CCRH PUBLICATIONS
CALIFORNIA TRIBAL HOUSING NEEDS AND OPPORTUNITIES:
A VISION FORWARD
AUGUST, 2019
This study was conducted by the California Coalition for Rural Housing and Rural Community Assistance
Corporation to reveal the current housing and living conditions of California’s tribal communities and provide a blueprint for how the state can help to improve these conditions in the coming years. Components of the research and data collection helped inform the Final Statewide Housing Assessment 2025 published in 2018 by the California Department of Housing and Community Development. Much has been written regarding the history of California’s American Indian population and state and federal
policy impacts on the general welfare of tribal members. To our knowledge, however, there has never been
a comprehensive statewide study of tribal housing. The goal of this study, then, is to understand the unique
housing environment on tribal trust and fee land and, based on the findings, propose reforms to improve
access by tribes to state housing programs. We focus principally on the housing conditions and needs of
California tribes that have received federal recognition by the United States government...
California’s Housing Crisis & Manufactured Housing Communities
SEPTEMBER, 2019
In California, at least one million people live in more than 5,000 registered manufactured housing communities — or mobilehome parks. Even more Californians live in unregistered manufactured housing communities, in individual manufactured homes on private land, or in American Indian Tribal communities. These homes make up over 4% of all housing across the state and are more concentrated in rural areas. Manufactured home communities are located everywhere from remote areas of the Sierra Nevadas to the coasts of Santa Monica and in the heart of Silicon Valley. While the price of homes, lots, and land vary widely across communities, manufactured homes make up a significant portion of California’s limited affordable housing stock. This study looks at four manufactured housing communities and explores how they were created and financed as well as what they can teach us about making future projects successful.
CALIFORNIA TRIBAL HOUSING NEEDS AND OPPORTUNITIES:
A VISION FORWARD
AUGUST, 2019
This study was conducted by the California Coalition for Rural Housing and Rural Community Assistance
Corporation to reveal the current housing and living conditions of California’s tribal communities and provide a blueprint for how the state can help to improve these conditions in the coming years. Components of the research and data collection helped inform the Final Statewide Housing Assessment 2025 published in 2018 by the California Department of Housing and Community Development. Much has been written regarding the history of California’s American Indian population and state and federal
policy impacts on the general welfare of tribal members. To our knowledge, however, there has never been
a comprehensive statewide study of tribal housing. The goal of this study, then, is to understand the unique
housing environment on tribal trust and fee land and, based on the findings, propose reforms to improve
access by tribes to state housing programs. We focus principally on the housing conditions and needs of
California tribes that have received federal recognition by the United States government...
JUNE, 2018
Through a process of gathering primary and secondary data on the Salinas and Pajaro Valley Laborshed, the research team of California Institute for Rural Studies and California Coalition for Rural Housing has identified some specific needs, barriers and solutions to the farmworker housing crisis in the Pajaro Valley of Santa Cruz County and the Salinas Valley of Monterey County
Beginning in December, 2016, we undertook a thorough compilation and analysis of existing databases on agricultural trends and labor patterns in the region. From this research, we found that the estimated number of unique individual agricultural workers employed in the region during 2016 was 91,433. An estimated half of California’s current crop workers tell government interviewers they lack authorization for U.S. employment. And those who are documented are aging. Finally, the flow of foreign agricultural workers into the U.S. has declined sharply. Some employers report labor shortages. Intense efforts to mechanize every aspect of production are underway. Still other employers have sought H-2A workers to supplement their domestic workforce.
We implemented a survey of 420 farmworkers in the laborshed as well as interviews with employers and other stakeholders to gather primary data. Among the farmworkers surveyed, men and women were relatively evenly distributed across age groups with 75% of the interviewees married. The clear majority of the immigrant farmworker interviewees had very few years of schooling. They were 92% immigrants (not born in the U.S.). About one fifth were follow-the-crop migrants (FTC) who had traveled outside the two county area for agricultural employment.
