Welcome Home! Housing in Our Community

In 2024 ABAG partnered with CPC to work with local staff and envision a fun and engaging storytelling approach to communicating about housing. The resulting Welcome Home! Toolkit is a suite of engagement tools centering a fully illustrated picture book: Welcome Home! Housing in Our Community. Concepts like density, zoning, and affordability are brought to life with relatable scenarios and illustrations representing a variety of neighborhoods, populations, and housing types. The book explores neighborhood impacts, lived experiences, and opportunities for change, ending by prompting readers to consider what they love about where they live, the housing needs of neighbors and loved ones, and what they can do to get involved.

Along with digital and print-ready versions of the book, the Welcome Home! Toolkit provides support materials including posters, bookmarks, coloring pages, social media posts, a slide deck template, and an illustration library. The book is available in English and Spanish and files are WCAG AA-level (accessibility) compliant.

A human-centered design strategy helped the team focus on plain language, relatable narratives, and engaging illustrations – methods that might be unavailable to local governments but have a big impact for diverse and hard-to-reach communities. With a variety of resources jurisdictions can choose and customize what works for them, to fit community context and local goals. The Welcome Home! Toolkit helps staff facilitate better conversations, more meaningful processes, and more housing where it is needed.