This episode of Changemakers LA is hosted by Alexandra Dawson, Director of Lending + Investments at the Local Initiatives Support Corporation’s Los Angeles office. Alexandra talks to our guests about how they are addressing the equity gap through public policy efforts. Our guests leverage public policy to address many regional issues, including affordable and fair housing, homelessness, and criminal justice.
Joining LISC LA for this conversation is:
Maria Casillas begins this episode by addressing the power in her experience as a formerly incarcerated mother. The challenges Maria faced were a big inspiration driving her passion for helping others. She talks about some of the root causes of the criminal justice system and its disparate impact on some communities. Community leaders like Maria were instrumental in achieving the Measure J funding outcomes.
Alan Greenlee discusses the power of coalition building in achieving the Measure ULA funding. He discussed the five components of coalitions and described the importance of generating resources sufficient to produce significant amounts of affordable housing.
Konstantin Hatcher discusses why it's essential to get people housed and build an environment that creates financial opportunities for those on the front lines and the most affected by the housing crisis. Finally, Konstantin explains how AB 2873 starts providing incentives for affordable housing builders that can diversify the pipeline of the folks they contract with.
About our panel:
Konstantin Hatcher is the Senior Director of Community Impact at California YIMBY. California YIMBY’s mission is to make California an affordable place to live, work, and raise a family. Their goal is to put California on a path of broad-based economic prosperity, creating vibrant, livable, and inclusive communities for everyone.
Maria Casillas is the Founder & Executive Leader of Pride In Truth, guiding the organization's strategy to center those most impacted by unjust systems. With a background as a formerly incarcerated, first-generation immigrant and single mother, Maria brings a unique perspective to the role. She serves on the Board of the Youth Justice Coalition and advocates for the rights of youth, incarcerated individuals, and undocumented people.
Alan Greenlee, is the Executive Director of the Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing (SCANPH), where he has served since 2012. With 25 years of experience, he has a strong commitment to helping low-income families, and he has designed and managed programs nationwide, impacting hundreds of thousands of families. His extensive experience allows him to bring innovation to the fight against poverty.
If you would like to learn more about how we support place-based initiatives for housing, economic development, and alternatives to incarceration at LISC LA, please visit us online at www.lisc.org/los-angeles and follow us on twitter @LISC_LA.
You can find the rest of the series on iTunes, Spotify, and Google Podcasts. Subscribe to hear more conversations about the people and places that shape Los Angeles.
This podcast was produced in collaboration with Ronnell Hampton, Founder of Growing Greatness Now. Growing Greatness Now is a consulting firm committed to social and environmental justice.
Alexandra Dawson 00:04
Hello and Welcome to the latest episode of the Changemakers LA Podcast presented by LISC Los Angeles. The Changemakers LA Podcast is a tribute to the people and the policies that make LA neighborhoods good places to live, work, and play.
Alexandra Dawson 00:19
I'm Alexandra Dawson, Director of Lending and Investments at the Local Initiative Support Corporation here in Los Angeles. On today's episode we will talk with our guests about how they are addressing the Equity Gap through public policy efforts. Joining us today, we have Konstantin Hatcher, who is the Senior Director of Community Impact at California YIMBY.
California YIMBY’s mission is to make California an affordable place to live, work, and raise a family. Their goal is to put California on a path of broad-based economic prosperity, creating vibrant, livable, and inclusive communities for everyone. Thank you for joining us today, Constantine.
Alexandra Dawson 00:59
We also have with us Maria C. Gonzalez, who is the Founder and Executive Leader of Pride and Truth, guiding the organization's strategy to center those most impacted by unjust systems. With the background as a formerly incarcerated person and first generation immigrant and single mother, Maria brings a unique perspective to the role. She serves on the board of the Youth Justice Coalition and advocates for the rights of youth, incarcerated individuals and undocumented people. Welcome Maria.
Alexandra Dawson 01:31
And finally, we have Alan Greenlee, the Executive Director of the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing also known as SCANPH, where he has served since 2012. With 25 years of experience he has a strong commitment to helping low-income families and he has designed and managed programs nationwide, impacting hundreds of thousands of families. His extensive experience allows him to bring innovation to the fight against poverty. Welcome and thank you all for being here with us today. We're going to jump into questions.
