 Good afternoon everyone and welcome to the climate gap in housing. My name is Connor Goodwin I'm the interim director of communications here at ProPublica, and I'll be your host today We'll get started in just a few moments. I'm just waiting on a few more people to join as You may know today's event is inspired in part by Elizabeth Wiles most recent ProPublica story In which she paints a dystopian portrait of a California town on the front lines of climate change The aptly named town of thermal is a case study in how the growing climate crisis magnifies inequality I'll drop a link in a chat. I highly recommend reading it in case you haven't already Okay, it looks like we have enough folks to get started So I'll go ahead If you're just joining my name is Connor Goodwin, and I'm ProPublica's interim director of communications We're excited to be partnering with climate one to bring you tonight's event the climate gap in housing For those new to us ProPublica is a non-profit newsroom dedicated to investigative journalism Our partner the climate one podcast empowers conversations that connect all aspects of the climate crisis As mega fires rage out west and century floods batter the eastern seaboard The nation faces critical infrastructure challenges when it comes to combatting climate change housing chief among them To unpack how climate change has magnified the affordable housing crisis in california and elsewhere ProPublica partnered with climate one to convene a group of climate housing and transportation experts Now, let me introduce you to our speakers If you want to turn your cameras on Juan de Lara is an associate professor of american studies and ethnicity at usc Monica teyes is a super supervising development specialist for riverside county where she's worked for 26 years Darnell grizzby Is a transportation expert and serves on the california transportation commission? Ben matcalf is the managing director of the turner center for housing and housing innovation at uc berkeley Our moderator today is liz wilde Liz covers california and climate change for pro-publica Before I hand it off to liz I want to note that today's session is being recorded and a link to the video will be emailed tomorrow to everyone who registered And if you'd like to ask a question, just click the q&a icon at the bottom of your screen and type it there Thanks again to climate one for partnering with us and thanks to mckinsey and company for their support I'll let liz take it from here All right. Thank you connor and thank you everybody for Taking time out of your night or day depending on where you are So I feel very grateful and we are all incredibly lucky to have These folks joining us to talk about the climate gap, which is a term that gets tossed around But I think really deserves to be discussed and unpacked in the way we're gonna do that here tonight So Juan, maybe we can start with you. Do you want to just sort of Unpack that term a tiny bit for us? I think you're right. Thank you. Thank you so much liz and connor for inviting me today I'm I look forward to our conversation with My fellow panelists. Um, this is an incredibly important Topic for me not just because we're dealing with issues like climate gap Uh, but we're also because we're talking about a place Thermo and the Coachella Valley. That's very dear In in my heart because I grew up there Much of my family still lives there and these are things that are very real for me as I talk to you and share these things with you today So there are three things. I think that we need to remember when we discuss the climate gap first The effects of climate change will be distributed unevenly across different communities And that's the first thing second Climate change will tend to make existing social and economic inequities worse and third our attempts to mitigate climate change Might very well reproduce existing inequities if we do not address the underlying social issues that we That have made some communities More vulnerable to social ecological and economic injustices So let me quickly review then some of the additional challenges that I think that climate change will bring just to illustrate What you know in a concrete way the climate cap means We know that living in the desert will become more difficult and deadly Rising temperatures the lack of inadequate insulated shelter Rising costs from an increasingly unreliable electricity grid will expose people to more dangerous living conditions We know that access to water will become a bigger issue Especially because so many people who live in unincorporated parts of the Coachella Valley rely on wells for drinking water Wells that are becoming drier and more polluted as we have learned from local mobile home residents And from the story that Liz wrote about some of the mobile home residents in the eastern Coachella Valley And we know that working in these conditions will also bring new health risks We know from research that exposure to heat and toxins Like pesticides increases disease and health emergencies for workers Farm workers and construction workers most of whom are latina and latino are already dying from heat exposure recently An article published by the new england journal of medicine has found that people who live in agricultural Communities and who are exposed to hotter temperatures also suffer from significantly higher rates of kidney failure And finally these concerns come on top of what we already know about existing health disparities Data from the california health interview survey show that climate changes will likely magnify these inequities for example in the Coachella Valley When people were asked about whether they face food insecurity that those numbers ranged Dramatically across income and racial categories When in california six percent of all adults said that they faced food insecurity in california In the city of la quinta, which is just to the west of coachella Food insecurity was