Evaluation Purpose

Why the Website?

Meet the Team

Evaluation Questions

Approach to Answering Evaluation Questions

Evaluative Power Fellowship Model

Ecosystem Mapping

Findings

Housing Justice Framework

Pathways to Power

Case Examples

So What, Now What?

Anyone working with or interested in building community power must also be cognizant of the issues it exists in opposition to, and ways to overcome such obstacles. Community power is defined by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) as “the ability of communities most impacted by inequity to act together to voice their needs and hopes for the future and to collectively drive structural change, hold decision makers accountable, and advance health equity,” and has been a vital focus area for the foundation. As part of work designed to support community power building in the face of ongoing and severe inequities propagated by persistent racism experienced by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) in the American housing system, RWJF provided funding in 2020 to select organizations committed to advancing housing justice through community power. This work aimed at addressing unjust housing policies and practices exists as part of a larger initiative also focusing on building broader local constituencies to support local racial equity issues (Local Base Building) and promoting maternal/birth equity for women of color (Birth Justice). 

For this project, UBUNTU and Mathematica partnered to evaluate community power as it relates to housing justice, and how RWJF’s 2020 grantmaking efforts in the space have assisted housing justice actors in their work. Additionally, we wanted to produce insights that would not only help RWJF to more effectively support community power building through housing justice in the future, but also support housing justice organizations and actors in their own direct efforts, to strengthen the movement as a whole. We came to the project with three primary goals:

1. Document the narratives of those who received funding to better understand how the money contributed to building the capacity and infrastructure of funded organizations.

2. Describe how changes in the capacity and infrastructure of funded organizations impacted the wider housing justice ecosystem’s efforts to advance their collective housing justice goals.

3. Develop actionable insights for future funding and engagement of RWJF within the housing justice sector by identifying the ongoing capacity and infrastructure needs of the housing justice ecosystem to advance their housing justice-specific objectives and outcomes. 

• Equitable evaluation

  • Equitable evaluation encapsulates the tools and approaches used to uplift and empower historically undervalued or unheard perspectives, to conduct evaluation in a way which truly advances equity rather than simply paying lip service to this. Our other guiding principles help us to structure our evaluation equitably and understand how its findings can be used to advance equity in practice.

• Dignity

  • Dignity allows all those participating in our work to be and feel heard, respected, and valued. It involves both restorative dignity, given to the self, and social dignity, shared with others.

“Dignity is the reciprocal self-worth shared between and individual and society. Every human-being should understand themselves to be worthy because those around them are worthy.” - Dr. Monique Liston

• Emergent strategy

  • Our evaluation team chose adrienne maree brown’s Emergent Strategy as a core text for our work. We read the book as a team multiple times per year routinely and consider the principles of emergent strategy within our work. Emergence allows us to consider everything we engage, do, or witness as data that we can learn from. Our emergent attitudes encourage us to be more responsive than reactive when engaging and embracing conflicts.

• Beloved Community

  • The expression “Beloved Community” was coined by American philosopher Josiah Royce and popularized by civil rights activist Martin Luther King, Jr. In many academic spaces, beloved community is understood through the work of author bell hooks. 

  • By centering beloved community as an important part of this evaluation, we further our ability to reach truer and more authentic insights through equanimity, radical accountability, embracing conflict, and creating transformative relationships.

In thinking through how best to present our work from this evaluation, the team kept coming back to the idea of community and how valuable the insights from our housing justice fellows were. We knew that our findings would best serve others as readily accessible, living artifacts of our work that can be shared and engaged with widely. What initially began as an animated PowerPoint slide on the housing justice power-building framework we brainstormed with our fellows turned into a fully interactive, scrollable, web graphic on Mathematica’s website and podcast episode. But we recognized that the graphic in itself, though a product of the learning done through this evaluation, could not capture it all on its own. This project has turned out to be so much more than the sum of its parts, and to encapsulate that we wanted to share those parts which would resonate most with others invested in housing justice, community power building, and equitable evaluation: our fellowship model, what we learned from it, our approach to data collection and understanding, and our passion for finding the common threads between them. We hope through viewing the pages here and on Mathematica’s partnering page that you learn something new, interesting, and actionable.

Several other members of UBUNTU and Mathematica worked on this project and helped make it possible. We acknowledge and applaud their efforts!

Reframing RWJF’s Evaluation Questions through an Equity lens

The guiding questions for our evaluation initially posed by RWJF program officers were as follows:

1. What are the power-building capacities and infrastructure needed to advance housing justice work?  

2. To what extent did this funding increase the grantee’s ability to utilize these capacities or build infrastructure to further these capacities? 

These two questions can be situated along a high-level theory of change for how RWJF envisioned their investments would help to advance the housing justice movement, as depicted in the following graphic:

Using these guiding questions as a starting point and in line with our guiding principles to center equity in the evaluation, our team facilitated a participatory process with all HJ grantees to generate a set of HJET evaluation questions that responded to both RWJF’s and the grantees’ information needs, ensuring that the perspectives of all grantees were included in our evaluation planning process. As evaluators, we have the unique task of ensuring that the evaluation is informative to all stakeholders and beneficial to all stakeholders—giving each of them opportunities to use our evaluation activities and findings to satisfy their own curiosities.

