The California Housing Partnership (“the Partnership” or “CHP”) was born out of the need for a bridge between the urgent needs of low-income renters to protect their homes and nonprofit and public housing agencies with inadequate capacity to systemically meet those needs. At the time, nonprofit and public housing agencies hardly knew what existing affordable housing needed to be preserved, let alone how to effectively marshal state and federal resources to build new affordable housing. Recognizing this disconnect, tenant lawyers and advocates pushed for the creation of an entity that would help the state support their efforts to keep people in affordable homes and use the state’s resources to preserve those homes for the long term.

Since 1988, the Partnership has worked to ensure that funds for long-term, sustainable affordable homes make it to the mission-driven organizations that build and preserve it, and advocated for the refinement and expansion of those funding sources as well as the creation of new ones. As the sector and funding landscape has grown bigger and more sophisticated, so too has the Partnership. Today, we are a go-to advisor on all matters of sustainable affordable housing finance in California; a trusted partner to nonprofit developers and public agencies; an expert policy analyst and advocate for the Legislature, Governor’s office and local governments; and supportive educator for all of the above.

Our dual identity as both a do-and-think tank, combining hands-on technical assistance to housing developers and public agencies with policy leadership at the state level is what sets the Partnership apart in California’s push to provide affordable, sustainable housing for working families, people experiencing homelessness, veterans, seniors, and individuals with disabilities.