at five point eight percent Meanwhile in coachella, which is predominantly latina and latino 21 of all adults said that they faced food insecurity in thermal that was 17 So you're talking about the difference between five point eight percent in la quinta 21 and coachella Those who fared Who said that they have poor health? right In california the between 18 and 64 20 percent of the population said they had poor health la quinta 21 percent so in line with the state average in the city of coachella 37.6 percent of the residents said that they had poor health in thermal 34 percent again significantly higher and much of this attributable to issues around access to health care living conditions social economic status And then finally in older people and we know that older people are especially at risk Due to climate change because of exposure to heat related illnesses In california those who were over 65 Said that 26 point seven percent of those who were over 65 Said that they were they had poor health In the city of la quinta again the immediate neighbor to the city of coachella Only 19 percent of 65 and older said that they had poor health Meanwhile in the city of coachella 48.3 percent nearly half of all of the 65 and above population said that they had fair or poor health And again when we talk about things like the climate gap What we are talking about is not only the uneven distribution of climate change But the uneven way in which the negative impacts are distributed and mapped on top of already existing disparities So that is what i'm talking about when i'm talking about the climate gap Thank you. That was unbelievably helpful Um, I think for me as a journalist the job is always how do you tell a story? How do you get people to care? How do you get people who aren't from this area to engage and notice? What their world is like? So I wound up doing this story in thermal with my colleague marizio Because it is so stark you can just see clearly how development patterns and how income is distributed influence everything because alongside You know people who are on one side of the climate gap in thermal there's luxury development pushing out from palm springs And you can just see and I really encourage everybody who hasn't looked at the images and the story that I did with marizio to look at those They're really powerful examples of how Money changes so much. It changes the green space. It changes, you know, if your house is air conditioned It changes if you can leave So I will leave it at that for now, but As a journalist, hopefully it's a way to get people to Engage and care and carry forth and talk to other people about it So then maybe you can tell us a little bit about how development and how thermal in this area compares to the rest of california Yeah, so first Liz. I want to just compliment you on a fantastic piece and thank pro publica for having this important conversation. I'm really happy to be here I am I work with the Turner Center for Housing Innovation at UC Berkeley. We do a lot of work looking at the affordability crisis in california Um, and we sometimes talk about it as a crisis that looks and feels very differently depending on whether you're residing in coastal communities versus inland california partly because the demand pressures are different, uh, we see in coastal areas of the state a real supply shortage tremendous scarcity of accessible and available homes Whereas in inland area the problem sometimes looks a little bit different where it's less about a shortage of homes and more about a Quality issue, so we have a housing stock that is often aging you talked about this in your article more systematic infrastructure issues around water access The deteriorating physical structures, but actually what you know, what is shared across both the inland areas and the coastal areas is an affordability crisis because whether you are on the coast And home prices are objectively higher, but you have a higher income The difference between what you make and what you need to pay for rent Um, it's quite similar to what you find inland, uh, which is to say the affordability challenge may maybe just as meaningful and coagulate because Uh incomes are much lower wages are much lower the stability which you get is much lower Um, so in that sense, I think we we have some common through lines between Uh the the story that you're telling in coachella and thermal Um, but I do think the solutions and the interventions end up looking a little bit different in a place like coachella valley It's really the purchasing power the incomes of folks who are living there are inadequate to be able to afford the housing that's there Um, and we just have a stock problem. We need more investments into housing. We need ways to do upgrades to pay for built getting homes up to up to code and compliant Uh with local zoning and building code requirements We need ways to accommodate overcrowding and make sure that folks can add on to their On to the units in their homes. Um, and those tools aren't great We don't have them and one had an excellent observation in there Which is sometimes as we try to figure out ways to mitigate the climate crisis We actually make it all that harder to solve the affordability issue And so we often have this very painful situation where folks May desperately need to upgrade the home that they live in they may need to remodel the home or rebuild it But they go in to get that permit pulled and the code requirements, which have been built To actually ensure a more energy efficient outcome Mean that the cost is that much higher in in other words the california residential building code requires Certain things that are intended to mitigate climate impacts But the consequence of that means that the cost to do that repair that remodel Is quite high and may mean that nothing happens that there is no remodel. There is no renovation And underlying health issues with whether it's lead pain