This presentation addresses the persistent crisis of homelessness in U.S. cities and presents recent research from Los Angeles that demonstrates how the economic and social devastation wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic will greatly worsen the crisis of housing insecurity. The crisis of homelessness, as well as that of impending evictions, are disproportionately borne by Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, making these matters of racial inequality. While public health experts have drawn attention to the dangers of congregate shelters and the need for emergency non-congregate sheltering, what is urgently needed are new visions and models of housing provision. Adopting a Housing First approach, Professor Roy will make a case for how access to housing can be rapidly and significantly expanded, and the principles of racial and housing justice that must undergird such efforts.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand the economic and social impact of COVID-19 on housing insecurity, particularly the disparities faced by Black, Latinx, and Indigenous communities.
• Describe the Housing First approach.
• Identify strategies to expand access to housing in the context of racial and housing justice.

Target Audience: Public Health Professionals 

Duration: 34 minutes

Continuing Education Information:  0.5 CECH for CHES

Format: Web-based training, Self Study

Originally Recorded: 08/2020

Presenter: Ananya Roy, Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography and The Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Ananya Roy is a Professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare, and Geography and The Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the inaugural Director of the UCLA LuskinInstituteonInequalityandDemocracyatUCLA, which advances research and scholarship concerned with displacement and dispossession in Los Angeles and elsewhere in the world. Working in alliance with social movements, the Institute seeks to build power and abolish structures of inequality. Ananya’s work has a determined focus on poverty and inequality with special emphasis on housing insecurity and urban displacement. Her most recent book is Encountering Poverty: Thinking and Acting in an Unequal World(University of California Press, 2016), which was accompanied by the #GlobalPOV video series. Currently, she leads a National Science Foundation Research Coordination Network on Housing Justice in Unequal Cities.

Public health professionals have warned that the COVID-19 Pandemic and the accompanying financial strains of a recession will require an agile response. COVID-19 response and recovery are occurring simultaneously. This session will apply a racial equity lens to pandemic response and share a model from the San Francisco Bay Area focused on COVID-19 responses focused on the Social Determinants of Health. Some have referred to COVID-19 as the great equalizer because viruses don’t discriminate. But while viruses don’t discriminate, people and policies can and do. The cost of this outbreak has been disproportionately borne by communities of color. Black and brown workers make up the majority of essential personnel and are more likely to be locked into expensive, unstable housing thanks to exclusionary rental and lending practices. This has left a significant percentage of the country unable to shelter in place, forced to continue working and risking infection and transmission. We will discuss what rolling recovery means for these workers--and how policies and systems can create protection factors for their health.

Learning Objectives

• Examine the BARHII Regional Response and Rolling Recovery Plan, which combines public health equity infrastructure and policies to protect the social determinants of health
• Discuss the Bay Area model of regional response, which focuses on building momentum with early wins and targeted investment in communities with less infrastructure
• Identify strategies to be led by communities most impacted throughout the rolling pandemic

Duration: 18 minutes

Continuing Education Information: 0.5 CECH for CHES

Format: Web-based training, Self Study

Originally Recorded: 08/2020

Presenter: Melissa Jones, MPA

Melissa Jones is the Executive Director of the Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative (BARHII). She is passionate about creating conditions that increase the quality of life and makes life fairer for more people. Her work focuses on the intersection of social determinants of health, social inequity, and well-being. Her experience includes work in municipal government and non-profits in the Bay Area’s large and small cities. Melissa is an active community member in Oakland and also serves on the Association of Bay Area Government’s Regional Planning Committee, which advices on regional planning issues. Before joining BARHII, Melissa served as Senior Program Officer at Boston Local Initiative Support Corporation (LISC), where she launched and ran Boston LISC’s Resilient Communities Resilient Families (RCRF) Initiative. Melissa has additional experience funding and implementing programs focused on community economic development, family financial stability, education, and civic empowerment. Specifically, she has served in youth empowerment organizations, as Program Specialist for the City of Alameda, and as Program Analyst for the City of Oakland’s Oakland Fund for Children and Youth. Early in her career, she served as Director of Professional Development for Partners in School Innovation, where she trained staff to support school reform efforts in SanFrancisco Unified, San Jose Unified, and Oak Grove Unified school districts.