Reflecting on "The Housing Crisis: Affordable Cities Start in Your Backyard"

On Tuesday, April 30th,  from 6 to 7:15, Ian Macleod and I hosted "The Housing Crisis: Affordable Cities Start in Your Backyard," the culmination of over 6 months of work inside and outside of our Global Scholars Seminar. The panel discussion that was the main focus of our event featured four guest speakers representing various groups and entities working to combat the housing crisis and promote affordable housing in Los Angeles: Bill Huang, the Director of Housing for Pasadena, spoke about the need for dignified, livable affordable housing; Alice Kimm, a partner in the JFAK architecture firm, which works to design affordable housing, discussed combating the the disturbing rise of homelessness; Clemente Franco, a housing rights attorney and President of the Board of Inquilinos Unidos, compared the relative effectiveness of different legal policies in place to protect tenants; and Jose Felix Cabrera, a Mexican immigrant and community organizer who has fought tenants' rights in the Westlake-Macarthur Park area for over 20 years—even while fighting—brought the human side of the issue into focus with his powerful words.

For all of our promotion in person, on Facebook, and even on the airwaves of KPFK, we got a solid turnout from Poly student and a pretty respectable number of audience members from the Pasadena area and the housing advocacy community. Though I felt truly honored to bring awareness and my passion for housing justice to the Poly and greater Pasadena communities, the most valuable part of the event for me was the members of the Inquilinos Unidos Tenant Leadership Academy who were able to attend (almost 40 of them!). Though they arrived around 25 minutes late due to difficulties with the bus they chartered from Pico Union (causing me a not insignificant amount of stress), inviting them to my school, having them in the audience, and sharing taquitos with them on the senior patio afterwards. During dinner (catered expertly by community member Evi Hurtado), I even got the chance to introduce my friend Noemi, the daughter of one of the women in the Leadership Academy, to all of my friends from Poly.

The attendance of the Leadership Academy tenants compelled us make our event fully bilingual, and with the help of IU Executive Director/my boss Luis Cabrales (who served as a translator on the panel), this ended up being to me one of the most memorable and powerful aspects of the event.

It was a truly unforgettable experience planning, organizing, and leading my event, and I'm extremely grateful to the Global Scholars program for allowing me to make it a reality. In the future, I hope Poly students continue to be aware of housing issues, and that Poly and Inquilinos Unidos can grow their newly-created partnership.