To operationalize this principle, we first facilitated a participatory exercise in April 2022 designed to allow each grantee to share their key questions about their housing justice work and RWJF’s support to advancing the housing justice movement. We used an online virtual work platform called Mural where we invited grantees to share the key questions they had that our evaluation might help them answer, and any other thoughts they wanted to share about the evaluation. 

The Mural board invited participants to share their specific questions organized as follows:

• By the end of the evaluation, what would you like to know about how the Community Power-building Initiative has contributed to changes in the following areas:

• Housing Justice Funders (for example, changes in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation directly, changes with other HJ funders, changes to how funders collaborate and coordinate, etc.)

• Housing Justice Movement (for example: changes in coordination and collaboration between national networks of grassroots organizing and base-building groups? Changes within the national ecosystem of housing justice actors? Changes with local and/or state-level community power-building organizations? Changes within local and/or state ecosystems of housing justice actors?)

• Policy and Policy-level Changes (for example, changes at the national level? Changes at the local and/or state level? Changes in the type of policy work that you are invested in over time?)

• Communities who have Experienced Housing Injustices (for example, changes to housing conditions in impacted communities? Changes to the narratives used to describe housing injustices? Changes in the ways in which the voices of impacted communities are lifted up in the housing justice movement?

Overall we collected 72 separate questions from grantees.

During a team retreat in May 2022, our team reviewed, refined, and synthesized these questions. We found that the questions fell into six specific domains that grantees identified as crucial to address to advance the housing justice movement: narrative power, political power, philanthropic power, material power, leadership power, and vision. For instance, narrative power involves the ability to promote narratives around housing, while political power focuses on creating and enforcing housing policies. Philanthropic power pertains to funding housing justice work, material power involves changing renters' conditions, leadership power emphasizes sustaining leadership in the housing sector, and vision consists in understanding and leveraging the ecosystem for change. Addressing these six power domains is a critical step toward advancing the housing justice movement.

With these six domains identified, we drafted evaluation questions corresponding to each domain based on synthesizing specific questions we obtained from our Mural exercise. From May to August 2022, we held one-on-one interviews with each grantee to present these domains of power and draft evaluation questions for feedback. We also had RWJF internal stakeholders share and provide feedback on the first round of questions. 

In addition to RWJF’s two questions outlined above, we added the following six evaluation questions mapped to the six domains of power that blend the curiosities of all stakeholders and provide an initial framing of power-building concerns from the grantee and internal stakeholder perspective.

Roadmap to the remainder of this report:

• Approach to answering evaluation questions: This section outlines the data collection and analysis activities we conducted to answer our eight core evaluation questions. It highlights some of the innovative evaluation approaches used in this evaluation, such as the Housing Justice Power-Building Evaluation Fellowship and Ecosystem Mapping. It also includes limitations in this approach and lessons learned for the wider evaluation community. 

• Changes within six domains of power to advance housing justice: evaluation findings related to grantees’ evaluation questions. This sections responds to the six core questions identified by grantees linked to how changes the six power domains described earlier in this section have changed throughout the evaluation and how these changes contribute to advancing the housing justice movement. 

• Overview of the Housing Justice Power-building Framework:  evaluation findings related to RWJF’s question #1. This section responds to RWJF’s question about the power-building capacities and infrastructure needed to advance housing justice work. It widens the lens on RWJF’s framing of “infrastructures and capacities” to propose a more expansive and inclusive framework to understand what is needed to advance housing justice work.

• Pathways to power for housing justice: evaluation findings related to RWJF’s question #2. This page provides evaluation findings related to RWJF’s question about how their investment increased grantees’ abilities to advance the housing justice movement. It uses the two core frameworks developed as part of this evaluation (Housing Justice power-building Framework and Domains of Power within Housing Justice Movement) to articulate the various pathways by which RWJF funding has contributed to building power for housing justice and how these contributions plausibly contribute to RWJF’s mission of health and health equity for all Americans.

Conclusions and recommendations. This page moves beyond evaluation findings to explore the “so what” of these findings for RWJF and the “now what” for the housing justice movement.

Grantee Engagement

We engaged housing justice grantees virtually throughout the evaluation. Our initial engagement focused on introducing the evaluation team and building relationships with each of the eight grantees (Table X). We conducted virtual meetings with each of the grantees and collaborative office hours to brainstorm and refine grantees’ evaluation questions and confirm their goals for the evaluation.

RWJF conducted annual learning conversations with four national network grantees: Right to the City, Center for Popular Democracy, PowerSwitch Action, and Right to the City. We attended these learning conversations, where grantees shared major wins and discussed emergent questions with the Foundation. Alliance for Housing Justice convened a monthly grassroots table with housing justice organizations, many of whom were other grantees. Organizations attended to learn from each other and collaborate on solutions for emerging challenges. We received permission from the table to participate in their monthly meetings and analyze the qualitative data we gathered.

At the midpoint of our evaluation, we shared learnings from the first two years through virtual, one-on-one meetings and solicited grantees’ reactions and feedback. Grantees also supported the recruitment and selection of our Housing Justice Fellows.

