2022 Workshop Proposal Guidelines

2022 Housing California Annual Conference Proposal Guidelines

The 2022 Annual Conference will embrace the vision, values, and goals of California’s Roadmap Home 2030 and reflect Housing California’s focus on creating systems changes and structural reforms essential to realize the California Dream with homes, health, and wealth for all in thriving, sustainable communities.

The Roadmap Home 2030, co-led by Housing California and California Housing Partnership, proposes four big goals, reflected in the first four tracks below: 1) Create 1.2 million affordable homes, 2) Protect 1 million low-income renter households from losing their homes, 3) End homelessness for more than 160,000 who are unhoused every night, and 4) Close racial equity gaps in housing and homelessness. Together, we advance the Roadmap’s vision and goals by shaping a new housing justice narrative and by building and shifting power, reflected in the last two tracks.

The Roadmap also includes a five-pillar equity-centered framework for structural change: 1) Invest in our values, 2) Promote fairness in the tax and finance systems, 3) Reimagine growth, 4) Protect people, and 5) Create accountability and efficiency in housing and homelessness systems.

For more on both the four goals and five pillars, visit www.RoadmapHome2030.org. Because housing and homelessness issues are inextricably linked and effective solutions require us to break out of our siloes, workshops should relate to more than one track and more than one pillar, and this should be reflected in the speakers and the topics addressed.

Help advance this shared vision by creating innovative, interactive workshops and learning labs that push the field. Please follow the guidelines below as you develop your proposal.

  • Workshop sessions will be 75 minutes (one hour and fifteen minutes) in length to allow for more networking time during the conference. Learning Labs will be 4 hours in length.
  • Four (4) people maximum may present during a workshop. This may be one (1) moderator and three (3) co-presenters or a combination of four (4) people of your choosing. Learning Labs may include more speakers.
  • Proposals need to be complete and clearly articulate the session’s proposed purpose and goals. Housing CA reserves the right to work with you to modify the title, track, and description.
  • Sessions should meaningfully address justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism within the topic presented and the speakers included.
  • We encourage you to push the field. Be innovative and/or controversial and allow for lively, interactive participation among panelists and the audience.
  • Sessions with interactive formats are encouraged. A workshop that engages the audience will be selected over the standard panel presentation on the same topic.
  • Strive for originality in the approach of your topic. If there are two proposals with the same subject matter, the proposal with the most innovative approach will prevail.
  • Consider statewide approaches when creating your workshop. Proposals with a local or regional focus, or those that spotlight one example only, may not be as competitive.
  • Identifying panelists at the time of the proposal is strongly encouraged. If you do not have a specific person confirmed, writing “someone from X organization” is the second-best strategy.
  • Proposals that highlight one agency, product, or business, may be interpreted as an “infomercial” and will be disqualified.

Track Descriptions and Topic Examples

(Your workshops should cross-reference tracks):

Track 1: Create Affordable Homes

Proposals that address:

  • Equity-centered policy strategy and solutions to produce and preserve affordable homes, including:
    • Legislative, electoral, administrative, and budgetary policy at the local, regional, state or federal level
    • Investments in affordable housing production and preservation
    • Land use reforms and enforcement to promote affordable housing development and inclusive communities
  • Construction, design and entitlement, sustainable practices, and development and preservation innovations, including:
    • Innovative and/or equitable rental and ownership structures, such as community land trusts, cooperatives, and sweat equity
    • Zero net energy, solar, energy efficiency, and weatherization
    • Prefab, modular, and other construction types
    • Develop for different neighborhood and geography types (e.g., urban, rural, suburban) and population types (e.g., seniors, youth, tribal, individuals with disabilities)
  • Finance for rental and ownership housing, including:
    • The latest changes, innovations, and competitive best practices for local, state, federal, and other financing programs
    • Asset management
  • Managing and owning a property and providing resources, opportunities, and protections to potential and current residents, including:
    • Lease-up and compliance
    • Funding for resident services
    • Build and maintain innovative partner and community relationships
    • Trauma-informed management
    • Preventative approaches to help residents stay housed
    • COVID safety measures

