What 60 advocates from seven states taught us about the pro-housing movement

Notes from the Second Annual Welcoming Neighbors Network Mountain West Regional Gathering

Earlier this month, Gem State Housing Alliance had the honor of hosting 60 housing advocates and practitioners from seven states — Utah, Montana, Wyoming, New Mexico, Arizona, Alaska, and Colorado — in Idaho for the Welcoming Neighbors Network Mountain West regional gathering.

I’ve spent most of my career working on the back end of the housing shortage, sitting across from families who were one car repair, one medical bill, one missed paycheck away from losing their home — or even others who had already been homeless for years. Connecting people to emergency rental assistance or helping someone navigate our complex homeless system is necessary work, and I believe in the people doing it. But you can only sit across from so many families in crisis before you start asking a different question: why are so many people this close to the edge or without a home in the first place?

That question is what eventually pulled me upstream into housing policy, and it’s the same question that brought 60 advocates and practitioners from seven states to Boise last week for the Welcoming Neighbors Network Mountain West regional gathering, hosted by Gem State Housing Alliance.

I want to tell you what I took away from those two days, because I think it matters beyond just what happened in that room.

We built the wrong systems for a long time.

For decades, the dominant policy response to the housing shortage has been reactive. We built systems around responding to failure: emergency shelters, rental assistance programs, eviction diversion courts, rapid rehousing. Those systems are necessary, but they exist because we never adequately addressed why housing became so unaffordable in the first place. As one of the wealthiest countries in the world, it’s still shocking to me that the U.S. has one million people living outside. Most nonprofits working on the issue are tailored around responding to the problem — not solving it at the root.

This is fascinating to me, because research tells us the answer is not complicated, even if the politics around it are: we don’t build enough homes, and we don’t build enough of the right kinds of homes — and our zoning codes, permitting processes, and land use regulations have made it harder and harder to change that. A family can’t rent what doesn’t exist and a first-time buyer can’t purchase a starter home that was never built.

The movement to fix that at the root, by increasing housing supply through policy reform, is still so young. We need to be honest about that because I think the temptation is to talk about this work like it’s more established than it is. The organizations in that room are still in early chapters, and we are all building the infrastructure of a movement while trying to win policy fights at the same time. I want to be upfront about Gem State Housing Alliance as well: we are still learning what it means to be on the forefront of tackling this intractable problem in Idaho, which touches every aspect of our society.

Sixty people from seven states with a short runway

What struck me most over those two days was how much overlap there is across the Mountain West, and how hungry everyone is to learn from each other. Whether you’re in Phoenix or Cheyenne or Anchorage or Missoula, the shape of the problem looks familiar: demand is outpacing supply and governments are under pressure to come up with solutions on the number one problem facing their residents — housing. Advocates are trying to figure out where to put limited time and resources for maximum impact, and everyone is asking the same questions.

Do you go deep with a small number of government partners who are ready to move, or do you cast a wide net and try to shift the broader landscape? When does grassroots organizing — actually getting into people’s churches and community centers and around their kitchen tables — move the needle more than relationships at the top? How do you build a coalition that holds together across different political environments? When is a good bill worth passing even if it’s not a great bill?

Nobody in that room had clean answers; all we had was each other’s experience and the honesty to share what’s working and what isn’t.

That kind of peer learning is hard to replicate in a webinar or a policy brief, or even a one-on-one Zoom conversation. It happens in hallways, over dinner, and in the middle of a panel when someone says something and you think: we tried that too, and here’s what happened. Convenings like this make it possible for organic epiphanies to happen — and that’s what we need more of.

Why was Idaho the host?

Idaho is among the fastest-growing states in the country, in every report that comes out. This fact shows up in the cost of a rental in Garden City, in the waitlist for a first-time homebuyer program in Post Falls, in the planning commission meeting in a small resort town where half the workforce can’t afford to live in the community they serve.

The pressure on our housing supply has pushed Idaho to start moving on some things earlier than states where the challenge feels less immediate. The state passed major housing legislation this session, while cities are being asked to amend their zoning codes and comprehensive plans — and seeking to tackle these issues in their own ways, even in the face of fierce anti-growth pressure, political challenges, and unprecedented constraints on infrastructure and property tax revenue.

Other states are looking at Idaho and the broader Mountain West as we all work to overcome these challenges — especially those unique to our region, including significant in-migration from out of state.

What I’m taking back to Gem State’s work

I came home with a clearer sense that the most important thing we can do right now, beyond winning individual policy fights, is invest in the infrastructure of this movement — especially our relationships — and reach as many Idahoans as we can with our message, while orienting them toward action.

We’re all still learning which government partners are ready to move, how to talk about zoning reform in a room full of people who have never encountered these ideas and have no reason to trust that change benefits them. We’re still learning when to hold the line on a policy belief versus when to focus on grassroots organizing.

These questions don’t get answered in isolated thoughts. They get answered in rooms like the one we had last week, when someone from Montana describes a fight they had three years ago and someone from New Mexico realizes they’re about to make the same mistake.

We are grateful for the lessons learned from our colleagues doing this critical work across the Mountain West, and we look forward to continuing these conversations.