Overview and objectives

The Housing Justice Evaluation Power-building Fellowship brought together housing advocates and organizers from across the country. It was simultaneously our core data collection exercise and a capacity-building opportunity for emerging voices in the field. The function of the fellowship was to explore the relevance and use of measuring and evaluating community power to advance housing justice. Through the fellowship, we engaged 10 organizers from eight organizations dedicated to housing justice, including the Resident Action Project (Washington Low Income Housing Alliance), Inquilinxs Unidxs Por Justicia, the Midwestern Housing Justice Education and Advocacy Institute, South Carolina Housing Justice Network, Not Me We, Tenants Together, the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, and the Nevada Housing Justice Alliance.

The fellowship allowed us to meet our objectives as evaluators and build power through evaluative mindsets in practitioners in the field. We disseminated relevant resources around measuring and evaluating community power and conducted workshops on practices like forming evaluation questions and ecosystem mapping. In turn, those fellows provided us with practice-turned-theory in the form of a new housing justice framework based on centering the voices of tenants and advocates. The post-fellowship interviews and surveys we conducted reinforce what we hypothesized: that providing evaluative tools and practices to those working directly in a space creates new evaluators who then go on to form new and more just evaluative practices.

Our rationale for creating the fellowship, which we later dubbed the Evaluative Power Fellowship Model, was three-fold. First, the model embodied our equitable evaluation principles; we offered as much as we received. Second, it honored the power-building intent of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s initial grant investments; it gave fellows access to a set of tools and practices to further their organizing work. Third, it was the most effective use of our evaluation team’s limited resources; we had an opportunity to gather data with both breadth and depth through sustained discussion and practice with the fellows. 

For more on the Evaluative Power Fellowship Model, listen to our episode of Mathematica’s “On the Evidence” podcast.

Process

1. Design.

• Centered around a week-long, in person workshop in September 2023, the fellowship had three core phases:

1. Recruitment and orientation

2. Intensive workshop in Milwaukee

3. Three, virtual follow-up sessions

• In the recruitment and orientation phase, we focused on engaging, meeting, and introducing the Housing Justice Fellows to the fellowship program and each other. During the intensive workshop, based in Milwaukee, we convened the fellows for four full days to discuss the application of evaluation in their work, including grounding frameworks and skills to elevate their organizational capacity. In the three virtual follow-up sessions, we connected with Housing Justice Fellows to learn how they applied learnings from the workshop in their day-to-day work and finalize key outputs from our work together.

2. Recruitment. 

• We designed and recruited for the fellowship over the course of 2023. We coordinated with RWJF housing justice grantees, four community power-building intermediaries, to advertise the fellowship to their affiliate organizations. Our aim was to bring together 40 fellows from 20 organizations, but given competing priorities among affiliates and our condensed timeline, we convened 10 fellows from across the country, representing three of the four RWJF-funded intermediaries, in September 2023.

• Learn more about the Housing Justice Fellows here.

3. Curriculum.

• The fellowship's curriculum was designed to address critical frameworks and content for advancing housing justice. Participants explored grounding frameworks such as dignity, beloved community, emergent strategy, and generative conflict. Core content covered included a review of community power-building frameworks, notably the Barsoum Power-Building framework and the Power Flower from the Power Building Landscape, as well as ecosystem mapping and storytelling evaluation methodology. These components aimed to enhance evaluative thinking and strategic approach within the field.

• The fellowship also featured insightful guest speakers, including local organizers from Milwaukee and a representative from RWJF. Feedback from fellows underscored the transformative impact of the program. Participants expressed a strong commitment to building a beloved community and noted the value of integrating member voices in narrative development and fundraising. One fellow highlighted their newfound confidence in conducting evaluations, reflecting the program’s success in fostering self-reliance and expertise among participants.

• Graphic 2: Curriculum plan/facilitator guide

4. Emergent facilitation. 

• We grounded our facilitation practice in emergence and responsiveness to the Fellows’ learning interests. As such, our curriculum plan evolved considerably over the course of the week. For example, we had planned to spend our final day of the fellowship focused on storytelling evaluation and an individual visionary writing workshop, with opportunities for peer-to-peer sharing and feedback. However, our Fellows pushed hard to focus the final day on developing an alternative community power-building framework for housing justice to those we had discussed earlier in the week. Furthermore, Fellows often sought to dig deeper into various topics we raised, which necessitated frequent schedule shifts. Our core facilitators met after each day to regroup on our plan for the following day, ensuring we were collaboratively making adjustments. In several instances, we also connected with the Fellows to ask what they would like to discuss or dig into next.

5. Dignified operations.

• Fellows received a $1500 stipend to participate in the entirety of the fellowship, $1000 of which was distributed after the week-long workshop and $500 of which was distributed after the three, virtual follow-up sessions. We also provided shared meals, rides to and from our convening location, and reimbursement for travel expenses. Fellows were encouraged to ask for what they need from food tailored to their dietary restrictions to yoga mats for intermittent stretching and movement. Swag for the workshop centered capacity building; fellows received books on key frameworks and evaluation strategies discussed, including Emergent Strategy by adrienne marie brown; materials to support evaluative techniques we discussed, including an instant camera for photo storytelling; and items to support personal care, including water bottles and fidget spinners. 

6. Process evaluation.

• To understand the impact of the fellowship, we conducted four evaluations:

1. A pre-fellowship survey that set a baseline for experience with evaluation, both internal to their organization and from external evaluators. (N=10)

2. A workshop midpoint evaluation, facilitated through a collaborative Padlet, to assess emergent opportunities to improve the approach and guide learning (N=9).