or asbestos or Mold are not addressed because we've set the bar so high for what we expect as a minimum Housing quality that we we want everybody in california to enjoy Monica, maybe we can segue to you here. Will you tell us just a little bit about what the housing stock is like For residents in your community and what their challenges are accessing safe housing? Sure, um, first, thank you lizz and connor for having me and inviting me As a panelist to share my experience With you and so, um, I've been in affordable housing for a little over 26 years I am a project program manager in our housing development division Been in addition to that. I am the farm worker housing ombudsman To our one of our most disenfranchised communities Um, and so in this capacity, I work primarily in in the eastern cotella valley Unincorporated riverside county In in assisting our farm worker community with their housing needs Historically, there's there's been an issue with With housing in the eastern cotella valley along with other areas In riverside county it affects Our farm worker community because they're they're in a rural area And there's a huge lack as your piece pointed out in infrastructure. And so There's a huge lack of Potable water waste water systems electricity and without those types of Without that type of infrastructure You really can't bring in the housing, right? You need to add all of those All of the costs associated with that Infrastructure into the development of your project and sometimes that renders the project Unfeasible right and so we we can't build And so how does that impact our families living in the eastern cotella valley? Um, they live a majority of our farm workers live in unsafe undecent unpermitted Polanco parks Right. Polanco parks are Agricultural housing That has been around for years and The majority again are unpermitted because Folks just didn't know um How to go through the permitting process And have the benefit of permitting their agricultural facility and and sometimes That you know, sometimes we Think that it's not It's not uncommon for us to find individuals that you know purchase a piece of land and and You know, they will install a mobile home on their park with again without the benefit of proper, you know a well septic system And so what will happen is, you know, they're they're providing Other family members other individuals with the housing an affordable housing opportunity And they'll say hey come on you can bring your mobile here and park it here and One mobile becomes two becomes three becomes four Sometimes 30 or 40 and so You then run into this huge unpermitted situation and so Sometimes we we end up with these larger 250 space unpermitted mobile home parks and Squalid conditions people don't have the infrastructure the proper infrastructure and thereby suffer with the lack of Permitted portable water again waste water systems and electricity and so During the midst of summer their electricity goes out septic systems are overflowing spilling out into Into the the street where the the kids are are playing and they have You know the the potable water systems have arsenic natural occurring minerals fluoride that are dangerous to family's health so those are are in a nutshell the You know what what a lot of us might take for granted living in you know in In larger communities where where there is infrastructure that are disenfranchised Families and households face Thank you for sharing all of that Darnell can you maybe help us address why housing and climate aren't discussed together more often? absolutely and I just want to say thank you for the invite and I grew up in Riverside County and one reason why I got involved in transportation and Transportation equity more particularly is because of what I experienced there Um, I think one of the reasons why they're not discussed together Often enough is because they're interdisciplinary in nature And oftentimes people will get uh expertise in an area And they'll have to learn a whole new one in order to understand the connections to how climate impacts their work So as a transportation person I've had to become better adapt when it comes to housing Because of course transportation impacts the housing outcomes that we have as well And what role housing will play when it comes to the climate crisis and what it does for the climate gap Just to give you an example on the transportation side What we do in an urban area around parking can actually increase the cost of housing which pushes people further out And it leads to a bidding up of cost across the income spectrum Which really leads to these uh deleterious outcomes that we've been talking to and that's just one aspect of transportation So I think it's the interdisciplinary nature of how housing and climate interacts Uh transportation is just one area that this this housing and climate nexus impacts those others as well And we need to do more as experts to reach across our own aisles to understand this Thank you Ben. Can you maybe address how to think about mitigating the fact that You know low-income housing tends to be in places that are going to be more heavily impacted by the climate crisis and How do we structure our society to have a better world? Yeah, that's a tough one I mean the the old saw is that you know if you want to find a mobile home community You look for where the floods are happening or the wildfires are blazing It's it's it's definitely one of these functions of when folks go to establish mobile home communities They're doing it often in areas where land is relatively cheap. They're doing it on the periphery of of Of established communities and that means often they're on locations that are at extreme risk for for climate related events There's a couple ways that we can get at that none of them are great One of them is through direct investments You know the state and the federal government invest a lot of money directly into affordable