The Partnership for the Bay’s Future Fellowship
A transformative new generation of Bay Area housing leaders.
Affordable housing is one of the Bay Area’s most foundational challenges — and opportunities. The Partnership for the Bay’s Future Fellowship is a two-year, full-time, cohort-based, and salaried position for experienced, entrepreneurial, and equity-minded affordable housing professionals interested in leading collaborative policy making efforts in selected Bay Area cities. Each Fellow works with one selected local jurisdiction and a community organization committed to working collaboratively on the adoption of equitable and inclusive affordable housing policy.
Fellows gain access to sector experts and influencers while also developing a network of leaders with the capacity to effect substantive and lasting change in the housing landscape. In this unique program, Fellows are positioned as learners and practitioners. As such, they are provided with leadership and technical skills needed to help create a region where everyone can thrive, largely through advocating inclusive and innovative housing policies.
Coro Northern California is the Fellowship administrator for the 2024 – 2026 cycle, working in close partnership with The San Francisco Foundation, Enterprise Community Partners, and Informing Change.
Partnership for the Bay’s Future Fellows are matched and embedded with one government jurisdiction for the duration of the two-year Fellowship. Their role is to provide additional expertise and serve as a grounding anchor, project manager, and catalyst for policy innovation alongside their city and community partners.
To set up each Fellow for success, they will receive the following training, structure, and support:
- Convene monthly as a cohort to participate in Coro’s proprietary leadership development training and Enterprise Community Partners’ technical expertise and mentorship.
- Receive 1:1 coaching to support individual professional development and leadership growth needs.
- Convene with jurisdictional and community partners monthly in support of building relational trust and ongoing project-level clarity.
- Convene with the broader community of core Fellowship teams 2 – 3 times per month, to cultivate a network of innovative and equity-minded housing policy makers, share key project updates, and learn from one other.
- Have access to a bench of expert technical assistants and a fund of financial resources to support the creation of innovative affordable housing policy solutions.
The Partnership for the Bay’s Future Fellowship is managed through a partnership between Coro Northern California, The San Francisco Foundation, Enterprise Community Partners, and Informing Change.
Leadership is a practice; as such, ideal candidates do not need to have a specific title or position to apply. The role does require Fellows to be located in the Bay Area for the duration of the fellowship and be able to participate in a hybrid office schedule.
Ideal candidate qualities:
- Affordable housing expert: You have 5 – 10+ years of experience in the affordable housing sector. This experience can be a combination of education and professional experience, and encompasses areas of affordable housing development, finance, policy, research, or coalition building related to housing preservation, production, and/or protection.
- Committed to operationalizing racial equity: You have an interest in and are aware of how to explicitly consider racial equity in decisions, including policies, practices, programs, and budgets.
- Leadership enthusiast: You love leadership and regularly think about how to help people recognize their agency and influence outcomes regardless of positional authority.
- Holder of the “both/and”: Able to hold apparently conflicting ideas and embrace our non-partisan approach to prepare individuals, diverse in thought and background, to be leaders.
- Innovator: You think creatively, and see opportunities to create value and increase impact.
- Collaborator: You play well with others and thrive in contexts where you are bringing people together to achieve common goals.
- Autonomous worker: You exercise judgment to prioritize your work and hold ownership of moving toward your goals while welcoming advice and input from stakeholders.
- Lifelong learner: You consistently seek out new information to stay current with best practices; you welcome feedback and can integrate it into your work.
- Culturally adaptive: You understand, articulate, and navigate the differences and similarities across work cultures. As an employee of Coro working in a jurisdiction, you will work with many types of peoples and within varying systems.
- Two-year, salaried project management position working in partnership with a selected government jurisdiction and community partner located in the San Francisco Bay Area.
- Direct ability to influence outcomes within a jurisdiction — the creation of an affordable housing policy that either preserves or produces housing — through the development of relationships, community assessments, and policy priorities.
- Hands-on experience working with equity-centered affordable housing experts.
- Access to Fellowship staff, peer cohort, and alumni network.
- Intensive, cohort-based adult learning model with a focus on collaborative leadership development and affordable housing preservation and production.
- Sponsored monthly gatherings to share experiences, build skills, establish a network, and learn with and from one another.
- Periods of active rest and support in developing approaches in service of renewed thinking, innovation, and connection to the project.
- Medical and dental insurance.
Individual Outcomes:
- Increased capacity to thoughtfully navigate complex affordable housing production and preservation dynamics such as diverse stakeholder interests; public, private, and nonprofit systems; historical and present day policy making and their implications on housing; economic forecasts; and the evolving impact of Covid-19 on all of the above.
- Accurately assess conditions to identify, evaluate, and propose solutions to problems within housing production and preservation.
- Predict, engage, and incorporate multiple perspectives in strategic planning and decision making.
- Communicate more effectively with individuals across stakeholder groups.
- Facilitate and directly inform bringing people together across differences.
- Feel equipped to collaborate and accelerate positive change without formal authority or title.
- Increase self-awareness and emotional intelligence, thus regulating responses and grounding one’s actions in values and awareness.
- Recognize personal strengths and opportunities for growth.
- Prioritize balance between striving for successful outcomes and determining the processes, roles, and decision making tools necessary to get there.
Technical/Cohort Outcomes:
- Ability to advance policy with the following priorities:
- Promote racial equity, economic opportunity, and resident power for people historically excluded from shaping the decisions that affect their lives and those of their communities.
- Prevent low-income individuals from experiencing homelessness, displacement, foreclosure, housing instability and poor-quality housing conditions, particularly renters.
- Ensure individuals experiencing homelessness can be re-housed as quickly as possible, in the most appropriate housing placement, and provided responsive, culturally informed supportive services to facilitate recovery and housing retention.
- Expand resources and eliminate barriers for the production and preservation of housing that low- and moderate-income individuals can afford.
- Advance inclusive and equitable development that promotes housing affordability, climate and community resilience, environmental sustainability, economic opportunity and racial equity.
- Feel equipped to use disaggregated data to inform policy discussions and grassroot support for proposed policies.
- Develop skills to design and lead community-based policy discussions and build grassroots support for proposed policies.
- Coro Northern California
- The San Francisco Foundation
- Enterprise Community Partners
- Informing Change
View Cohort 2’s partner policy proposals here.
- City of Antioch in partnership with Multi-Faith Action and Hope Solutions.
- Bay Area Housing Finance Authority (BAHFA) in partnership with Urban Habitat, Bay Area Community Land Trust, and Unity Council.
- City of Berkeley in partnership with Healthy Black Families.
- Contra Costa Housing Authority in partnership with Richmond Our Power Coalition, Community Housing Development Corporation, and Richmond LAND.
- City of East Palo Alto in partnership with East Palo Alto Community Alliance and Neighborhood Development Organization, Youth United for Community Action, Community Legal Services, and Preserving Affordable Housing Assets Longterm, Inc.
- City of Mountain View in partnership with Silicon Valley at Home and Housing Trust Silicon Valley.
- City of Oakland in partnership with Richmond Neighborhood Housing Services.
- City of Richmond in partnership with Richmond LAND.
- City of San Francisco in partnership with Urban Land Institute.
- City of San Jose in partnership SOMOS Mayfair.
- City of South San Francisco in partnership with Housing Leadership Council.
