Housing Security
In Silicon Valley, two issues drive inequity more than any others: housing insecurity and economic mobility. That’s the catalyst for The Sobrato Organization’s (TSO) Housing Security Initiative (HSI)—a bold, cross-company effort to ensure that low-wage, housing-insecure residents and families not only have a stable place to call home, but also the opportunity to thrive.
We envision Silicon Valley as a region where all individuals and families can remain in their communities, achieve economic success, and shape their own futures. Where every person has the dignity of a safe, stable home.
Why Housing Matters
Housing insecurity is one of the greatest challenges facing Silicon Valley today:
- The region lacks 118,000+ housing units affordable to people making below 120% of the Area Median Income.
- 173,000 households in Santa Clara and San Mateo Counties are rent burdened.
- Families with young children are especially vulnerable—18,100 households with kids under age six spend more than they can afford just to stay housed.
- Nearly 370,000 San Jose residents live in neighborhoods already at risk of displacement.
Stable housing is the necessary condition for economic mobility and community belonging. When families are forced to leave, they lose not only their homes but their communities, schools, and support systems.
Our Approach: Production. Preservation. Policy.
HSI leverages the unique power of TSO by bringing together its Sobrato Real Estate, Capital, and Philanthropies groups to take a holistic approach and use all the tools at our disposal for greater impact and alignment to our core values. This integrated model allows us to address housing insecurity from multiple angles at once:
- Production – Through our impact investment tools and partnerships, we catalyze and finance the creation of new affordable housing across the San Francisco Bay Area, where affordable options lag far behind demand. This impacts many residents including essential workers—nurses, teachers, first responders, grocery clerks—who need local housing to stay in their communities.
- Preservation – We acquire, rehabilitate and operate existing naturally occurring affordable housing (NOAH) at risk of market rate redevelopment. We’re preserving housing complexes that may have been neglected over the past few decades, and turning those into dignified homes where families can stay connected to their neighborhoods, schools, and resources. Without this work, many would have been forced out of the area entirely.
- Pro-Housing Policy – Tackling the root problem: California’s undersupply of housing. With 75% of land zoned for single-family homes, we need policies that allow denser, more attainable housing for working families. We provide grants to and work with partners to advance solutions that can scale, improve, and shift California’s housing system.
Partnerships for Impact
We believe lasting change requires the public and private sectors to work together, aligning resources and building shared solutions. As a founding partner of the Bay Area Housing Innovation Fund, we’re working closely with nonprofits, foundations and corporations to scale our reach and inspire others to act.