housing So they you know make loans and grants to help people build Subsidized rental units or or help folks access home ownership I think there's been an increasing realization over the last few years That the ways in which those funds get awarded and allocated need to have a lens that thinks about climate implications and that thinks about Access to resources and opportunities Not to say that you want to stop funding areas that don't have a climate, but you need to make sure you're funding A spectrum of different options And I think you know looking at climate. I think we need to be smarter about where those investments are being made the second point is land use and zoning so today in california every city has an obligation to zone for The household growth that it expects to experience in the years to come And cities are have to think more creatively About making sure that the areas that they're zoning that allow for sort of multifamily more entry-level housing That they're zoned land where builders can actually build in communities that have infrastructure That are located near transit that have existing infrastructure I think the temptation has historically been that sort of those are the places that end up zoned for single family or commercial Neither of which is very helpful to folks who are more Entry-level minimum wage kind of price point. So we need to both have Zoning and regulations that allow for buildings to get built in places that have those infrastructure And prioritize those those sites for the places that have the infrastructure And we need to make sure that when we're investing our scarce Subsea dollars that we're doing in ways that have that layer Of climate and have that layer of equality built in Thank you Monica, can you maybe address the ways in which immigration status and immigration policy also play into housing and equity issues? Absolutely so The unincorporated areas of In eastern Coachella valley Has a high population of farm workers and so In addition to that There's billions of dollars that This small sector Produces in in In goods, right? All kinds of citrus grades You name it. We produce it and so Historically And even now the wages that our farm workers earn are very minimal and so You know the on top of that the the We will find that there are there's also a large population of undocumented Farm workers How does that affect them? It affects them because They are not able to rent Or purchase in a lot of affordable housing projects In you know, they're they're not able to obtain a loan To purchase a home and be a home owner. So, you know, they're left to Have to purchase what what they can attain and sometimes those are Some standard mobile homes that are placed in Unpermitted parks And so, you know, I I would like to see that You know A lot of our federal dollars are are Particularly usda Might be able to You know to change change some of their Requirements as it relates to Immigration status. So a lot of our Multifamily projects are built in layers, right? Just like a cake. There's like all kinds of ingredients funding ingredients that are required to make a project Feasible so, you know, one of those ingredients is you know, usda federal dollars and so um Those dollars come with immigration status requirements. And so, um, if if We cannot move our Undocumented farm workers into those affordable Housing projects that we build You know, they're left out and where do they go? And so, um, you know That really is An obstacle and I think if doors opened in that arena, we would be able to move More of our families Into these nice affordable units Thank you Um, okay. Let's maybe talk about some solutions. So how would how would each of you advise governor Newsom to spend the $9.3 billion earmarked for housing programs Yeah, and are now infrastructures clearly a huge part of all of these discussions um What might partnerships with utilities look like the government look like Yeah, I can talk a little bit about what we can do in the transportation side. So, uh, there's a couple ways that Transportation investment can address the affordable housing crisis And one of those would be to open up new areas for affordable housing development in the urban and suburban areas That's one area and that's one of the things that we're trying to address on the state level when it comes to funding The other is to provide more direct service to rural areas. Now when a lot of people think about Uh transit service they assume is a big bus in an urban area But in actuality when you look at a map of all the transit agencies in america A lot of them are small rural operators That might just have one or two bands And uh increasing that type of service throughout our state including in areas like this Be a great way to provide more equitable service for people And actually hopefully lower the out-of-pocket cost because one thing that we know Is when people are forced into owning an automobile It really spikes their out-of-pocket costs when you talk about The combined cost of housing and transportation That's really where people get get into financial trouble and there's been a lot of research on this Uh is oftentimes called the housing plus transportation index h plus t index and and the center for neighborhood technology Did a lot of work with us a couple years ago and found that when we had the great recession 10 years ago There was a big spike in foreclosures in areas that did not have adequate transportation service around transit So we know we can actually benefit these communities just by providing some additional bands So they can have better service and that could be a great way to address it Thank you Juan, what about how community organizations might help that 9.3 billion dollars be better spent? Yeah, I think part of um Part of what we have to talk about when we're talking about solutions is we have to understand what the nature of the problem is And I think one of the ways that