3. A workshop culmination evaluation, conducted by the Fellows, to assess the efficacy of the fellowship model as a data collection method. (N=9)

4. Two midpoint evaluations during the workshop to assess opportunities to improve the fellowship and guide learning toward participant priorities. (N=9)

5. A post-workshop interview (N=10) and survey (N=2) to assess evaluation capacity after participation in the fellowship.

7. Impact of COVID-19.

• To minimize the impact of COVID-19 on our in-person workshop and address one of our attendees’ requests for COVID accommodations, we developed comprehensive health and safety rules for our meeting. We provided at-home tests to Fellows to use prior to their arrival to Milwaukee and ensured anyone who had to stay home would be able to participate in the fellowship fully using Owls. In the end, one of our facilitators and one of the Fellows were unable to participate in the intensive workshop portion of the fellowship due to COVID diagnoses. 

Findings and Lessons Learned

This section will focus on findings regarding the use and efficacy of the fellowship model as a data collection and power-building method. For findings related to our evaluation questions, which the fellowship helped to answer, go to the Findings section of this website.

For data collection:

As a data collection method, the Fellowship allowed us a level of depth we could not achieve through site visits or one-off interviews with housing organizers. This was in large part due to the time we could dedicate and the relationships we could build through the in-person workshop. In addition to having more time with the Fellows during our sessions (it came to about 5.5-6 hours per day), we were able to spend time with them outside of our sessions. We stayed in the same hotel, shared meals, and explored Milwaukee together. This contributed to a sense of trust and community that made space for honesty, vulnerability, and authentic collaboration. 

The emergent and relational approach also allowed for Fellows to drive the Fellowship’s results. More specifically, our key deliverable from the week, a new community power-building framework was the Fellows’ idea to document the week’s learnings for the Foundation. As emergent facilitators, we created the container in which the Fellows accomplished this. Through the resulting framework, we had the data we needed to answer key evaluation questions, in a way that amplified Fellows’ expertise and leadership to the broader field.

The results from the workshop’s culmination evaluation support these findings. In this evaluation, Fellows used the Photovoice method to evaluate the evaluation team’s hypothesis that we would get higher quality data from the fellowship model than traditional evaluative approaches such as site visit and 1:1 interviews. Based on their findings from analyzing their own photos and sentiments through Photovoice, the Fellows found that the fellowship method built deeper relationships, garnered trust, offered rich and diverse perspectives, and offered space for reflection and emergence (although more time is always needed). 

For evaluation power-building:

There were two main indicators for the efficacy of the fellowship method as a means of building evaluative power among housing organizers: (1) the extent to which they saw themselves as evaluators, and (2) their use of evaluative practice beyond the fellowship setting. Over the course of the fellowship, we found positive outcomes for both. During the workshop and in a few follow-up interviews, we found that Fellows were more frequently taking ownership of the evaluative identity. On Day 3 of the in-person workshop, Duah-Rahemaah said, “When you talking about this stuff, I go, ‘oh, I do that.’ And now, when someone asks what my skills are, I can say ‘I’m an evaluator.’” Lupe also reflected, “You so often hear that evaluators have to be unbiased, but you really just have to be critical.” On the final day of the workshop, when Fellows were working through the Photovoice evaluation, Dixon said, “We don’t need y’aal. We got this.” when a facilitator offered to support. 

During our post-workshop interviews with the Fellows, we also learned about the various ways in which Fellows were incorporating evaluation into their practice. Lupe encouraged the evaluation team to name evaluation and learning as a central strategy in the community power-building framework for housing justice, saying: “I feel like that's a really key part of movement building because I personally believe, like, one of the biggest issues that we have in our movements is that we don't learn from our mistakes, and that we don't learn, that we're not digging enough into past history to be like, oh, this has happened before, because history is circular.” Shanzeh shared about the ways in which she was engaging her organization in a draft version of the framework to discuss opportunities to leverage the framework for capacity building. 

Explore our Kumu ecosystem map and explanation below. Click the three vertical dots on the left to expand and collapse the explanatory text.

Changes within six domains of power to advance housing justice

EVALUATION FINDINGS RELATED TO RWJF EVALUATION QUESTIONS

Now we turn to how we answered RWJF’s two evaluation questions:

1. What are the power-building capacities and infrastructure needed to advance housing justice work?  

2. To what extent did this funding increase grantee’s ability to utilize these capacities or build infrastructure to further these capacities?

The graphic below visually depicts our approach for answering each of these questions.

Evaluation findings related to RWJF’s question #1

Our experience with the Housing Justice Power-building Evaluation Fellowship widened the lens on RWJF’s framing of “infrastructures and capacities” by proposing an expansive and more inclusive framework for understanding power within the context of the housing justice movement. Rather than a focus on “infrastructures” and “capacities”, the Fellows offered that there are four interconnected concepts needed to build power: strategies, capabilities, infrastructure and ecosystems. The foundational principles and values of the movement underpin these four concepts. 

Learning into a housing analogy, our team worked with the Fellows to develop a Housing Justice Power-building Framework: The House that Justice Builds. A summary of the framework is provided below. The full interactive graphic can be explored here. 

