Reflections on Vienna: Delegations Designed for Impact

Sarah participated in the Global Policy Leadership Academy’s September 2022 Vienna Social Housing Field Study delegation while serving as Director of External Affairs at the Central Valley Community Foundation. This article is a replication of her recent LinkedIn post.

When I was first invited to Vienna, I was serving as Director of External Affairs at the Central Valley Community Foundation under former Mayor Ashley Swearengin.

Like many people considering the trip, our first reaction was, woah that is cool, but then immediately feelings of skepticism entered. What can we really learn from Vienna and bring back to Fresno? We knew Vienna had done housing well. Beyond that, we didn’t have much context. We certainly didn’t have a roadmap for what we could implement here. As conversations continued with LeSar and the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI), who were helping us think through a delegation, our minds began to shift. We decided to invest in ourselves and the question then jumped from Should we go? to If we’re going to go, what would make this worthwhile, and more importantly, who needs to come with us?

• Who needs to see what is possible?
• Who can come back and has the decision-making authority to actually do something about it?

I know many participants have boards or constituents to answer to so those questions are important as we look towards planning ahead.

Like many communities, we started with local government. At the time, we had a new Mayor who was ready to do something meaningful around housing and a Chief of Staff with a fantastic housing background. So key to this delegation’s success.

Then we narrowed our thinking to an issue that united us: downtown. If we really want a vibrant downtown, young people need to live there. If we want young people to live there, students need housing. If students need housing, who should be part of this conversation?

That led us to invite our Community College Chancellor.  They were in the beginning stages of student housing and just received a state allocation for 200 beds to go “somewhere in the city”.  Looking back, she proved to be one of the most important members of the delegation. Not only because she was interested in housing, but because she became a bridge between the public and private sectors. She helped connect conversations that may not have otherwise happened.

This is why today’s conversation is so important. My first lesson from Vienna happened before I even left, because you can always find people who want to spend a week in Vienna, but it was more important and beneficial to bring together people (especially those working in silos with the exact same intentions), who will need each other when they return home.

We left Fresno representing different organizations and different interests. We came home unified around one goal: how do we bring more affordable housing units to our city?

Because this was a delegation of decision makers, the conversations and momentum didn’t end when we returned. We continued in meeting rooms, over coffee, through grant applications, advocacy efforts, and strategic planning conversations. I’ll say something happens to you when you spend a week together learning, asking questions, challenging your assumptions and, most importantly, building trust. The relationships became stronger than the individual organizations we represented. With the right delegation, you stop saying, “We can’t do that here.” And you start asking, “What could we do here?”

Suddenly we weren’t having these conversations just within Fresno. We were having them with counterparts in San Diego and across the state. Working alongside LeSar, local government leaders, community foundations, and the Governor’s team, we were able to help articulate a challenge many communities were facing: housing doesn’t happen without infrastructure.

Those conversations ultimately helped shape support for the creation of the Infill Infrastructure Grant program, which invested millions into communities throughout California and helped unlock housing development that otherwise may not have been possible.

With that win and momentum at our back, that same Vienna delegation came together to lead a bold, some might say obnoxiously ambitious, ask of state government: We need $250 million to support the creation of 10,000 affordable housing units in Downtown Fresno. Over the course of the year, we fought together to include and protect those dollars in the state budget and at home with our own city council.  That long, tough fight resulted in close to $300m invested in the City of Fresno.

Why I mention this is that without the Vienna delegation I truly believe this would have never occurred.  That shared learning led to a shared language. All the actors were telling the same story, pursuing the same goals and in alignment over what we would do with the funding.  Sometimes together and sometimes separately, but always moving in the same direction.

Most unique to this was the diverse perspectives we brought in. Now we had student housing included in the conversation with investment allocated to this which may not have occurred before. This led to an additional delegation with our CSU Fresno President, health industry consultant, local developer and local CDC jumping in to see their role in this and better understand the shared vision that sparked as part of the Field Study.

As someone who spends most of her days looking at ways to strategically advocate for clients with the federal and state government. I can’t emphasize enough how important those diverse perspectives are to have your application stand out. As the housing crisis grows so does the narrative that “Everyone works in housing” because it’s going to take all sectors to come together to fix this issue from workforce to education. It was exciting to see education come through with their own delegation to Vienna in 2024 to learn more about housing in this way because programming does not exist otherwise for them.

And that to say, this came from a group of people spending time together and developing a shared understanding of what was possible. Today, Fresno approaches housing a little differently. Our partners understand how their work intersects with one another whether they chose to do so or not.  And perhaps most importantly, people better understand how to align public, private, and philanthropic investment to achieve shared goals.

The Global Policy Leadership Academy designed this opportunity for local government, philanthropy, housing leaders, workforce professionals, educators, business leaders, and community organizations to learn together. This unique blend of cross-sector attendees doesn’t exist elsewhere.

With an upcoming cohort beginning September 13^th, I hope you take away from this that this trip is a leadership opportunity to build a network both within and outside your region.  As you hear examples across the state, don’t think about who wants to go to Vienna, ask yourself:

• Who needs to be part of this conversation?
• Who influences decisions in your community?
• Who could benefit from seeing what is possible?
• Who should better understand the opportunities and challenges around housing?
• Who could build meaningful relationships with others on the trip?
• And most importantly who will still be part of the conversation when you get home?

Because that’s where the real value is.

Learn more: https://gpla.co/vienna-social-housing-field-study/