Eight years ago, the Irvine Foundation began asking an urgent question: what role can we play in making housing more affordable for working Californians? 

At the time—and even more so today—already high housing costs were rising far faster than wages. Families living on low incomes were forced to make impossible tradeoffs just to keep a roof overhead. And we could not ignore the deep roots of this crisis: decades of racist housing policies and practices that created barriers for communities of color and still shape who is most rent burdened and facing higher risks of losing their home. 

We knew that any meaningful effort had to start with the people most impacted. So, our first step wasn’t to immediately jump into funding solutions—it was to listen. We spent time learning from community organizations, housing advocates, and researchers. We explored how power shows up in housing decisions, how advocates organize to influence policy, and how low-income Californians can have real agency in efforts to change the status quo. 

These early grants and conversations helped us understand where Irvine’s resources could make the greatest impact. They became the foundation for our Housing Affordability project, through which we’ve invested more than $40 million since 2022 to support statewide and community-driven solutions to make housing more affordable for low-income workers and their families. 

Throughout this work, we remained focused on advancing the “3 Ps” strategy—protect tenants, preserve affordable housing, and produce new affordable units—while strengthening systems-level change efforts. We invested in organizations that put their communities first, including responding to the need for rural, tribal, and farmworker housing, and in those working to shift policy and expand the power of tenants and community leaders. And we centered the insight and leadership of those who understand and experience the housing crisis every day, supporting efforts to meaningfully engage communities in both designing and implementing solutions. Collaboration was also a central pillar of our approach; most of our work focused on bringing together people and organizations with a range of perspectives, strategies, and solutions and involved coordinated grantmaking with other funders. 

While we know there is an incredible amount of work still to be done, we’ve seen encouraging signs of progress—and positive impacts are still emerging. Across California there is a growing movement to expand models of permanently affordable housing, such as community land trusts and shared-equity housing, that are helping shift ownership and control of land and housing from speculators and investors to local residents. In Los Angeles, community-led coalitions have organized and won groundbreaking ballot initiatives that strengthen tenant protections and expand resources for new affordable housing. And efforts like Roadmap Home are helping groups throughout the state align under a shared vision for bold housing solutions. 

This is a moment of transition for the housing affordability field, with funders, including Irvine, narrowing their investment focus. As we look to the future, we’re heartened by the leadership and continued work of our partners at the San Francisco Foundation, Liberty Hill Foundation, Common Counsel Foundation, and elsewhere who are continuing the work of supporting housing organizers and advocates. And we’re excited to offer a resource, Advancing Housing Affordability in California: A Funder Playbook, developed in partnership with the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative. It shares lessons from our eight years and more than $52 million of grantmaking—alongside CZI’s—for a combined $325 million invested in housing affordability. The playbook highlights key strategies that have made an impact and offers guidance for both current funders and new funders exploring how best to support this work. 

Because the truth is: you don’t have to consider yourself a “housing funder” to contribute meaningfully to housing affordability. There are opportunities to align housing-related investments within your existing mission, values, or perhaps even your portfolio. The housing crisis affects nearly every issue philanthropy touches—education, health, economic mobility, and more; when families do not have a safe, stable place to live, everything else becomes harder to solve.  

Given that the high cost of housing intersects with Irvine’s goal of ensuring low-income workers in California can advance economically, the issue will continue influencing our work even as our standalone Housing Affordability project sunsets. We are actively exploring how to integrate housing affordability and community ownership grantmaking into our existing initiatives. 

We are deeply proud of the organizations we’ve supported and the coalitions and networks we’ve partnered with. Their leadership, persistence, and creativity have built a strong foundation for the next chapter of this work. We hope the strategies and lessons learned outlined in the Funder Playbook prove helpful for current housing funders and provide clear entry points and guidance for those who are looking to step in. And we look forward to staying connected with the field and sharing more about Irvine’s next steps. 

Read the Executive Summary of the Playbook here.