Truckee · Tahoe · Sierra Nevada Region
The Tahoe-Truckee basin faces real pressures: overdevelopment, wildfire risk, workforce housing shortages, and a regulatory maze that rewards those who can afford to play it. We work with the people and organizations trying to get the balance right — locals, stewards, and community builders who understand that the best outcomes here usually require bringing people together, not just outmaneuvering them.
Who We Work With
What We Do
TRPA, CalFire, the Forest Service, Lahontan Water Board — these agencies shape what happens to the land and water here. We help conservation groups, community coalitions, and concerned residents show up effectively in the rooms where those decisions are made.
Getting vegetation management, prescribed burn programs, and defensible space initiatives funded and approved requires navigating a tangle of state, federal, and local jurisdictions. We help communities cut through it.
The Tahoe region's housing crisis is pushing out the workers, teachers, and longtime residents who make the community function. We support organizations fighting for workforce housing policy and local affordability — not luxury speculation.
TRPA board actions, Placer and Nevada County planning updates, state water and fire rulemaking, federal land management decisions — we track what matters to your organization and brief you before the window to act closes.
Our Approach
The disputes that come before TRPA, county boards, and planning commissions don't appear out of nowhere. Many of them have been playing out for decades — between old-timers and newcomers, between environmental protection and economic need, between state mandates and local identity. Before we develop a strategy, we spend time understanding who has skin in the game and what they actually care about. Long-time locals have institutional knowledge and moral standing that no outside consultant can manufacture, and the best advocacy respects that.
We also believe that in a tight-knit community, the win-win is usually worth finding. Scorched-earth advocacy may win the battle and lose the neighborhood. Where there's a path to an outcome that works for the environment, for working families, and for the long-term character of the region, we'd rather find it than run up a legal tab. That's not naivety — it's how durable agreements get made in small communities where everyone knows each other and the issues never fully go away.
Why the Tahoe Region Is Different
Outside capital flows freely into the Tahoe basin. Short-term rental proliferation, luxury development, and land speculation push against the environmental standards and community character that make the region worth anything at all.
A century of fire suppression, beetle-killed trees, and continued development in the WUI means the Tahoe-Truckee region faces existential fire risk. Translating that urgency into funded, approved action requires navigating a maze of overlapping agencies.
Median home prices above $900K and rents that have doubled in five years are hollowing out the year-round community. The people who teach the kids, fight the fires, and run the trails deserve advocates in the policy process too.
How It Works
We start by listening — your community, your issue, the stakeholders for and against, and the realistic timeline for action.
We identify every agency, board, official, and pressure point that touches your issue — including the ones that are easy to miss.
We help you build the relationships and the record — public comments, coalition support, and credibility with decision-makers — before the vote happens.
We follow through. Whether that means showing up at a TRPA board meeting, coordinating testimony, or drafting the response to an adverse decision.
Start a Conversation
Whether you're a fire-safe council trying to move a fuel break project, an environmental group preparing for a TRPA comment period, or a community org fighting for locally-priced housing — we're happy to talk through the landscape at no obligation.
