Building a Moral Economy
For more than 30 years, PICO California has organized to confront what Pope Francis called an “economy of exclusion,” an economic system that leaves too many families struggling while wealth concentrates at the very top.
We believe California has more than enough resources for everyone to flourish. Yet millions of families face rising housing costs, stagnant wages, crushing debt, and economic instability.
This contradiction is not accidental. It reflects rules that allow wealth to be extracted and hoarded rather than shared and reinvested in communities.
We organize to change those rules.
Our goal is not only to win policy reforms. It is to build organized communities across race and faith who understand the deeper values shaping our economy and who are working together to create something different, a Moral Economy rooted in dignity, belonging, and shared prosperity.
What We Believe
We approach our Moral Economy work with a number of core beliefs:
- We believe California generates extraordinary wealth, and that wealth should serve the common good.
- We believe economic insecurity is not inevitable. It is the result of policies and systems that prioritize extraction over care.
- We believe practices like predatory lending, displacement, wage theft, and privatized detention are connected to deeper forces that treat people and communities as commodities rather than as inherently valuable.
- We believe racial division and scarcity narratives are often used to keep working families separated from one another while wealth continues to flow upward.
- We believe people can come together across race, class, geography, and faith to rewrite the rules and broaden access to opportunity and stability.
- And we believe faith communities have a unique role to play in articulating a moral alternative.
What We’ve Won
PICO California’s organizing has led to significant state and local victories that improve material conditions for working families.
- COVID-19 relief and recovery: During the pandemic, we helped secure the largest expansion of tenant protections in the nation, protecting hundreds of thousands of families from eviction. We supported the creation and implementation of California’s COVID-19 Rent Relief Program, which covered 100 percent of eligible past-due rent and utilities. We organized for disaster relief funding for immigrant workers and expanded access to no-cost COVID testing and treatment regardless of immigration status.
- Wages and Family Supports: Our federations have helped lead campaigns to raise minimum wages, secure earned sick time, expand paid family leave, and increase access to childcare and pre-kindergarten for millions of workers and families.
- Predatory Lending and Financial Protections: We have organized to cap usury rates, challenge payday lenders, and strengthen consumer protections at both the state and federal levels.
- Raise and protect state revenue and public programs: PICO California has fought for progressive tax policy measures to fund schools and communities and helped secure billions of dollars in state budgets for historically-disadvantaged communities.
- Public Revenue and Investment: We have fought for progressive revenue measures that fund schools, healthcare, housing, and community programs, helping secure billions in public investment for historically under-resourced communities.
- Fair Hiring and Reentry: We helped pass “ban the box” policies and other reforms that reduce discrimination against formerly incarcerated individuals.
- Responsible Development: We have won community benefits agreements and policies that ensure major development projects include equitable outcomes for local residents.
- Foreclosure Prevention and Financial Reform: Following the 2008 housing crisis, we helped push for federal and state reforms, including California’s Homeowner Bill of Rights, that protected hundreds of thousands of families from losing their homes.