Learn from some of the Bay Area’s preeminent housing experts about how your city can plan for affordable housing. At HLC’s Affordable Housing for the Next Generation event, Craig Castellanet of the Public Interest Law Project, Nevada Merriman of MidPen Housing, and Kalisha Webster of Housing Choices will discuss the history of housing law in California and identify ways cities can best plan for affordable housing options in the future. 

Every eight years, cities across California update their housing laws to plan for more affordable housing. Cities plan for new housing by updating their housing elements. Housing elements are contracts between cities and the state government, legal documents in which cities make specific commitments to change their laws in ways that promote affordable housing production. 

Over the past five years, new state laws have required cities to plan for more affordable housing than ever before. However, every city in California has been required to maintain and regularly update a housing element since 1969. Therefore, housing activists have decades of experience using the housing element process to promote affordable housing–and we can learn from them!