Growing Impact Beyond Borders — SFCLT at the Grounded Solutions Network Conference 2025

This year’s Grounded Solutions Network Conference in Washington, D.C. brought together affordable housing practitioners, advocates, and policymakers from across the country, including a strong contingent of CLTs from California!

SFCLT was honored to contribute to this critical conversation as a panelist in the session titled: “State and Regional Policy: Increasing Impact through Regional Collaboration.”

As community land trusts (CLTs) and other shared equity housing models continue to gain momentum, we’re finding that many of our most urgent challenges—and promising solutions—don’t fit neatly within city limits or county lines. Housing instability, displacement, and disinvestment ripple across regions, just like the communities and social networks they affect. That’s why collaboration across municipal and state boundaries is not just useful—it’s essential.

In our session, we explored what it takes to build and sustain regional approaches to housing justice:

• Aligning policy priorities across jurisdictions

• Forming partnerships that leverage shared resources

• Pooling technical expertise to serve a wider network of communities

• And advocating collectively for increased access to state and local housing funds for shared equity programs

At SFCLT, this regional lens has guided our work over the past year. Through efforts like the CLT Capacity Collaborative and Capacity Catalyst Program, we’re building infrastructure to support emerging land trusts across the Bay Area—sharing knowledge, providing hands-on assistance, and strengthening the broader ecosystem of community ownership.

The takeaway from this year’s conference was clear: regional collaboration is not just a strategy—it’s the future of lasting affordability. We’re proud to be shaping that future alongside allies across the country, and we’re grateful to Grounded Solutions Network for continuing to be a home for this vital work.