Today’s episode is one that goes back to a core motivation for starting this podcast in the first place. One of the reasons I love housing is because it is so complex. Never in a million years could someone be a true expert on the full housing system, in part because there will always be new wrinkles. This doesn’t mean it can’t be a goal to learn as much as possible about all the corners of housing, and this podcast has always been about giving me as the host and you as the listener a chance to dig deeper into a part of housing you may be aware of but don’t fully grasp.

Our focus here is on the growing connection between the health system and housing, in particular, creative ways in which housing and social services agencies are using healthcare dollars and programs to provide housing services and improve housing outcomes. This isn’t just housing as healthcare. It’s a recognition by the healthcare system of how our systems can and must become better linked.

My guests today are two leaders from the North Bay whose organizations have helped pushed this work forward. Chris Cabral is the CEO of COTS, an organization that has worked with people facing homelessness in Sonoma County for more than 35 years. Erin Hawkins is the VP of Programs for Community Action Marin, an organization who has been working to support often invisible low income people in one of the wealthiest communities in America since the Johnson Administration. It’s an honor to have them both here on the show, and to reflect on their work in a part of the Bay Area that means so much to me personally.

I hope you enjoy today’s show, which also marks the end of the brilliant tenure of Tina Lee as our editor and my partner in crime on this podcast. After 24 fantastic episodes, we’re going to take a pause for a bit to figure out a pathway to a more sustainable podcast future and focus in the meantime on getting words on paper the old fashioned way.

Thanks for tuning in, and thanks to all of you who’ve subscribed, paid money, given likes or otherwise supported the show.

Of course all of our episodes are special, but this one is extra meaningful because our amazing editor and producer Tina Lee is stepping out from behind the mic for the first time, joining us in a new role as special correspondent. Tina was an attendee earlier this summer at the big social housing festival in Dublin, Ireland, hobnobbing with an international array of interesting people with generally interesting ideas about housing, including a few Housing After Dark alumni.

Today, we are digging into what she saw and heard at the festival, including the differences between Americans and everyone else when it comes to social housing talk. If you're new to the social housing world, check out some of our archives on this site, including recordings done at the Institute for Metropolitan Studies at San Jose State University, where I'm a visiting scholar. If you're a long time social housing nerd, or have recently been to Vienna or Singapore or France or Denmark, or so many other places that do housing better than we do, and you're ready to do things differently. I hope this episode helps nudge the process along.

Social Housing, for me, is two things, full stop. It is shorthand for a better housing system. It’s ideal for folks who know only a systemic approach will work and are committed to actually doing change across the full housing system, and it's a call to Americans to recognize that other countries do housing better and that we can learn from elsewhere, especially if we're willing to adapt things to our crazy, sprawling, hyper diverse and historically messed up land where we have no choice but to adapt to the facts on the ground.

Thanks, as always, to our listeners and subscribers. This podcast also marks the beginning of the end of Tina's tenure as editor, and I just want to thank her, from the bottom of my heart, for making this podcast possible. There would be no Housing After Dark without her. As Tina moves on, it's also transition time here at the podcast. In order to continue, Schafran Strategies needs a partner. If you or your org or company can see a future in which you have a great housing podcast as part of your offering to the housing world, hit me up, and let's see if we can't do something valuable and amazing for the housing community together.

Today’s guest, Dr. Magda Maaoui, is an Assistant Professor of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and a Researcher affiliated with the Joint Center for Housing Studies. Prior to that, she was an Urban Planner and Research Associate at the Atelier Parisien d’Urbanisme (APUR), which is a key regional planning organization in greater Paris, where Magda grew up. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Magda for more than a decade, ever since she was an intern at our own Bay Area regional think tank, SPUR. Magda is one of the most thoughtful, intelligent and passionate housers I know, and someone uniquely positioned to help American housers understand all that team France has to offer us. Join us for a nerdy chat about French housing, about why France and the US are more alike than we think, and about what we can learn from French success. I hope you enjoy this conversation, and thanks as always to all of your who support the podcast and substack. If you are not already a subscriber, consider joining? Allez les Bleus!

In today’s episode we dive deeper into what is happening to our federal housing system. If you’re like me, you know enough about federal housing to get in trouble but not enough to follow every twist and turn of HUD, FHA, Fannie, Freddie, and Ginnie and many more. Thankfully, today’s guest, Ethan Handelman, does know enough and does follow it. His regular LinkedIn posts about what is being dismantled, paused, canceled or attacked in the federal housing world have been a lifesaver.

Ethan was Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily at HUD in the Biden-Harris Administration and I hope you’ll enjoy our conversation, one that’s not entirely without hope. We talk about some kernels of hope in bipartisan legislation, areas of housing where change is possible, and we give more love to housing vouchers. Thanks to all of you who listen and subscribe. If your organization is able to sponsor us, reach out and say hello. We’d love to keep being able to bring you Housing After Dark and for that, we need some help.

I’m super excited about today’s episode because it’s one of those episodes where I’m learning about something I should know more about: housing for people with disabilities.