Alexandra Dawson 02:04
Today we're talking about public policy. Public policy is often overlooked ,but it plays a critical role in the lives of Angelinos. Our guests, you all are working to bring attention to critical issues and advocate for equitable public policies that impact the most vulnerable populations in our region.
Alexandra Dawson 02:25
You all focus on areas such as homelessness, incarceration, workforce, development, immigration reform, and engage affected communities to be involved in decision making at Local, State, and Federal levels.
Alexandra Dawson 02:38
Let's talk about your efforts in raising awareness for public policy and achieving equity for marginalized populations. The first question is for you, Maria. As an organizer, you're on the front lines of advocating for reforms to the Justice System statewide. Here at home in LA County, you are deeply involved with the Measure J campaign which sets the foundation to reimagine the system in Los Angeles. You've spoken about how your lived experience is a source of motivation that guides your work.
Alexandra Dawson 00:03:12
How does your lived experience inform your advocacy, and in what ways has it guided your policy work so far?
Maria C. Gonzalez 03:23
Yes, thank you for such an important question.
Maria C. Gonzalez 03:27
If I can take it back to when I was raising my 2 boys, and being formerly incarcerated. It was a really challenging time, because statistically there are over 70,000 barriers that a person faces after incarceration, and that's not counting the fact that there's a big factor of homelessness. Even with the little help that we did have, I still couldn't manage to sustain, let alone raise 2 children by myself.
Maria C. Gonzalez 04:05
So that was just the beginning of realizing that there was a huge problem. Not mentioning that there's already a problem in the criminal justice system as it is. If we really look at it, the root of this whole problem starts within the criminal justice system, the court system, our community not having enough services where our youth and our people that are impacted can get services to move on with their lives and have a better opportunity.
Maria C. Gonzalez 04:43
So at the beginning I didn't quite understand where the problem was, but now being so fully invested in doing the work, I understand that the problem is at the beginning, in the root.
Maria C. Gonzalez 04:57
If our communities have the support that is needed; then we wouldn't have so many issues in the streets of LA. Over the years we've seen homelessness come up to incredible percentages. And one of the things that I was struggling with was maintaining my home, maintaining the rent, and being able to house my children.
Maria C. Gonzalez 05:29
Little by little I started taking workshops and realizing , how can I help? I've been in their shoes. I'm experienced in my own life. How can I help? Today we realize that we need to help with intervention, with diversion, with mental health, with homelessness, because if we don't attack the problem from the beginning, there's no way that we can stop the problem.
Maria C. Gonzalez 06:05
That's where I feel my experiences have helped me develop the nonprofit organization that I have, so that I can help along with our volunteers and people that are standing behind us in the community itself that want to make changes in their communities together, we want to make sure that we have a chance.
Maria C. Gonzalez 06:29
Now I realized that it's such a bigger beast. We cannot sit here and think this is going to happen overnight. But if a lot of organizations and a lot of people that have been in those shoes all get together and work with the county, then maybe we'll have a shot at making sure that our future generations have what we needed.
Alexandra Dawson 06:59
Thank you so much for sharing that. You're right. These are not things that can easily just be tackled in silos, it takes the work of the community to pull together and address the root causes of the issues that our communities are facing.
Alexandra Dawson 07:20
Turning to you, Alan. Measure ULA was drafted by homeless service providers, housing nonprofits, labor unions and renters rights groups. Speaking of bringing people together, how are you able to achieve alignment across so many stakeholder groups?
Alan Greenlee 07:39
Well, first of all, thanks for the question, and thank you for inviting me to be part of this discussion today.
Alan Greenlee 07:45
To answer your questions, specifically, our coalition was able to succeed, because we followed 5 basic steps.
Alan Greenlee 07:56
We acknowledged that coalition work is hard and that all the members need to be committed to the hard discussions that you need to have, and then also be committed to the work over the long haul.
Alan Greenlee 08:10
The 5 components of the Coalition, where, first of all, we had an alignment of agreement, and it was really based on 2 principles. One was that we wanted to keep vulnerable low income people in their home if we could.
Alan Greenlee 08:28
The second thing we want to do is generate resources sufficient to produce significant amounts of affordable housing.
