Power to Tenants: Launching Our 2026 Giving Project

By Emily and Adiza

Greetings from Emily and Adiza, project managers at Social Justice Fund Northwest (SJF)! As we prepare to launch the 2026 Tenant and Housing Justice Giving Project later this month, we want to share what we’re working on and what’s guiding our thinking.

Why Giving Projects?

Giving Projects are an important part of SJF’s overall grantmaking strategy. They use a cohort-based, participatory funding model that provides significant financial resources to grassroots organizing for long-term, progressive social change.

SJF Giving Projects push back against traditional philanthropy, in which wealthy individuals make funding decisions behind closed doors about who and what deserves support.

Instead, we intentionally build a group of people from diverse racial and class backgrounds who are committed to loving accountability, continuous learning and growth, and moving money to community organizing in our region.

The methodology behind a Giving Project is rooted in African Indigenous collectivist solidarity economics. SJF aims to honor this legacy of collective giving and mutual aid through how we design and run each Giving Project, grounding the work in a collective liberation and movement-building framework with a commitment to social justice and community organizing strategies.

Why Tenant and Housing Justice?

This year’s full Giving Project will focus on moving money to tenant and housing justice organizing in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain West. We asked members and grantees which issues feel most urgent at this moment, and this focus rose to the top.

Through our research and preparation for the Tenant and Housing Justice Giving Project, we’ve learned a lot. For example, some argue the term “housing crisis” is misleading.

As Rosenthal and Vilchis write in Abolish Rent, “Housing isn’t in crisis; tenants are. … The frame of ‘housing crisis’ trains our attention away from the fundamental power imbalance between landlords and tenants” (11).

This so-called crisis has been created by unchecked capitalism that prioritizes the capture of capital through real estate over the human need to create spaces where we can be sheltered and safe among each other.

Housing Injustice Unpacked

The private housing market and real estate speculation allow wealthy investors, companies, and corporations to treat the neighborhoods where we live as nothing more than opportunities for financial gain.

In addition, federal, state and local governments have historically passed legislation that undermines housing options that are not privatized and that would restore decision-making power and agency to those of us who live in them.

While every community faces specific challenges, the root cause of capitalist greed is the same, whether in rural Montana or the Seattle metro area. Understanding the root causes of the so-called housing crisis (unchecked capitalism) has helped us better understand what we’re truly up against and what organizers on the ground are fighting to change.

Notably, victories such as Bozeman’s recent win of tenants’ right to counsel and Seattle’s passing of Initiative 135, which created the city’s first social housing developer, always come from tenants organizing together to demand the conditions they deserve – a testament to the power of community organizing.

Building Trust, Moving Money

We are so excited to get to know the 2026 Tenant and Housing Justice Giving Project cohort!

Something Emily always looks forward to in every Giving Project is the community and trust building that happens with the cohort. Adiza looks forward to seeing participants’ personal transformations of the six-month project.

Every Giving Project also comes with its own set of challenges, whether that’s fundraising during an election season or navigating the generative conflict that arises when an intentionally diverse group needs to figure out how to move together.

But we, Emily and Adiza, welcome any and all challenges as a way for us to build accountability and discover further alignment as a cohort. We can’t wait to get started.

Learn More & Support

If you’re interested in learning more about tenant and housing justice, here are some of the resources we’ve found helpful:

• How to Kill a City by P.E. Moskowitz
• Abolish Rent by Tracy Rosenthal & Leonardo Vilchis
• A conversation on Abolish Rent by Gabriela Rendón with Tracy Rosenthal & Leonardo Vilchis
• The Color of Law by Richard Rothstein
• The Tenant Class by Ricardo Tranjan
• The Pruitt-Igoe Myth directed by Chad Freidrichs
• Priced Out directed by Cornelius Swart
• Push directed by Fredrik Gertten

You can support the Tenant and Housing Justice Giving Project by following the journey on our social media pages or being a donor when fundraising begins.

If you’re interested in participating in future Giving Projects or on one of our grant panels, fill out this interest form, and we’ll be back in touch! SJF runs at least one full Giving Project a year.

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