1. The City of Sonoma controls how land can be used, minimum parcel size, parking requirements, and a host of other rules affecting housing within the 2 square miles of the City. The elected City Council decides on policy after the appointed Planning Commission makes recommendations. 

2. The County of Sonoma controls how land can be used, minimum parcel size, parking requirements, and a host of other rules affecting housing in most of Sonoma Valley. The elected Board of Supervisors decides land use policy after the appointed Planning Commission makes recommendations. Permit Sonoma is the relevant County agency.

Both jurisdictions operate under a General Plan that describes higher-level land use policies. Both the City General Plan and the County General Plan are being updated now and will remain in force for about 20 years. The City’s General Plan update will likely be finalized in 2026; the County’s could take several years. Fine details of policy that allow staff to implement policies are described in ordinances and codes. 

• Advocates

  • Sonoma Valley Collaborative, and its members on their own

  • Generation Housing

  • California YIMBY

  • Legal Aid of Sonoma County, North Bay Organizing Project (depending on the policy)

  • Developer advocates

    • Incremental Developers Alliance

    • Habitat for Humanity

    • California Housing Partnership 

    • Burbank Housing

    • Eden Housing

    • MidPen Housing

    • PEP Housing

    • SAHA

  • Construction and trades

    • North Bay Leadership Council

• Advisors

  • Sonoma County Community Development Commission

  • California Department of Housing & Community Development

  • California Housing Partnership

  • National Housing Law Project

  • National Low Income Housing Coalition

  • Novogradac

  • Redwood Credit Union and other community-based banks

Costs for advocacy to improve land use policy are primarily in the category of staff time for strategy meetings and coalition-building, policy research, writing and revising statements for different audiences, creating and promoting media messages, conversing with decision-makers in private, recruiting and supporting community members who may not have confidence in their ability to be influential, and participating in public meetings which can last for hours. Lesser costs include printing for 1-pagers, occasional creation of buttons or other identifying items, occasional small costs to boost social media posts, and occasional travel for regional strategy meetings. 

The sub-strategies below could each likely be achieved by a 6 to 12-month campaign. Multiple substrategies could be combined and packaged under a compelling umbrella as resources permit. Tackling one or two of these substrategies for 6 months could cost $8,000-$10,000, whereas pursuing several substrategies simultaneously, as a unified campaign over 12 months, could cost $30,000-$50,000. The policies in this substrategy are strictly about land use and zoning, but other substrategies could also be combined into a single policy advocacy campaign; these include Strategy 2c Better Just Cause Eviction Protections, Strategy 3a Adopt a Strong Rental Registry, and Strategy 4c Preserve Mobile Home Parks.

Investors, donors, and funders should realize that supporting policy advocacy is fundamentally different from funding services or projects. The outcome of advocacy work is not guaranteed, because unlike in a conventional nonprofit project, advocates face actual opposition, and the opposition is often better funded. Local government’s limited bandwidth can also limit success. On the upside, regardless of near-term success, advocacy done well builds alliances, both among advocates and with decision-makers, and these linkages then open doors for more good work.