Alan Greenlee 08:35
We had a very special emphasis on the production side around innovation. We don't only fund traditional affordable housing the way we build it today, but we also had 4 other components of the measure on the production side that looked at learning from our experience and encouraging the city to engage in innovative techniques.
Alan Greenlee 09:00
The second component was that the coalition needs to trust each other. Most of the ULA Coalition members had worked together on different ballot initiatives, Measure J, for example, and other things going back to 2016, and, in fact, individuals, probably at different organizations had worked together, even before that. But the idea was that we knew each other, and we trusted each other.
Alan Greenlee 09:23
The third component was that coalition work just takes time.
Alan Greenlee 09:26
It took us about a year to write the measure, and we also realized in those really difficult and tough discussions that nobody was going to get 100% of everything they wanted. So we needed to be able and willing to negotiate in good faith, to hold on to our values and make sure that our values are incorporated in the measure. Understanding again that everybody wasn't going to get everything that they wanted.
Alan Greenlee 09:53
The fourth component was that we wanted to focus on winning. So each of the coalition partners was 100% committed to the work and to the campaign. We created areas of work that allowed for each of the organizations to make a contribution based on their own capacities.
Alan Greenlee 10:13
There was not only their ability to engage by doing work that they understood and could do well. But there was also room for organizations to stretch and build their own capacity, and it's fair to say that all of the Coalition members are better able to do the work they do today because of the work they did on the campaign.
Alan Greenlee 10:36
The final thing to say is that, as sad as I am to say, the work is not over after election day. You might win, but what we realized over the course of the holidays, in the early part of the year, was that the coalition needed to stay together to make sure that our values and our point of view was represented when the city started to implement the program.
Alan Greenlee 11:01
And so we continue to work just as hard today as we did during the campaign.
Alexandra Dawson 11:10
Thanks, Alan, I love that you mentioned actually going through this process created stronger organizations at the end of the day; it built on their capacities to do the work that they are already doing.
Alexandra Dawson 11:22
It was an unexpected benefit out of all of that. How is the work that you're continuing to do on this?
Alexandra Dawson 11:30
Turning to Constantine, between 2015 and 2020 developers spent upward of 52 billion on affordable housing development in the State of California, with the majority of resources going toward White led firms.
Alexandra Dawson 11:45
California YIMBY advocated for AB 2873, which presents a unique opportunity for the State to invest in construction and construction adjacent professional services and firms led by people of color. What type of impact will AB 2873 have and why is this legislation important?
Konstantin Hatcher 12:09
Thank you so much, Alex. First off, thanks for having me, I really appreciate that I get to be in discussion with all of the folks here, everyone's doing such amazing work, and Maria I just want to uplift you, I really appreciate you sharing your personal story. It's very, very powerful.
Konstantin Hatcher 12:30
I'll start with the second question in terms of why it's so important for us, but also appreciate this leadership, and bringing this idea to the forefront
Konstantin Hatcher 12:45
For us it starts with our values. If we're looking at trying to create vibrant, inclusive great communities with access to great schools and great services and great transportation; we have to look at the problem holistically. We can't just look at housing as just how we provide people housing, it’s a key component, but without also looking at what are some of the causal factors of why we got to this in the first place.
Konstantin Hatcher 13:23
We're talking about Racist zoning laws, and deed restriction, specific government policies that have exacerbated this issue and really set communities of color behind; creating things that have been some of the causal factors of racial wealth gaps.
Konstantin Hatcher 13:46
It's important for us that we're also looking, not just at how we get people housed. But how do we use the built environment to create financial opportunities for those that have been on the front lines, and the most affected by the housing crisis. Our communities of color.
Konstantin Hatcher 14:04
Part of that is where they've been locked out. Here's a clear case of where people of color, just like you mentioned, have been locked out of this process of billions of dollars in terms of wealth creation, in terms of critical jobs, in terms of money that can flow into communities and really change lives and outcomes.
Konstantin Hatcher 14:26
That was the basis of why we felt this is so important and looking at how and what we can do here? How can we make some positive change?