Today’s guest, Louisa Bukiet, is a Housing Development Manager at The Kelsey, a super innovative organization based in San Francisco that's trying to speed up the development of supportive, inclusive, community housing. Join us for a wide-ranging conversation about The Kelsey’s work, transforming the affordable housing system to make it more inclusive, and why being thoughtful still really matters when it comes to delivering housing.

Housing After Dark is a production of Schafran Strategies, and we’re also the sole sponsor—but that could change if someone in the community reaches out to join us. Come help us keep the podcast going and keep it free and accessible. Especially in these difficult times, we need your support to stay focused on both the present and future of housing.

Jonathan Fearn is someone I’ve gotten to know slowly over the past five years the old fashioned way—by seeing him at housing events. Jonathan is a Senior Vice President of Real Estate Development at Oakland’s own Signature Development Group, where his day job is to build buildings, most of which are for people to live in. But for me, and I imagine many of you listening in, Jonathan is someone known for what he calls his “extracurriculars”—serving on public committees and non-profit boards across the Bay Area. He’s never the loudest person in the room, even when he’s on stage, but when you look at his list of accomplishments and the places where he shows up, you’ll realize how quietly important a person like Jonathan is to moving all of Bay Area housing forward. It’s an honor to have him on the show, and I hope you enjoy our wide-ranging conversation on everything from the interconnectedness of the housing economy to social housing.

Shanti Singh is the legislative director for Tenant’s Together, a statewide Coalition of local tenants rights organizations and one of California’s most important voices for tenants rights and housing protections. Shanti herself is one of the most interesting people I know in this business, someone with a diverse background—including time in finance—who understands both the technical and political side of housing. She’s an intellectual and an activist, and someone who I have learned I can trust— a trust that enables us to disagree from time to time, not just in person but on air.

In this episode, we discuss the past, present and future of rent control and tenant protections in California, the challenges and opportunity of Prop 33, and our shared love of social housing as an idea. This is also the first episode where my guest and I talk in depth about somewhere we disagree. I’m grateful to Shanti for coming on board to do this, and what enables this to work is partly that trust that we have built. It also comes from an important fact—we share a vision of a better housed California, where amongst many other things, tenants have real rights. Like with many housing disagreements, the issue is over how to get there, not where we need to go. There is more consensus about the destination than the path, and I hold onto this fact as a key source of hope for California housing.

When you work in the nonprofit sector in the US, philanthropy is everywhere, even when it’s sometimes trying to pretend it's just following the expertise on the ground. One of the many reasons for which I like and respect Ruby Bolaria Shifrin, the VP for community at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, or CZI, is that she’s not afraid to lead. As we discuss today, Ruby has a background as both an organizer and developer, and has now spent the past six years funding a who’s who of Bay Area and California housing orgs. It’s given her a unique eye for housing politics, and for what she thinks philanthropy can and cannot do, in housing. It’s also made her one of the smartest and most thoughtful people we have in the business, someone who is unafraid to nudge us all forward, and to support a wide range of housing ideas and organizations, including some who may think they are on different sides of the housing fight.

Thanks as always for tuning in, and if you like the show, please give it some love on social media or pass it along to someone who needs to hear Ruby or any of my other amazing guests.

Today’s guest, Paul Fordham, is doing something that is so much harder than it should be—housing the unhoused in one of the wealthiest counties in America. As the Co-Chief Executive Officer of Homeward Bound, he helps lead one of Marin County’s most important homelessness organizations, a group which provides a wide range of housing and services to the County’s most vulnerable residents. 

His work for me is both personal and professional. Marin is where I’m from, a place of incredible beauty, wealth, and privilege. It’s also a place that has been hostile to housing for generations, and as a result it is one of the most segregated places in the Bay Area. It’s also not entirely rich—one third of Marin-ites rent, and there are people all around the county barely hanging on to the roof over their heads. But Marin is showing signs of change on the housing front, in part because of the work of people like Paul and organizations like Homeward Bound.

I will do more to feature people doing transformative work in Marin in coming episodes, including some of the projects I am honored to be a part of. I will also feature much more about the professionals working on the homelessness side of housing, part of my own long overdue effort to bridge the homelessness / housing divide, a divide which is still very real, even if most of us in the business know it shouldn’t be.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy this conversation with this smart and savvy Mancunian, a person who has become an important leader and a critical voice in housing in a place very different from where he grew up. Thanks as always for tuning in, and if you like the show, please give it some love on social media or pass it along to someone who needs to hear Paul or any of my other amazing guests.

Today’s guest, Nikki Beasley, is someone I first came across during a pandemic era webinar. I listen to a lot of webinars about housing and Nikki, the Executive Director of Richmond Neighborhood Housing Services, is a frequent contributor to the world of housing ideas. If you haven’t heard her, she’s great live, but her intelligence and charisma are not the only reasons why I am a card carrying member of her fan club. She also keeps it real, and too often she’s the only person in a housing space talking about homeownership, even when many of the folks in the room are homeowners too. 

Our conversation gets into this dynamic and talks about how and why she is willing to stand up for a housing system which gives BIPOC households a real choice in whether to own their housing in one way or another. I hope you enjoy listening.

Thanks as always for tuning in, and if you like the show, please give it some love on social media or pass it along to someone who needs to hear Nikki or any of my other amazing guests.