As rising rents continue to stretch working families in Santa Clara County, the labor movement has an opportunity to lead on real solutions to our housing crisis that lower rents AND create family-supporting union construction jobs.To this end, the South Bay Labor Council, Santa Clara and San Benito Counties Building and Construction Trades Council, and Working Partnerships convened an exciting new Working Families Housing Workgroup to create policies and partnership to develop cheaper, faster, union-built, publicly owned affordable homes for working families in Santa Clara County. The Workgroup includes a powerful, diverse membership of more than 70 county leaders, including our State Assemblymembers and Senators, County Supervisors, Mayors, City Councilmembers, developers, chambers of commerce, unions, pension trustees and more.

Working Families Housing Workgroup proposes a more efficient local system for developing union-built affordable housing using public ownership and investment incentivizes from union pension funds and institutional investors. The goal is to offer huge savings in rent and better quality construction jobs at roughly ⅓ the cost to local governments when compared to traditional development, better leveraging taxpayer dollars to impact even more families over time. The Workgroup is planning to announce a set of recommendations this March and unveil a potential demonstration project. Historically, the labor movement has been the backbone of building affordable homes. Now, the Working Families Housing model represents a return to home—pun intended—for the labor movement, whereby union dollars and labor fuse with efficient fiscal governance to house our working families and create better jobs. As Santa Clara County’s labor movement, we are committed to innovative solutions to finally put a roof over everyone’s head, and we invite all members of the labor movement to join us in fighting for the fiscal and legislative changes needed for this model to succeed.