Housing for All

SHA was founded in 1989 and incorporated in 1991 by a group of non-profit developers, a legal services attorney, a homeless service provider and an employee from the California Department of Housing and Community Development. From its inception, SHA was a membership organization, with the board composed primarily of people working in housing rights, homeless services, and civil rights fields and representing dues-paying organizations. As a collaborator, SHA has brought together organizations of activists who represent communities that are experiencing system impacts. Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee, Sacramento Services Not Sweeps Coalition, Building Healthy Communities, Sacramento Investment without Displacement, Housing California, SAC ACT, and many other individual residents, activists, scholars, and independent researchers with lived experiences of housing insecurity partner with SHA to adopt a community centered approach and build collective power for housing rights. With over 5,500 people experiencing homelessness on any given night (2019 Point-in-Time Count), 81% of the county’s extremely low-income households, or those who earn less than one-third the area’s median income, already pay more than half their earnings on housing and utilities (California Housing Needs Report, 2021), SHA is determined to create solutions and improvements for low-income residents who deserve a healthy and safe place to call home.

Affordable homes are the foundation of a healthy, equitable and sustainable community. SHA incorporates community empowerment narrative strategies to tell authentic stories in public and de-stigmatize the fight for affordable housing, like our annual Affordable Housing Bus Tour and Annual Regional Affordable Housing Summit. As a convener, SHA has had the privilege of bringing together organizations of activists who represent communities that are experiencing system impacts.