Konstantin Hatcher 14:36
The key thing with AB 2873 is it starts affordable housing builders to incentivize them to really look at how they can diversify the pipeline the folks that they use to build a housing that quite frankly, oftentimes is meant to benefit our communities right, and forcing them to have to first report who they're using in their supply chain; who are they using the bill. Then forcing them to make a plan and then set goals around. It's setting a level of intentionality about who they use to hire, especially as they're working in different communities and working towards benefiting communities.
Konstantin Hatcher 15:23
And so by doing that you're creating this environment where now we're creating new opportunities for folks by just people having to do the work. When they start digging in they find we could do this a little bit better. The other side of it that's really important is, it gives the opportunity to really collect the data and collect the information that we need down the road. We can now see and we can diagnose this problem a little more accurately, we can see where the pitfalls are to make sure that the built environment, especially when we're talking about the billions that our State is spending on affordable housing can use more policy solutions to make sure the money is being spread out in a more equal way.
Konstantin Hatcher 16:21
The other side of that it's. It's a win-win for the State. Because if you have more folks, ] one of the issues around building homes and home building is that we don't necessarily have the workforce available to actually do the work, to build the millions and millions of homes that we need to build.
Konstantin Hatcher 16:41
It also encourages more growth in that department, and more equitable growth, offering other new people the opportunity to uplift themselves in their communities. It's one of those no brainer win-win types of situations. But we have to actually get it down on paper and move it forward. It's exciting to see that we have this kind of opportunity to provide equity in a space where we see so clearly, it has not existed to this point.
Alexandra Dawson 17:19
Yeah, thanks, Constantine, for talking in depth about that. I'm really excited to see you know what the data brings and what can grow out of that data collection process.
Konstantin Hatcher 17:30
Absolutely, absolutely.
Alexandra Dawson 17:33
I have a question that can be for all of you.
Alexandra Dawson 17:37
Where does funding for this type of legislation come from? Why is it important for legislation like Measure J, ULA and AB 2873 to be backed by a permanent source of financing or funding.
Alan Greenlee 17:57
I love talking about money. I can talk about money if you want.
Alan Greenlee 18:00
ULA in and of itself is a permanent funding source. When it gets implemented it has no sunshine, it goes on forever.
Alan Greenlee 18:13
But what's really important about that, particularly in the affordable and the development world is that it provides certainty. An affordable housing developer understands there's going to be funding available from the city.
Alan Greenlee 18:28
When they know that's available, they're willing to take the risk associated with requiring land and making the investment in all the pre-development functions, hiring an architect to design what's going to get built there, and starting to work with the city on the entitlement and land use approvals.
Alan Greenlee 18:47
That certainty is just a key component. What you'll see is the city will start to ramp up and start doing affordable housing at scale. I can't not speak to the California YIMBY Bill 2873, I think it's fantastic, and I wanted to do a pitch on May the ninth, at 10 clock. We're going to do a webinar with our developers to talk about implementation because it is going to require a certain amount of thinking about doing business differently.
Alan Greenlee 19:25
We want to equip our members with as much information as possible, and the community with as much information as possible about how to be affirmatively looking to diversify the workforce as building affordable housing.
Konstantin Hatcher 19:39
I love that. I love that.
Konstantin Hatcher 19:44
That goes great with thinking about the importance of tying AB 2873 to funding because it provides that incentive. I don't need to tell Allen how difficult it is to get a project built; especially an affordable housing project where you have to leverage so many different financial levers planning. The barriers to building are incredible in this state, and that's you know. I mean thankfully, it helps us to have a job, but we folks are suffering.
Konstantin Hatcher 20:24
It's unbelievable. When you're trying to have all these things to measure, it's important that we have some incentive to incentivize folks to say we need to have that intentionality, and the interesting thing is in talking to developers, most of them, it wasn't that they didn't want to do it.
Konstantin Hatcher 20:46
It’s when you're weighing about 10,000 different things, and have about 6,500 hurdles to jump over. It's hard for that to come into your periphery and be actionable. That's the real importance of it.
Konstantin Hatcher 21:03
It incentivizes developers to say, we want to get this funding. Let's make sure that we're doing it; this is what we want to do anyway. Big props to Allen and his folks and many others across the State that really want to do this. Now they have some better incentives with the State stepping in to help make that a reality.
