About
The people behind this
The California Stewardship Alliance is a small nonprofit with one question: what would a housing law have to deliver to work for the whole of California, and how would anyone know?
Where this started
I came to this fighting a project near my own neighborhood. Working on it, I found a problem bigger and more complicated than any one town's, with more voices in it than the two that get heard. So I went back to what California's 1969 housing law set out to do, and asked what a law would have to deliver to do it. The four tests are my answer; everything else here follows from them.
Tom Gonzalez
How we work
Tests first, then proposals
Nobody is asked to endorse anything. We ask for agreement on the four tests first, and proposals come after, every one scored the same way. The Fund's own proposal, the Act, is published with its arithmetic and its gaps stated. Revisions are dated. If review finds a flaw, the design changes before anything is filed.
The people
Tom Gonzalez
Executive Director · California Stewardship Fund
Tom designs the policy, drafts the bills, and meets with electeds and the people who build housing. He co-founded both of the Alliance's nonprofits and serves on the board of the Balanced Housing Foundation, its research arm.
He came to housing law as a systems architect and entrepreneur. Over thirty years he founded and grew companies in software consulting and enterprise software, building systems for clients including Apple, Adobe, and Northrop Grumman. The discipline was always the same: work out how data, process and incentives fit together, then design a system people will use. He holds housing policy to the same standard: what does it produce?
Dennis Richards
Chairman
Dennis is a former San Francisco Planning Commissioner and a retired executive vice president at Salesforce. He was a founding board member of Our Neighborhood Voices.
Here, he chairs the board, holds finance and governance, and leads the board's growth.
Lori Brooke
Community & Coalition Director · Board Member
Lori has spent twenty-seven years organizing San Francisco neighborhoods: a leader of Neighborhoods United San Francisco, a board member of the Cow Hollow Association, and the founder of YesAnd!, a housing advocacy group.
She runs the community work statewide, enrolling the neighborhood and resident associations, Bay Area first and then across California, whose members review the Act's revisions.
The organization
Two nonprofits
California Stewardship Alliance is two nonprofits working together: the California Stewardship Fund, a 501(c)(4) that can lobby for the law, and the Balanced Housing Foundation, a 501(c)(3) for research and education. Both are funded by individual donors.
To reach us with a question, an introduction, or a flaw you have found in the Act, write to us. If you know which conversation you want, start at Work with us.