials, and growing the coalition to include more partners like elected officials, foundation staff, and public agency staff also working on housing.