Let's Talk Housing
Since 2008, we have facilitated the 21 Elements collaborative in San Mateo County – a cooperative project between all 21 city and county governments in the county. As part of our broad-spectrum support for these participants and their work on their housing elements, we launched the Let’s Talk Housing project as a community engagement effort in March 2021. The goal of Let’s Talk Housing was to clearly explain to as many residents as possible 1) what a housing element is, 2) why it matters, and 3) how to get involved. We coordinated the naming, branding, planning, and implementation of this outreach effort over the course of multiple years.
The hallmark element of Let’s Talk Housing is the comprehensive website, with user-friendly explanations of the project, housing elements in general, affordable housing and why it matters, and specific details for their community. The site is available in Arabic, Chinese, English, Spanish, and Tagalog and features up-to-date accessibility features. In the first nine months, the site was visited more than 17,000 times. We also launched social media platforms for Let’s Talk Housing (including Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube) to help people keep informed about housing issues in their community, and posted two videos: What is a Housing Element and How it Works and Countywide Trends and Why Housing Elements Matter.
Let’s Talk Housing also included a series of events to inform the public about the Housing Element and to hear what matters to the community – including webinars, virtual meetings, and listening sessions for specific stakeholders (including fair housing organizations, housing advocates, builders/developers, and service providers). Each of the events provided clear explanations of the concepts and featured dedicated time and space for people to ask questions and/or give feedback, and opportunities were provided in multiple languages. All together, thousands of community members participated in ways that heavily influenced updates to these communities’ housing elements.
It was fundamentally important that community organizations be involved in the Let’s Talk Housing process, so we formed an Equity Advisory Group with 15 organizations across the county focused on advancing equity and affordable housing. These groups worked together to advise on the Housing Element Update, gather community stories and input, and amplify messaging to their communities. These organizations are featured on the Let’s Talk Housing website. These communities stories and quotes were also compiled into Our Stories: Housing in San Mateo County, with content for jurisdictions to use in their communities and/or include in Housing Elements.