Mission
The Council of Community Housing Organizations (CCHO) has been leading the affordable housing movement in San Francisco since 1978. We fight for funding and policies that shape urban development and empower low-income and working-class communities.
As a nonprofit coalition of 22 community- and faith-based housing developers and advocates, CCHO (known as “Choo Choo”) crafts actionable public policy and supports resident leadership to create long-term change. We are dedicated to the vision of a San Francisco Bay Area where all residents can afford to live, work, and thrive.
CCHO’s mission and core values have been consistent since its founding:
To foster the development of permanently affordable low-income housing in San Francisco, under community control and through non-speculative means of ownership, with adequate provisions for tenant services and empowerment.
CCHO’s overall goal is to create a comprehensive housing framework and substantial funding to meet the need for affordable housing. Our issue scope reflects the broad community-building missions of our members, addressing not only funding, but also land use and zoning, employment and economic development, social services and environmental justice. A twin goal, essential in achieving the first, is to build the capacity of San Francisco’s lower income and working class residents to determine their own priorities and carry out policies, strategies and development.
The work of CCHO’s member organizations has resulted in over 30,000 units of affordable housing, as well as thousands of construction and permanent jobs for city residents.
CCHO is a group with deep roots in San Francisco working on a comprehensive set of solutions to the city’s affordability crisis for everyone
PROTECTING tenants, in our coalition work with the San Francisco Anti-Displacement Coalition;
PRESERVING the invaluable stock of affordable, rent-controlled and SRO housing, by rebuilding the City’s public housing and creating a robust Small Sites preservation program to help tenants and nonprofits buy buildings that are being targeted for eviction;
PRODUCING new housing for our future generations, by dedicating public sites, expanding the city’s affordable housing funding sources, and meeting the increasing impact of the housing crisis on middle-income earners through inclusionary units and new teacher housing programs.
CCHO’s Purpose & Strategic Approach
CCHO’s staff and member organizations leadership recently led an organizational evolution to strengthen the durability of the coalition, and to continue building the collective power of the Council of Community Housing Organizations in an increasingly polarized housing policy landscape in San Francisco, the Bay Area and at the State level, beginning with a process to strengthen the coalition’s internal alignment on strategic approach.
Alignment on strengths & unique role
CCHO has a unique role as the only coalition of nonprofit developers and anti-displacement advocates in SF
CCHO builds movement alliances beyond the housing arena
CCHO builds on a 40-year track record of impact and concrete wins
Alignment on impact focus
CCHO’s work is framed within a community development approach
CCHO’s primary focus is on lower-income and working-class and/or immigrant communities of color
CCHO focuses primarily on local policy, but also regional and state that have local impact
CCHO frames its work through racial and social equity, focusing on community self-determination and the leadership of BIPOC-led and BIPOC-based organizations
Alignment on strategic approach
CCHO’s strategy combines political access, relationship-building, and the legislative process
CCHO builds an electoral strategy around packages of housing and land-use ballot measures
CCHO builds a media strategy for long-term narrative shift
CCHO leverages individual members’ grassroots organizing and political access, striving to coordinate inside + outside strategies
CCHO maintains political independence to build long-term power