The house that justice builds represents the goal of housing justice for all and demonstrates the communal and individual capacity required to get there. Housing justice is not just about homeownership, and the framework reflects that; the housing justice movement aims to provide a place of stable shelter, privacy, and dignity—and the house that justice built can be any structure where this is possible: it may be an apartment or a friend’s house, a trailer, or cooperative housing. Whatever structure you see when you think of housing justice has common elements, though. A successful movement consists of capabilities, strategies, infrastructure, and an understanding of the ecosystems at play. The manner of capabilities, strategies, infrastructure, and ecosystems interacted with is what sets one movement apart from another, as well as the inherent values on which the movement is built and the people building it (its “foundation” and “people who build it” when thinking of a house). In the house that justice builds, each element depicts a necessary component in the movement for housing justice. Each figure below explains the movement building elements on which the framework is built in more depth.

Evaluation findings related to RWJF’s Question #2

Our findings related to RWJF’s second question are presented in four sub-sections:

Part 1: Findings related to how power is built in the housing justice movement

Part 2: Findings related to how RWJF’s funding contributed to ongoing efforts to build power 

Part 3: Case examples of how grantee efforts advanced the housing justice movement

Part 4: Findings related to how advancing the housing justice movement contributes to health and health equity.

1. How is power built in the housing justice movement?

To advance housing justice work, RWJF grantees who took part in this evaluation shared several key power-building domains they feel are essential to advance the housing justice movement. These are presented in the graphic below.

These include narrative power, which involves the ability to create and promote compelling narratives around housing issues, thereby influencing public perception and policy. Political power is crucial for shaping and enforcing housing-related policies that protect and support tenants. Philanthropic power plays a significant role in funding initiatives that drive housing justice efforts and enable organizations to reflect, experiment, and build new capacities. Material power is needed to effect tangible changes in the conditions faced by renters, such as securing rent control or legal protections. Leadership power focuses on developing and sustaining leadership within housing justice organizations to ensure continued advocacy and impact. Finally, having a clear vision of the housing justice ecosystem and understanding how it operates is critical for aligning efforts and resources effectively. These domains collectively build a robust foundation for advancing housing justice and achieving sustainable and systemic change.

2. How RWJF’s funding contributed to ongoing efforts to build power

We use the Housing Justice power-building Framework to present findings related to how grantees used RWJF’s investment to contribute to their ongoing efforts to build power.  The graphic below provides examples of how RWJF support contributed to building the strategies, capabilities, infrastructure and ecosystems needed to build these various domains of power.

3. Case examples of how grantee efforts advanced the housing justice movement

In general, the funding provided by RWJF enhanced grantees' power-building efforts in all of the domains of power we identified in some way or form. For instance, it has allowed organizations to strengthen their narrative power by enabling them to craft and promote impactful housing justice messages. Political power has been bolstered through increased advocacy efforts and policy influence, leading to significant local policy wins and tenant protections. The funding has also expanded philanthropic power, allowing grantees to experiment with and refine their approaches to funding and resource allocation. Material power has been amplified by supporting initiatives that achieve concrete improvements in renters' conditions, such as the establishment of rent control and legal representation. Investment in leadership power has facilitated the development and sustainability of leadership roles within the sector, empowering organizations to drive continued progress. Additionally, grantees have been better equipped to develop a strategic vision of the housing justice ecosystem, which has improved their ability to operate effectively and align their efforts with broader goals. 

On this page we present four case examples of different pathways from RWJF investment to changes in advancing the housing justice movement that we documented through this evaluation. Each case example highlights the power-building experience of one grantee. Within each case, we first describe the housing injustice that the grantee aimed to address. This is followed by a description of how the grantee used the investment of RWJF to strengthen their existing power building efforts or launched new efforts to build power within the movement. This description is anchored in the Housing Justice Power-Building Framework as well as the power domains. Each case example concludes with an overview of how these efforts advanced the housing justice movement and hope to further advance the movement in the future.

The Right To The City Alliance (RTTC) has played a key role in shaping a national ecosystem for organizing, communication, and advocacy to drive policy changes that promote equitable and sustainable neighborhood development. This work focuses on preventing the displacement of low-income families and fostering alternative, viable housing models. One of RTTC's priorities has been addressing the housing injustices stemming from instability and the rental affordability crisis, which forces families into inadequate housing, negatively affecting their health. More specifically, aggressive lobbying by the real estate industry, combined with land-use planning that prioritizes developers' profits over community well-being, has left tenants with few protections from these health risks. In an environment where low-income communities of color face heightened displacement pressures, individual residents often find it difficult to have a voice in planning processes—unless they align with a community-based organization.

In this context, RTTC aimed to use the investment from RWJF to further their long-term goal of community controlled, affordable, permanent and dignified land and housing. Specifically, the investment from RWJF was intended to establish regional learning hubs among housing justice organizers, implement a new regranting strategy to ensure funding was regranted directly to local groups organizing for housing justice, and provide training and technical assistance for tenant unions established through their member affiliates. 

Through RWJF support, RTTC implemented new strategies including knowledge and experience sharing across affiliates and the establishment of a multi-year strategic planning process to develop a long-term strategy and vision. They also used funding to support a new governance structure within the alliance to align with their new strategies. They also built the capabilities of affiliates in several key areas, including governing resources, governing communities, and practicing the set of skills and capacities that it takes to make decisions and to self determine at the community level. They invested in ecosystems by building regional and local infrastructure such as new regional hubs and adding new housing justice affiliates. Finally, they built the relational infrastructure needed to deepen relationships and build trust among affiliates, extending an invitation for them to be part of systems change. 

