WORK HERE. LIVE HERE. STAY HERE.
An innovative housing plan to make Santa Clara County affordable
Working Families Housing is a plan to build homes that working families and everyone who calls this county home can afford to live in, not just for now, but for generations to come.
It’s a new way to build, one that pools resources across our cities, puts union labor at the center, and public investments that keep working for us, project after project. Over the next 20 years, this plan will build 5,000 permanently affordable homes, sustain up to 500 union construction jobs a year, and build a future working families can count on.
Homes that stay affordable. For everyone who calls this county home.
Right now, a worker earning Santa Clara County’s median wage would need to work 66 hours a week just to afford typical rent here. For low-wage workers, like fast food workers or janitors, the math doesn’t work. With only 74 affordable rental homes available for every 100 low- and moderate-income households, the chances of finding a home within their means are slim, if not impossible.
Working Families Housing changes that. It creates a powerful new ecosystem for building thousands of permanently affordable homes here in Santa Clara County, with public ownership keeping them affordable for the long run.
Worker-Centered, By Design
Working Families Housing puts the workers who build this county back at the center, as builders and as neighbors. And it leverages workers’ pension dollars to finance the homes they build.
Every home built under Working Families Housing uses a Project Labor Agreement, guaranteeing fair wages, benefits, and apprenticeship pathways that give working families a real shot at stable, well-paying construction jobs.
Whether you’re building these homes, investing in them or living in them, Working Families Housing offers Santa Clara County workers the chance to put down roots, build a career, and give their family a place to call home.
A better return for everyone
Santa Clara County has untapped resources to address our housing crisis. What’s been missing is a model that makes those resources go further. Working Families Housing can build more homes, roughly twice as fast, and at lower cost than existing tools allow, without asking for more from taxpayers.
Every public dollar invested recycles, funding the next project and the one after that. And by bringing cities and the county together around shared resources, this model helps local governments finally build at the scale their communities need.
That’s how we close the gap between the homes we have and the homes we need.
How it works
Three tools, one system, designed for faster, cheaper, union built affordable homes.
Dive deeper into the plan.
Built Together
Working Families Housing is the result of 70+ leaders across Santa Clara County coming together around a shared vision for housing that actually works.
Co-Convenors
Co-chairs
For a complete list of Working Families Housing workgroup participants, please see Working Families Housing: A new plan to bring more affordable housing and good union jobs to Santa Clara County
