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 Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA, 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.