As a result of these efforts to build political power, RTTC affiliates reported a number of policy wins that contributed to addressing housing injustices in their community. These are provided below:

The Center for Popular Democracy (CPD) works to promote equity and justice by empowering marginalized communities to influence policy, with a strong focus on housing justice. CPD's housing justice efforts aim to combat displacement, fight for affordable housing, and ensure tenant protections, particularly for low-income families and communities of color facing the brunt of the housing crisis. 

Their work aims to address the stark realities of housing injustice in the U.S.; namely that the U.S. economic system benefits a small elite, harming the majority—especially Black people, women, and immigrants—and most people lack meaningful ways to demand change. CPD believes that only sustained civic participation focused on equity can transform the country to prioritize human needs over capital. This is particularly evident in housing policy, where housing is treated as a commodity rather than a human right. Long before the pandemic, low-income families, especially Black and marginalized communities, faced a severe housing crisis due to segregation, redlining, and disinvestment. The imbalance of power between tenants and landlords has only worsened during COVID-19, as many renters lost jobs and face eviction. Corporate control of housing has increased, exacerbating instability.

In this context, CPD aimed to use the investment from RWJF to further a core objective around building a tenant justice movement that nurtures community-based leadership, with both the power to win municipal and state policy change, and the connections to share best practices across geographies and shape housing policy federally. Specifically, the investment from RWJF was intended to focus on organizing tenants at the local level and better resource affiliates to target corporate landlords. 

Through RWJF support, CPD implemented new strategies including supporting affiliates with developing strategic plans and fundraising strategies. They also employed mobilization strategies through digital actions to amplify tenant voice through testifying at multiple hearings around tenant rights. They also built the capabilities of affiliates in several key areas, including leadership development, providing executive-level and senior level coaching for affiliates as well as building political formation skills and capacities around organizing, leadership development and community development. They invested in better understanding the wider housing ecosystems in which tenant organizing operates. Finally, they built the relational infrastructure needed for movement building through bringing renters into national campaigns like Renters Rising. 

As a result of these efforts to build material power, CPD reported that the Renters Rising campaign helped to build density and a solid base through the first mass organizing of corporate tenants to fight landlords making conditions worse for tenants, including over 10,000 tenants organized with this grant. With this massive organizing effort, the campaign aims to further a number of critical goals to advanced the housing justice movement, including: 

• Advancing collective bargaining demands with landlords, including issues around evictions, rent caps, just cause eviction protections, the immediate repair of conditions/services, and the establishment of regular meetings with owners to identify concerns 

• Pursuing alternatives of ownership and de-commodified housing 

• Promoting narratives around housing as guaranteed right, rather than commodity

Power Switch Action (PSA) works to advance housing justice by organizing low-income communities of color to resist displacement and secure affordable housing. Their efforts focus on building local power through grassroots mobilization, challenging corporate interests, and advocating for policies that protect tenants and promote equitable development.

PSA’s work in the housing sector recognizes that housing injustice is rooted in the fact that land, racism, and power are deeply interconnected. The COVID-19 pandemic further exposed the racialized nature of housing injustice, intensifying the housing crisis for BIPOC communities and limiting their ability to organize for power. As municipalities faced budget crises, publicly controlled land and housing were at risk of being sold off, while corporate interests and private equity firms seized opportunities to profit. Despite temporary victories like rent relief and eviction moratoria, the failure to secure rent cancellation highlighted the imbalance of political power. 

In this context, PSA aimed to use the investment from RWJF to further core objectives around a) expanding affiliates’ capacities to engage in deep housing justice work, and b) consolidating collective knowledge to build a powerful housing justice movement with affiliates and allies. Specifically, the investment from RWJF was intended to focus on reinforcing base-building for the housing justice movement at the local level and reinforcing leadership development efforts. 

Through RWJF support, PSA implemented new strategies around narrative organizing for funders as well as strategic planning for a long-term vision. The RWJF investment allowed their team to think about big questions, move deliberately, build a program, build a theory of change, and help solidify their vision for the housing justice movement. They also built the capabilities of affiliates in several key areas, including leadership development. They invested in better understanding the housing justice ecosystems in which their affiliates operate. Finally, they built the financial infrastructure needed for advancing the housing justice movement by passing money directly to affiliates to support the field and allowing them to hire more housing justice organizers within their organizations. 

As a result of these efforts to build leadership power, PSA reported a number of advancements to further the housing justice movement. These included; 

• Expanding their affiliate network by bringing on two new affiliates focused on housing justice

• Deepening their housing justice network through hiring a Campaign Director, adding a worker center, and holding regular meetings of a housing justice cohort among affiliates to support a network for learning

PSA shared that these efforts are also leading to building political power in several areas, including: 

• Several affiliates won tenant protections around issues including the right to counsel and just cause rent control 

• Advancing work in Colorado to repeal rent control preemption

People's Action Institute (PAI) works to advance housing justice by organizing grassroots movements to combat displacement and promote affordable, equitable housing. They focus on empowering low-income communities and advocating for policies that protect tenants, reduce homelessness, and address systemic racial disparities in housing.