Most households of farmworkers interviewed included non-family members who were for the most part other farmworkers. There are consistently stunningly high rates of residences that are above the severely crowded condition of 2.0 people per room. This is true of almost all the subgroups of the population. Often more than 5 people per bathroom...
ADDENDUM
July 2018
Where Home Is: Recommendations for Affordable Housing Investment in the San Joaquin Valley
MARCH, 2016
The California Coalition for Rural Housing, with support from the San Joaquin Valley Health Fund, used GIS mapping to examine the prevalence of potentially ideal affordable housing sites that are close to public transportation, schools, and healthy grocery stores. These sites were then examined as to determine where they were in relation to Disadvantaged Communities, or if they were zoned appropriately for affordable housing development. San Joaquin Valley communities face increasing housing challenges, yet there are ever fewer State and Federal resources that support the development of needed affordable housing. A new resource supporting affordable housing development has emerged in the Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities program (AHSC) funded through California’s greenhouse gas emissions cap-and-trade proceeds. AHSC funds must benefit “Disadvantaged Communities” or those communities determined to have excessive environmental and socio-economic burdens under the California Environmental Protection Agency’s (CalEPA) CalEnviroScreen tool. Strikingly, CalEnviroScreen designates almost the entire San Joaquin Valley as Disadvantaged Communities. With these changing program focuses, developers, planners, and advocates alike are faced with ethical and strategic questions as whether to invest affordable housing resources in these Disadvantaged Communities with great needs that have long been underserved, or whether to invest in areas of opportunity that provide low-income people more options.
February, 2015
A “silver tsunami” is coming; an estimated 95 million people will be over the age of 65 in the U.S. in the year 2060, comparable to the current population of California, New York, Pennsylvania, and Texas combined. In anticipation, some financial institutions and community organizations across the country are partnering to develop age-friendly banking products and services that better protect and preserve the assets of an aging population. In order to examine the unique financial needs and increase the economic well-being of low-income older adults, the California Coalition for Rural Housing (CCRH) partnered with the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) with support from Citi Community Development to conduct an intensive study of over 400 low-income tenants living in subsidized senior housing in California.
FARMWORKER HOUSING STUDY AND ACTION PLAN FOR SALINAS VALLEY AND PAJARO VALLEY
JUNE, 2018
Through a process of gathering primary and secondary data on the Salinas and Pajaro Valley Laborshed, the research team of California Institute for Rural Studies and California Coalition for Rural Housing has identified some specific needs, barriers and solutions to the farmworker housing crisis in the Pajaro Valley of Santa Cruz County and the Salinas Valley of Monterey County
Beginning in December, 2016, we undertook a thorough compilation and analysis of existing databases on agricultural trends and labor patterns in the region. From this research, we found that the estimated number of unique individual agricultural workers employed in the region during 2016 was 91,433. An estimated half of California’s current crop workers tell government interviewers they lack authorization for U.S. employment. And those who are documented are aging. Finally, the flow of foreign agricultural workers into the U.S. has declined sharply. Some employers report labor shortages. Intense efforts to mechanize every aspect of production are underway. Still other employers have sought H-2A workers to supplement their domestic workforce.
We implemented a survey of 420 farmworkers in the laborshed as well as interviews with employers and other stakeholders to gather primary data. Among the farmworkers surveyed, men and women were relatively evenly distributed across age groups with 75% of the interviewees married. The clear majority of the immigrant farmworker interviewees had very few years of schooling. They were 92% immigrants (not born in the U.S.). About one fifth were follow-the-crop migrants (FTC) who had traveled outside the two county area for agricultural employment.
Most households of farmworkers interviewed included non-family members who were for the most part other farmworkers. There are consistently stunningly high rates of residences that are above the severely crowded condition of 2.0 people per room. This is true of almost all the subgroups of the population. Often more than 5 people per bathroom..
