4/30/19 Inquilinos Unidos

As part of their final, GS capstone project, my classmates Ian Macleod and Victor Swezey hosted and moderated a panel discussion about The Housing Crisis in Garland. The five panelists were experts from a host of different fields: Alice Kimm, affordable housing architect and Poly mom; William Huang, director of the Pasadena Housing Department; Jose Felix Cabrera Larios, a Mexican-American immigrant and affordable-housing activist who was forced to live in a single with 14 other people upon his arrival to the U.S.; and Clemente Franco, Board Chair of Inquilinos Unidos (Tenants United) and tenant lawyer representing those who've been illegally evicted. The discussion, which was hosted in both English and Spanish, covered a range of issues, from the growing stratification in modern cities to the rise of NIMBYism, or the "not-in-my-back-yard" vein of thought. Victor and Ian, along with their panelists, spoke of a phenomenon which is not at all new: the exclusion of lower-income families and residences under the guise of "neighborhood preservation." They gave us an overview of urbanization and uneven economic growth and backed it up with statistics like: if current trends continue, it'll cost $16 trillion to house the world's population by 2025, and: large-scale corporations purchased $1 trillion of housing in the last year, meaning there is no shortage of actual housing space, just of accessibility and affordability. Clemente Franco gave the audience a run-down of Proposition 10, which would have been the first step in passing legislation mandating rent control, and its disappointing defeat. He also spoke about his belief that, given the importance of housing, those facing eviction should be legally awarded the right to council-- he informed us that, according to a study done by UCLA, 70% of landlords had attorneys in eviction disputes, while only 10% of tenants did. He also advocated for an anti-harassment bill, as tenants are often so worn down by persistent landlords that they're inclined to give up their fight. The audience learned that there are over 55,000 homeless people sleeping on the streets every night in Los Angeles, but that it costs $500,000 to build just one unit of housing for one family. We learned that, as of 2017, the number of school-aged children in LA county exceeded 63,000. We learned that the average social security payment is $1,400, but that the average rent in Pasadena far exceeds that.
At the end of the presentation, we were left with one question: "what kind of city do you want to live in?" This was perhaps the thing that resonated most with me, as it's forced me to think about ways I can make my city more inclusive, accessible, and just. The presentation was incredibly informing, and I left Garland with an entirely new understanding of the housing crisis.

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