Sonoma Valley Collaborative Announces the Sonoma Valley Commons – Webinar 4/17

Since Sonoma Valley Collaborative launched its Housing Affordability Roadmap, we’ve been getting to work on what comes next.

A big focus has been designing a Community Development Corporation. A CDC was Strategy #1 from The Roadmap: to create an organization that can plan, develop, and preserve the smaller and lower-cost homes that our community needs.

We’re excited to share that this effort now has a name: the Sonoma Valley Commons.

Sonoma Valley Collaborative staff have been working with Julian Mackie, a UC Berkeley graduate student, the Future Collective, housing experts, and expert volunteers. So far, we have:

• Formed a steering committee of local experts across planning, finance, development, and land use
• Conducted 40+ interviews with housing experts across the bay area to understand what works and how other CDCs started
• Started identifying real project types we can move forward locally—not just ideas, but business plans that can pencil and get built
• Mapped out funding strategies and partnerships to make these projects feasible
• Partnered with The Future Collective to name, brand, and communicate what the Commons means for Sonoma Valley

Where we started

We keep coming back to the same issue: there’s a real gap in Sonoma Valley’s housing system.

• We’re short about 6,400 housing units
• More than half of renters are struggling with housing costs
• Some of our affordable housing is at risk of becoming market-rate
• There is no organization focused on building small- to mid-size housing that our community can afford. Right now, small and mid-size projects—like duplexes, ADUs, or small apartment buildings—often don’t get built at all. They fall between what the market builds and what larger nonprofit developers take on.

These are the reasons that Sonoma Valley Collaborative is creating the Sonoma Valley Commons.What we’re starting to build

We’re shaping what Sonoma Valley Commons can do in its first few years, while it’s still young.

• Partnering with developers to get projects moving faster
• Preserving existing affordable housing before it’s lost
• Helping homeowners build ADUs as lower-cost homes for workers, families, seniors, and more

As the Commons matures, it can take on more ambitious, expensive projects. The goal is simple: create a local organization that can move housing projects into reality:

Join us on Friday April 17 @ 10AM to learn more! CLICK HERE for the Zoom Link

We want to share more about what we’ve been working on and where this is going. We’re hosting a public virtual update to share:

• What we’ve learned about what works
• Where things stand now with designing the Sonoma Valley Commons
• What comes next