Fall, 2014
For many years tribes in California have struggled with drastically underfunded housing programs that have left them unable to meet even basic housing needs. Additionally, tribes have faced significant obstacles in trying to compete with mainstream affordable housing developers for funding awards in California’s low income housing tax credit allocation system. Considerable cross-community work to bring tribes and housing program administrators together, however, led to the creation of California’s first tribal set-aside within the LIHTC program, and the first award to an Indian tribe in California in the thirty-year history of the state’s LIHTC program. The story behind the establishment of this new set-aside offers important lessons about how alliances can be formed to begin to breakdown longstanding barriers of isolation and inaccessibility.
February 26, 2010
Principal Investigator: Dewey Bandy, Ph.D., Deputy Director
That manufactured housing isn't more widely used by the affordable housing community is especially surprising given the advantages offered by this housing type and the types of development challenges affordable housing faces in rural areas. Manufactured housing promises quality units at lower costs than comparable site-built housing through mass production economies of scale. Further, by constructing the unit at a factory and then transporting a completed unit that is exempt from local building standards to a prepared site for installation offers developers the potential for significant project time savings.
February 1, 2003
With this publication, the 30-year experience of inclusionary housing in California is brought to the attention of a national audience through the sponsorship of the National Housing Conference. It attempts to provide a concise, comprehensive, up-to-date, state of the art account of inclusionary housing in California. It is organized as follows: First, the origins and evolution of inclusionary housing are presented, together with a discussion of the controversy surrounding inclusionary housing, especially the issue of who pays for its costs. Second, the findings of the 2003 survey are presented, followed by a brief analysis of the constitutionality of inclusionary housing. The report concludes with an analysis of the market implications of inclusionary housing.
September 1, 2004
California farmworker housing cooperatives represent a small, but important, sector of California’s affordable farmworker housing stock. Farmworker housing cooperatives first took root in the state as the result of farmworker-led grassroots initiatives to fight displacement and establish roots in the communities where they worked. The first four out of the eleven farmworker housing cooperatives that have been established in the state were driven by farmworkers seeking ownership and control of their housing in the 1970s and early 1980s (Bandy 1992). These farmworkers were motivated by years of living in substandard conditions as renters at the mercy of labor contractors, large growers and slumlords. They sought out the cooperative as an intermediate form of ownership that could deliver ownership, control, dignity and security in situations where single-family housing was infeasible. Many years later farmworker housing cooperatives still fill this important niche in the farmworker housing inventory by providing affordable ownership in settings where single family or condominium ownership is not feasible.
March 30, 2003
The scale of growth in the Central Valley and the complexity of the problems resulting from this growth have left communities scrambling to find new and effective growth management strategies. There is growing recognition by local governments, civic leaders, environmental advocates, affordable housing developers and other stakeholders of the high social, economic and environmental costs of existing land use practices. New strategies must be found and implemented. The intent of this publication is to present a solution that is increasingly being employed in the Valley itself and communities throughout California and the nation-building affordable housing as a cornerstone of Smart Growth. This publication will present twelve case studies of affordable housing projects undertaken in different communities in the Central Valley to demonstrate how affordable housing is central to any Smart Growth strategy.
April 1, 2014
The Fair Housing and Equity Assessment (FHEA), a requirement as part of the HUD Sustainable Communities Grant, analyzes patterns in racial and economic segregation, discusses how segregation impactsindividuals and families’ ability to access opportunity, and proposes strategies and recommendations to createmore equitable and integrated communities. Based on analysis conducted for this assessment, the San Joaquin Valley continues to struggle with economic and racial disparities, geographic segregation, and inequitable access to opportunity.
Building Healthy Communities: Improving Housing Conditions In The Eastern Coachella Valley.
April 2014
October 8, 2002
This study was undertaken by the California Coalition for Rural Housing (CCRH) to evaluate the effectiveness of the cooperative model in providing affordable home ownership to California’s farmworkers. The cooperative housing model has been employed in California for almost three decades and there are now 11 farmworker housing cooperatives operating in the state. Although they vary in terms of funding sources, equity structures and occupational restrictions, all of these cooperatives share a common structure in which low-income farmworkers have an opportunity to collectively own and democratically operate their own housing.