Housing Mindsets

By understanding the perceptions and worldviews of our audiences, advocates can more effectively shape messages to persuade and engage. Deep research into the values, attitudes, and beliefs that California voters hold about housing offer advocates a fresh, more nuanced, understanding of their audiences. 

Audience research surfaced five distinct mindset segments that describe California voters’ ideas on housing affordability: 

Meet the mindsets graphic: five distinct mindset segments that describe California voters’ ideas on housing affordability.

Deep Differences

Research shows that California voters hold conflicting beliefs about housing reform and housing affordability — and these beliefs transcend the traditional political identities of party affiliation and demographic identities of gender, race, ethnicity, or class. This is important for advocates who may be accustomed to digesting audience research through these more familiar lenses, or through the political targeting lenses of base/persuadables/opposition. 

Mindset segmentation methodology goes deeper, to help us understand how audiences think, including the conflicting values and ideas they may hold about housing. The housing mindset segments reveal a deep set of ideas and values that are operating underneath our geographic and demographic identities, shaping the stories we hold about housing, what’s causing California’s housing crisis, and how best to solve it. 

What researchers learned through the mindset segmentation reinforces that housing is not yet bogged down by partisan tribalism among the electorate; while voters hold diverging ideas and opinions on the housing crisis and how to solve it, there’s no clear “left” or “right” on many aspects of this issue. 


Delve Deeper Into Audience Insights

To learn more about the housing mindset segments — and how to best understand and engage them.
Aerial view of houses // Tom Rumble / unsplash.com