Within the housing justice movement, their work addresses housing injustices related to the fact that although everyone in the U.S. should have safe, accessible, and affordable housing, the country falls short of this promise. Millions of low- and moderate-income renters struggle to afford housing, with 21 million households, disproportionately people of color, spending over 30% of their income on rent. In 2020, no full-time minimum wage worker could afford a two-bedroom apartment in any U.S. county. Housing insecurity worsens poverty, impacting health, education, and transportation access, with BIPOC communities hit hardest. The crisis has spread beyond cities into suburbs and rural areas, where many households spend over half their income on housing. However, this crisis reveals the urgency of building community power, particularly in under-organized areas like rural regions and small towns, where many remain disconnected from civic life and public engagement. PAI believes that expanding community power building is essential to address housing inequality.

In this context, PAI aimed to use the investment from RWJF to further their long-term agenda to build sustainable and powerful organizing practices that create structural change and deliver long-term improvements in the housing justice movement. Specifically, the investment from RWJF was intended to train and support local tenant-led collectives and housing organizations to build a base of low-income tenants around their self-interest, both to meet the immediate needs of communities in crisis and to build sustainable community power to advance overdue structural reforms. 

Through RWJF support, PAI implemented new strategies around evaluation, reflection and learning and strategic planning. The RWJF investment also supported core strategies around healing and restoration for their organization and affiliates, allowing them to prioritize building the infrastructure needed, slowing down and mitigating burnout within the organization. They also built the capabilities of affiliates in several key areas, including tenant organizing. They delivered a virtual tenant-based building training, diving into organizing basics. The 12-week boot camp grounded participants in a shared language of what PAI believes organizing/base-building is so that organizers could “start out from a nourished soil”. They invested in strengthening housing justice ecosystems by building out a playbook on being a strong tenant organization: what it means to be a tenant organizer and how to build being a tenant as a political identity in this country. Finally, they built the ecosystem infrastructure needed for advancing the housing justice movement by investing in new capacity in the field, especially in the south, within rural communities, and with organizations led by BIPOC individuals. 

As a result of these efforts to build vision within the housing justice ecosystem, PAI reported a number of advancements to further the housing justice movement. These included; 

• Re-grounding their efforts around transformational organizing 

• Moving to focused signature campaigns such as the National Homes Guarantee, moving resources towards what’s working

Emerging Needs: How RWJF could use these evaluation findings to more strategically inform future investments in power-building capacities 

Both the Housing Justice Power-building Framework and the Six Domains of Power that were developed as part of this evaluation can help to strategically inform future RWJF investments to ensure that they advance the housing justice movement. For instance, the Housing Justice Power-building Framework highlights that a deeper Uunderstanding of the power-building strategies, capabilities, infrastructures and ecosystemscapacities of housing justice organizations is crucial for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to maximize the impact of their funding in this sector. By knowing the specific assets, strengths and areas for improvement of these organizations, RWJF can better allocate resources effectively to support initiatives with the greatest potential for significant and sustainable change. For instance, organizations with strong infrastructure and strategies for harnessing political power can drive essential policy changes that benefit communities, aligning with RWJF's goal to build community power and advance health equity.

Strategic alignment between RWJF's funding strategies and the areas for improvement of grantees through the lens of the power-building frameworkneeds and capabilities of grantees can help to ensures that investments are purposeful and supportive of long-term housing justice goals. This alignment not only enhances the effectiveness of funded initiatives but also contributes to RWJF’s vision of creating healthier and more equitable communities. By expanding their frame from “capacities and infrastructures” to understanding”strategies, capabilities, infrastructures and ecosystems” the power-building capacities, RWJF can better tailor their support to address specific gaps, such as providing research and data resources or training, which strengthens the overall impact of their investments. For instance, one grantee highlighted the struggle around "research and data," emphasizing the need for "research on corporate landlords" and "data on people they've reached especially digitally." Another grantee expressed the need for help in distilling key lessons and successes that aren't just quantitative, stating, "[We] could use help with our own ability to distill key lessons and success that aren't just quantitative ones. Many more kind of qualitative outcomes that we could use support identifying and then tracking/evaluating." 

Additionally, the importance of relationship-building was noted, with a focus on leadership development to "keep people excited and engaged" and a priority to "build the infrastructure for building the bench and slow down to mitigate burnout inside the organization." The need for spaces to share learnings and successes with other funded groups was also emphasized. Some groups discussed the importance of instrastructure needed to build the movement, with a grantee stating, “Twenty-six groups received funds and because of increased funds from foundations like you we were able to increase the third tier of the grant-making level." Lastly, the significance of supporting strategies and capabilities around narrative change was noted, as funders need to move past the "supply/demand economics of the housing market" and start addressing the "villains and heroes crises and solutions" embedded in housing narratives.

An additional use of the HJ Power-Building Framework is to ensure that any investments made are in line with the underlying values and principles of the movement. These values and principles are the foundation for the work of local and state groups. Leading with these values and principles in investment will further align RWJF with the goals of the movement. 

Emerging Learnings: Micro-Transformations 

The difference between change and transformation is essential for program officers working on RWJF's initiative to build community power to advance health equity, especially in the context of housing justice. Change typically refers to modifications or improvements within existing systems and structures. It involves making adjustments that can result in better outcomes or more efficient processes without fundamentally altering the underlying system. For example, in the context of housing justice, change might involve implementing new policies to protect tenants' rights or increasing funding for affordable housing projects. These changes can have immediate and positive impacts, but they often operate within the existing framework of housing policies and market dynamics. Transformation, on the other hand, involves a more profound and systemic shift. It is about fundamentally rethinking and redesigning the structures, systems, and power dynamics that govern a particular area. In housing justice, transformation means addressing the root causes of housing inequities, such as systemic racism, economic disparities, and historical disinvestment in certain communities. It involves creating new paradigms and approaches that not only improve conditions but also empower communities to have control over their housing and future.

