CCEP Podcasts - Exploring Policy and Ethics in California

In this episode, we share with you our final 2021 panel discussion hosted by CCEP, titled “Racial Gaps in Homeownership, Income, and Savings”, which brought together three experts on the history of housing and wealth inequality in the US, and Los Angeles more specifically. 

This conversation is special because the moderator, Alvaro Huerta, Associate Professor in Urban and Regional Planning and Ethnic and Women’s Studies at Cal Poly Pomona, provokes our panelists to talk about their personal experiences--experiences with housing, poverty, and racism. These personal reflections lay the foundation for a discussion about historical and contemporary forms of discrimination in homeownership and other forms of institutional oppression that perpetuate wealth inequality along racial and ethnic lines. 

Panelists:

• Dr. Gary Painter, Chair, USC Department of Public Policy; Director, Sol Price Center for Social Innovation; Director, USC Homeless Policy Research Institute

This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit calhum.org. 

This episode tells a story about collective struggle during the pandemic by tuning into the ways the Healthy LA coalition navigates the bureaucratic dissonance of a call-in public comment system. It was recorded back in early 2020 and first aired on the “Digital Salon Podcast”, a project of the UCLA Urban Humanities Initiative. 

In re-airing this episode, we thought we would do something a little different. We start with a brief conversation between the episode creator, Brady Collins, Assistant Professor of Political Science at CPP and his colleague, Dr. Cory Aragon, Professor of Philosophy at CPP, about the episode--what it was like to make it, what it is trying to get across, and what it means today.

This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit calhum.org. 

In this episode, we share with you another 2021 panel discussion hosted by CCEP, titled “The Eviction Crisis on the Horizon: Rent Relief and Pandemic Recovery in California”. For this conversation, which I had the pleasure of moderating, we brought together three individuals leading the fight for rent relief in California, and particularly in Los Angeles. As with previous panels you’ll certainly hear some policy analysis here. However, we wanted to make sure we invited community organizers working at the grassroots level so listeners can also hear how the pandemic, and concomitant eviction crisis, is impacting the lives of tenants.

It’s worth mentioning that although this panel discussion was held several months ago, the issue is still very relevant today. The pandemic, while subsiding, is not over. And despite the funding for rent relief programs allocated to cities in the American Rescue Plan, renters remain vulnerable and an eviction crisis still looms on the horizon.

Panelists:

Gary Blasi, Professor of Law Emeritus, UCLA

Faizah Malik, Senior Staff Attorney, Public Counsel

Pamela Agustin, Coalition Manager, Eastside LEADS

Moderated by Brady Collins, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Cal Poly Pomona and Faculty Fellow with CCEP. 

For a full video of the panel, visit CCEP's YouTube page.

This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit calhum.org. 

In our third installment of Securing Justice, we share with you an episode created by one of CCEP’s 2020-21 student fellows, Itzia Salinas Cortes. To better understand the role that architects can play in addressing housing affordability, she interviews Jim Broeske, an architect with 40 years of experience working in Southern California. In their discussion, they talk about the ways in which building codes and design standards pose unique challenges to architects working in affordable housing construction, as well as creative solutions that architects--and cities--should consider to overcome them. 

This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit calhum.org. 

In this episode of Securing Justice, we share with you a second panel discussion hosted by CCEP, titled “Representations of Place, Home, and Insecurity”. For this conversation, we invited three creatives--a filmmaker, a visual artist, and a theater maker--whose creative work somehow examines these themes in Southern California. The impact of art and artists on the city is a widely studied topic, and something that any urban resident has probably seen or felt in their day-to-day lives. For this reason I think listeners outside of California will still find this conversation relevant to their own experiences. 

Panelists:

• Jeremiah Hammerling: Emmy-award-winning documentary filmmaker, who has worked on a number of projects including City Rising for KCET.

Moderated by Professor Rennie Tang, a designer, educator, and Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture at CPP, whose research interests include kinesthetic engagement in urban landscapes, intergenerational playscape for health and wellbeing, and choreographic spatial practices.

For a full video of the panel, visit CCEP's YouTube page.

This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit calhum.org. 

Welcome to Securing Justice, a podcast series created by the California Center for Ethics and Policy--or “CCEP”--at Cal Poly Pomona.The focus of our podcast is housing insecurity, an issue that affects millions in the United States and is particularly acute here in California. This podcast will explore housing insecurity through a variety of means--panel discussions, interviews, and creative works by faculty and students.

Our aim is not necessarily to debate solutions to housing insecurity in California--though you will find some of that here--but rather to examine the multiple ways in which housing insecurity is experienced by different groups and individuals. From artists and activists to philosophers and policy wonks, we hope to provide listeners with a varied and nuanced look at how housing insecurity affects the lives of Californians, and what we--and you--can do about it.

In this first episode, we share with you the first of what was a series of panel discussions hosted by CCEP this past semester. This discussion, titled “Housing Justice: From Trump to Biden”, brings together four panelists to discuss the role and impact of the federal government on housing insecurity under the Trump and Biden administrations. This is our most policy-heavy panel discussion, but by providing a macro-level perspective on the politics of housing insecurity policy I think it appropriately sets the stage for our later episodes that take a closer look at the lived experiences of the housing insecure. 

Panelists:

• Joan Ling (UCLA, Urban Planning, and former director of the Community Corporation of Santa Monica)

Moderated by Professor Anthony Orlando (CPP, Finance, Real Estate, & Law).

For a full video of the panel, visit CCEP's YouTube page.

This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Visit calhum.org.