🚨 BIG NEWS: California could finally legalize communal living! 🚨

The Housing Choice for All Act is here! A bold statewide proposal to remove outdated zoning restrictions that punish people for how they live and who they live with.

This legislation would end legal discrimination against non-family households, shared housing, and co-living communities by eliminating the distinction between “dwelling units” and “group housing”, and we’re proud to help lead the charge. Sign on to support here!

A group of twelve people of diverse ages, genders, and backgrounds pose together outdoors on a sunny day, smiling and relaxed. They are standing and kneeling on grass near trees, with a red woven blanket and bones in the foreground. A wooden garden structure and lush greenery are visible in the background, suggesting a communal or rural setting.

We believe in collective care.

We believe in the right of people to live together — to care for one another, to build stability, to share resources, and to create belonging. But right now, outdated zoning laws tell us who counts as a “family,” who can share a home, and what kind of relationships are legally recognized.

The Housing Choice for All Act is about dismantling these barriers and restoring the right to live communally — with dignity, safety, and joy.

What’s the problem?

For over 100 years, zoning laws in California have separated people based on family status, criminalized shared housing models, and suppressed immigrant and working-class communities’ living arrangements. Laws were written to privilege the nuclear family in single-family homes — with private kitchens, private bathrooms, and no room for anyone else.

In 1917, California implemented its first zoning law to “Americanize” immigrant families, targeting communal homes and banning residential hotels, boarding houses, and rooming houses in many neighborhoods. These bans persist today — disguised as “dwelling unit” vs. “group housing” distinctions in local codes across the state.

This is about liberation.

Just as the Law Center has supported cooperative strategies to reclaim land and labor, we now turn to reclaiming housing. We reject the idea that the law should dictate who is allowed to live together. We refuse to accept a system where only the wealthy can have collective care in their home — through live-in private chefs or in-home domestic workers — while others must navigate a maze of zoning violations for simply cohabiting and trying to care for each other.

We are building toward a vision where people choose who they live with, not where the law decides what “housekeeping unit” they fit into.

What does the Housing Choice for All Act do?

This policy recognizes the right to live together in community — however that looks.

It would:

• End the legal distinction between dwelling units and group housing

• Prohibit cities from requiring that people in a dwelling unit be related or act like a nuclear family

• Remove mandates for private kitchens and bathrooms and remove restrictions on limited private kitchens

• Legalize shared meals and communal kitchens

• Require the state to count all housing types in the Regional Housing Needs Allocation, not just fully private units

This act would unlock the power of shared housing: flexibility, affordability, sustainability, and care.

Who is this for?

This is for:

• Single parents sharing homes for childcare and support

• Elderly friends aging in place together

• Queer and trans people creating chosen family

• Cooperative households, coliving communities, and intentional communities

• Immigrant communities who’ve always lived intergenerationally

It’s for everyone whose home doesn’t fit in the narrow legal box of “family.”

Why now?

California is facing a housing crisis — and a one-size fits all type of housing stock doesn't help us solve it. 

We already have examples of more flexible, fluid, and oftentimes communal living arrangements, but zoning law marginalizes them. 

They look like homes built for larger nuclear families of times past being creatively repurposed by coliving communities.

They look like underused office buildings being affordably converted into group housing with a central kitchen and central bathrooms.

They look like bungalow courts and tiny home clusters.

They look like supportive housing and residential hotels providing meals and support services.

But none of these models can thrive unless we remove the laws that currently criminalize them.

Let’s legalize how we live.

We don’t need more restrictive zoning. We need housing justice rooted in collective care.

We invite you to support the Housing Choice for All Act — to fight for a future where no one has to justify their relationships to the government in order to share a roof.

✊ Join us in our call to action!

We're building a coalition of lawyers, tenants, organizers, planners, and culture-keepers committed to transforming how we live together.

Sign on to support here!

📧 Jay Cumberland, Staff Attorney – [email protected]
📧 Hope Williams, Director of Legislative Advocacy – [email protected]