For program officers at RWJF, understanding this distinction is crucial. While supporting changes can lead to incremental improvements and immediate benefits, aiming for transformation aligns more closely with RWJF's vision of advancing health equity by building community power. This approach requires a focus on empowering communities to lead the charge in reimagining and restructuring housing systems. It means investing in initiatives that not only address immediate needs but also build the capacity of communities to advocate for and create long-term, systemic change.

In the context of RWJF’s work on housing justice, program officers should strive to support transformative initiatives that dismantle existing inequities and build new, equitable systems. This involves funding projects that empower communities, support leadership development, and promote systemic reforms that address the root causes of housing injustice. By focusing on transformation, program officers can help create sustainable and equitable housing solutions that contribute to the broader goal of health equity.

Grantees have facilitated significant micro-transformations through funding, leading to power shifts that alter the relationship between renters and the market. For instance, the Community Power Collective, Strategic Actions for a Just Economy, and TRUST South LA won Measure ULA, providing approximately $900 million annually for housing justice in Los Angeles. Similarly, 9to5 Colorado outbid private investors to purchase a mobile home park, and the Oakland Community Land Trust purchased a 14-unit complex for residents. These examples highlight the material power gained through organizing renters into owners and promoting messages such as "Housing is a human right" and "Housing should not be on the speculative market."

Long-Term Commitment

Philanthropy must transition from short-term grantmaking to a model of sustained support for community-led initiatives. Short-term funding often fails to account for the time required to build capacity, develop relationships, and enact meaningful change. For transformative progress, communities need consistent backing that allows for the development of long-term strategies and resilience. This commitment includes not just financial support, but also providing the necessary resources and infrastructure to enable grassroots organizations to thrive and lead effectively.

Such a long-term approach involves fostering deep, trusting relationships with communities and understanding their evolving needs. It requires funders to be patient and flexible, recognizing that change takes time and is often achieved through incremental steps rather than immediate results. By committing to a sustained partnership, funders can help communities develop the infrastructure, skills, and networks needed to achieve lasting impact and create systemic change.

Alignment with Local Needs

To ensure effective impact, funders must align their objectives with the specific needs and goals of local organizations and communities. This requires a deep understanding of the local context and a willingness to adapt funding strategies to meet those needs. Funders should engage directly with community members and leaders to ensure that their support is relevant and responsive to local priorities, rather than imposing externally defined goals.

It is crucial to recognize that the objectives of intermediaries may differ from those of grassroots organizations. While intermediaries may focus on broader strategic goals, grassroots groups are often driven by immediate community needs and aspirations. Funders need to bridge these gaps by supporting both intermediary and grassroots efforts in a way that harmonizes their objectives and enhances overall impact. This alignment ensures that resources are used effectively and that community voices are central in shaping funding priorities and strategies.

Focus on Systemic Change

Philanthropic efforts should aim to address systemic issues and promote equitable changes at a foundational level. Transformative change requires a focus on altering existing power dynamics and dismantling systemic inequities. This means investing in initiatives that challenge and reshape entrenched structures of inequality and support broader societal shifts towards justice and equity.

Supporting systemic change involves backing efforts that tackle root causes rather than just symptoms. This could include funding policy advocacy, community organizing, and other strategies that aim to transform systems and structures at a fundamental level. By prioritizing systemic issues, funders can contribute to creating a more equitable and just society where long-term improvements in health and well-being are possible.

Building and Supporting Capacity

Investing in capacities beyond immediate campaign needs is essential for sustainable and impactful change. This includes supporting the development of research, data evaluation, and relationship-building capacities within communities. Such investments help organizations not only execute their current strategies but also adapt and scale their efforts over time.

Building capacity involves providing resources and training that empower organizations to collect and analyze data, refine their strategies, and strengthen their networks. This support enables groups to effectively measure their impact, identify areas for growth, and engage in strategic planning. By focusing on these broader capacities, funders can ensure that organizations are well-equipped to sustain their efforts and drive meaningful, long-term change.

Critical Evaluation

Evaluators must move beyond generic frameworks and focus on capturing the nuanced, iterative processes of power building and transformation. Traditional evaluation models often fall short in capturing the complexity of community-driven change, which involves ongoing learning, adaptation, and micro-transformations. A more tailored approach to evaluation is needed to understand how incremental changes contribute to broader systemic shifts.

Critical evaluation should involve methods that reflect the lived experiences of communities and the evolving nature of their efforts. This includes recognizing the importance of small, incremental changes and how they contribute to larger goals. By using more nuanced and flexible evaluation techniques, funders and evaluators can better assess the true impact of their investments and support ongoing learning and improvement in community-led initiatives.

Learn More

Still curious about housing justice and this project? Take a listen to Mathematica’s “On the Evidence” podcast episode on our fellowship, make sure to browse the full interactive housing justice framework, and check out more of UBUNTU and Mathematica’s work!

The evaluation was made possible thanks to funding by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.