Alexandra Dawson 21:31
Thank you both. I know we're running short on time. But I do want to fit in this last question. If you'll indulge me. A lot of this work that you're doing, developing policies, bringing them through whatever system they need to get through are unpaid, due to a lack of funding; you're doing coalition work.
Alexandra Dawson 21:51
Are there models that your organizations have related to either partnering with agencies to support inclusive participatory engagement that also compensates impacted community leaders for their time and their attention that they're paying to developing these policies?
Maria C. Gonzalez 22:17
For us at Pride and Truth, we were founded in 2020. We’re still a baby and growing. It does have a lot of attention because of the work that I've done before, Pride and Truth was born.
Maria C. Gonzalez 22:37
We’re big on fundraising right now, looking to uplift the CBO. We've been very fortunate to have the Youth Justice Coalition uplifting Pride and Truth.
Maria C. Gonzalez 22:51
Being part of the Youth Justice Coalition Board of Directors, and helping with the legal department, I can say that I really love the fact that they take pride in making sure the community members that engage get a stipend or a gift card, or always making sure that there is something for them, and uplifting their work, and always being present on how we can help them as well.
Konstantin Hatcher 23:27
For our organization we don't engage necessarily directly at the community level, we engage more at community organization level. What we usually try to do is really lean in to bringing community led organizations specifically BIPOC, lead and BIPOC serving organizations to bring them together and uplift their voices in the process, making sure their voice is part of a policy making that goes on, that our State elected here directly from them through convening our housing working group.
Konstantin Hatcher 24:09
They can communicate in and talk about housing and the issues that are important to them, and uplift some of the bills and policies that are important for their constituents, and the folks that they serve so that they can.
Konstantin Hatcher 24:27
So others can hear and support and jump on and get behind some of the other great ideas that are generated from the communities. The important thing is not just saying hey, come hang out with us. It's actually putting muscle and teeth behind it. One of the great phrases is, show some of your values, show me your budget. We try to put actual budget behind.
Konstantin Hatcher 24:52
We try to put the actual budget behind these convenings and make it something where the outcome is going to have a positive impact in those communities. And so that's something that's important for us, and that we have tried to invest in over the last few years, and to really make it happen in the offshoot are opportunities like AB 2873, and other exciting things that will be coming out shortly this year as well. It's been fruitful for us in really achieving that and achieving our values and it’s something that we're looking to continue to expand and do more of that, as much as we can going forward.
Alan Greenlee 25:35
A quick note on the funding, I'm not aware of anybody in the ULA Coalition, who was funded specifically to do the campaign or to put the measure together. It was all done within the context of our work plan.
Alan Greenlee 25:52
It was a matter of members of the Coalition getting themselves organized in a way that they had personnel resources available to do the work. I will say that since election day, however, we've been looking for resources to help support the work on the implementation side, and we've been somewhat successful on that.
Alan Greenlee 26:17
The theme that I would take out of that is, nothing breeds the ability to raise funds like success. Being out there in the community, working hard, and then being able to demonstrate that you can do the work, makes the pitch a little bit easier. And then the last thing I'll say is that all that work is funded by philanthropic dollars. The organizations are able to commit to work on things like that because of the philanthropic dollars.
Alexandra Dawson 26:50
Thank you all for answering my last question. I snuck in there. Thank you all so much, Alan, Maria and Konstantin for joining me in this conversation. Your insights are very essential in understanding how our daily experiences are impacted by public policy.
Alexandra Dawson 27:08
You all play a vital role in achieving complex policy outcomes from which we all benefit. Thank you for that.
Alexandra Dawson 27:16
If you'd like to learn more about how we support place-based initiatives for housing and economic development at LISC Los Angeles, please visit us at https://www.lisc.org/los-angeles/ and follow us on Twitter @LISC_LA.
Alexandra Dawson 27:33
Alex Dawson: You can find the rest of the series on Itunes, Spotify and Google Podcast. Subscribe to hear more conversations about the people and places that shape Los Angeles.
Alexandra Dawson 27:43
This podcast was produced in collaboration with Ronnell Hampton, founder of Growing Greatness Now. Growing Greatness Now is a consulting firm committed to social and environmental justice.