MEDIA ADVISORY
October 19, 2021
Contact: Duc Luu, dluu@publicadvocates.org
Select Committee Brings Social Housing Debate to the Capitol
What: Assembly Select Committee on Social Housing. Click here for membership, and
here for the agenda.
When: 10:00am-12:30pm PT, Wednesday, October 20, 2021
Where: Elihu M. Harris State Building, 1515 Clay Street, Oakland, CA 9461. This hearing can be viewed via live stream on the Assembly’s website at https://www.assembly.ca.gov/todaysevents
Who: Experts on the history and lessons of public housing in the US, and social housing in Mexico, Spain and Austria:
- Dr. Rob Wiener, Executive Director, California Coalition for Rural Housing
- Dr. Edward G. Goetz, Professor, University of Minnesota
- Talía González Cacho, Professor, Tecnológico de Monterrey
- Eduard Cabre Romans, Housing Policy Consultant, Barcelona Department of Housing
- Dr. Wolfgang Amann, Director, Institut für Immobilien, Bauen und Wohnen
Why: Social housing will be the rallying cry for California’s tenant advocates in the coming years and the campaign officially starts with this hearing by the Select Committee on Social Housing. Local and international experts will share lessons from their battles to decommodify housing and to take the profit motive out of this basic human need. Solving California’s decades-long affordability and homelessness crisis depends on our ability to make social housing a reality, not only by producing new housing under social/public ownership, but also by bringing existing housing (such as vacant investor-owned properties) under public and social ownership.
You can see a letter to the Select Committee that lays out the fundamental principles of social housing, including both near-term preservation and long-term production, signed by more than 85 California organizations, here.
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