Track 2: End Homelessness

Proposals that address:

  • Equity-centered policy strategy and solutions to end homelessness, including:
    • Legislative, electoral, administrative, and budgetary policy at the local, regional, state or federal levels
    • Investments in homelessness solutions
  • Housing First, resources, and public programs for service providers and residents
  • Best practices and partnerships to end homelessness, including:
    • Supportive housing, rapid re-housing, emergency responses, bridge housing, service provision, diversion, and prevention
    • Solutions to barriers and inequities involving youth, college students, formerly incarcerated individuals, seniors, veterans, LGBTQ, individuals with disabilities, survivors of human trafficking, survivors of domestic violence, and immigrants and refugees
    • Criminal justice reform and decriminalization
    • Continuums of Care (CoC), Coordinated Entry Systems, and multi-sector collaborations (mental and behavioral health, health, court system, etc.)

Track 3: Protect Low-Income Renters

Proposals that address:

  • Equity-centered policy strategy and solutions to protect people from discrimination and displacement, including:
    • Legislative, electoral, administrative, and budgetary policy at the local, regional, state or federal levels
    • Investment without displacement, rent control, just cause eviction protections, right to counsel, source of income discrimination, fair chance, credit history, condo conversions, accessibility
    • Gentrification and displacement mapping
  • Tenants’ rights organizing and campaigns

Track 4: Move Toward Sector-Wide Equity

Note: While this track focuses specifically on moving toward sector-wide equity, these values and the broader topic of justice, equity, diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism should be embedded in all the other tracks.

Proposals that advance anti-racism and justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) within ourselves, our organizations, and our sector/field, including:
  • Individual
    • Deepen awareness, integrate personal commitments, strengthen skills into practice, practice self-reflection
    • Build individual resilience
  • Organizational
    • Build just and equitable organizational systems, structures, processes, and policies that are actively anti-racist and fully embrace racial/disability justice, equity, diversity and inclusion
    • Create psychologically safe and healing workplaces (e.g., addressing burnout, navigating conflict, practicing mutuality)
    • Restructure organizational systems to promote power sharing, community, and collectivism
  • Sector/Field-Wide
    • Create an intentional, diverse pipeline of equity-oriented people of color in leadership positions and among the field at large
    • Create wide-scale shifts through shared commitments, expectations, and systems of accountability around JEDI
    • Evaluate the long-term success of integrating equity and anti-racism within our organizational systems and structures and among the sector/field at large

Track 5: Shape the Housing Justice Narrative

Proposals that address:
  • Narrative research
    • Latest polling results or research findings from the field
    • Opportunities to integrate research into ongoing work
    • Identified gaps and opportunities for expanding narrative research
  • Supporting narrative as skill
    • Create narrative strategies and campaigns for public will-building
    • Tools and techniques for seizing the moment and driving a housing justice narrative (e.g., social media, digital action toolkits)
  • Supporting narrative as a powerbuilding strategy
    • Connect various disciplinary approaches, issue areas, and constituencies to advance the housing justice narrative (e.g., environmental, climate change, public health, healthcare, criminal justice reform)
    • Develop and managing narrative infrastructure for cross-organization, cross-discipline narrative strategy formation and execution
    • Engage affordable housing residents in narrative building work
    • Storytelling from underserved communities
  • Measuring impact
    • Test the impact of supporting narrative as a skill, campaign, and powerbuilding strategy

Track 6: Build and Shift Power

Proposals that address:
  • Community organizing, voter mobilization, and leadership development with residents, staff, and community members
  • Resident voices and stories
  • Civic engagement and popular education
  • Multi-sector collaboration and coalitions to advance a shared agenda, including partners in public health, healthcare, education, transportation, disability rights, climate change, natural disasters, criminal justice reform, labor, ending poverty, and environmental justice

Read the Convener Agreement

Submit your Workshop Proposal Submission Form