Co-authored by Somos Mayfair and PLACE Initiative

The Cooperative Housing Blueprint: A Manual for Equitable Homeownership is a bold and timely guide to developing, designing, and living in housing cooperatives that center affordability, sustainability, and collective ownership. Funded by the Build It Green Housing Innovators Fund, and slated for completion in summer 2025, this manual is a vital resource for those working to build resilient, community-rooted housing solutions in the face of escalating costs, displacement, and climate disruption.

Co-authored by Garlynn Woodsong and Izzy Davids of Woodsong Associates, in collaboration with Óscar Quiroz-Medrano of Somos Mayfair (a community organization based in the San José, California neighborhood where Cesar Chavez lived during his pivotal Chicano organizing years), the Blueprint weaves together best practices, case studies, and step-by-step guidance into a practical framework for residents, organizers, and policymakers.

From legal structures and financing strategies, to governance models and regenerative design principles, the book equips changemakers with tools to create lasting, people-powered alternatives to speculative real estate. It challenges the extractive status quo of late-stage capitalism, while offering replicable, grounded solutions for a future where housing is not a commodity, but a platform for justice, stability, and shared prosperity.

Stay tuned for its release later this year!