we do that is by acknowledging I think you pointed this out Liz in your piece in your conversation in the discussions you had today The comments you made earlier about unless you go to the Coachella Valley And see it for yourself You will not understand the kind of pervasive way in which there is massive Racial and economic segregation in the eastern in the Coachella Valley Okay, and unless we deal with those underlying issues We are not prepared to deal with issues around climate change and Disproportionate impacts and the reason I say that is because on the one hand We need to talk about the kind of economic development model and the kind of political system that has enabled a housing Development model that has created this kind of massive racial and economic segregation For example on the one side and we can talk about in terms of ecological footprints And the kinds of ecological footprint disparities that exist between the eastern and the western Coachella Valley On the west side we have a housing model that enables a leisure lifestyle Which depletes natural resources like water desert ecosystems and has provided second homes for a largely white and upper middle class population And I will say there are also over 150 golf courses to service that kind of leisure lifestyle in the western Coachella Valley On the east side of the valley these communities are now reaping the consequences of being used historically for decades as a toxic sink for millions of gallons of agricultural pesticides And from and they're suffering from mountains of poisonous illegal dumping sites in places like the reservations In in the eastern Coachella Valley and are facing a water crisis because the water table is being depleted Sublimation is taking place in large part because the western part of the valley is sucking up resources And so if we're going to talk about sustainability We have to talk about the way that the unsustainable development model on the west side of the valley that services a particular kind of population is in fact Producing very dangerous and deadly conditions for people on the east side of the valley The the conditions that Monica was talking about earlier in the farm camps. My family grew up living in those farm camps They're called crampos right and that history of the eastern Coachella Valley serving as a source of cheap racialized labor for one Riverside county's agricultural industry and two now that same population is being used To serve people in either the leisure economy and the golf courses in the retail sector And increasingly being used to take care of older white retirees on the western part of the Coachella Valley So there are deeply entrenched economic and racial issues that need to be taken into consideration as we discuss models of sustainability too often we talk about sustainability and the climate gap in overly technical terms in ways that we might deal with things like, you know, you know, dealing with installing Solar panels in order to deal with heat sinks and provide electricity Those are part of the issue but the other issues that we have to pay attention to is what kind of space What kind of society do we want to create and enable? Because the kind of society that has been produced the kind of development that has been produced in the Coachella Valley to support The the leisure lifestyle is unsustainable and we need to address that and talk about that and we need to talk about these deeper underlying issues as well And can you maybe also help us understand what we've done to our building codes and How California has become so expensive to build housing and what it might take to unravel Yeah, I'm happy to talk uh to that and I I just want to really agree with with one your point I think we we we it's tempting to try and solve this through a housing lens because we see the manifestation of the problem So visibly in its housing context, right? We see deteriorating mobile homes on the one hand. We see Uh exquisite vacation homes on the other and so I think the reflexive response is hey, let's do something about the housing I don't know. Let's tax the expensive housing and let's upgrade the deteriorating housing And then we can you know call it a day and stay with one and I think I just want to really say like that's not this That's part of the solution set for sure But I think we do need to think holistically about the climate implications. I think Also, the folks who live in Coachella Valley You know absent having a basic sort of access to a basic safety net whether that's housing vouchers or decent health care Like all the housing interventions you're never going to add up, but to answer your question We have built over the years in california one of the most extensive and expensive Residential building codes so literally when you go in to pull a permit whether that's a single family home Or it's a multifamily building The hoops you have to jump through the regulations that you have to deliver Add up to being the one of the most expensive places to build in cal in in the country And we've done that all for the absolutely the right reasons You know, we've we've added a seismic protections. We've added very stringent fire protections We've put in all kinds of energy upgrades that we need to make sure that we're using as little energy as possible Water improvement efficiencies. We're moving towards net zero Where we're going to be requiring a solar on the roof of every new residential home that's getting built Absolutely, those are the right things to be doing motivated by the right policy interests of safety and energy But it does mean that You know, literally if you looked at a residential code book from the early 80s You know, it could sit in your hand if you look at the california residential building code Circle 2020 It fills up a bankers box and it's much much much more detailed much more sophisticated much more complicated to to to to deliver on And I you know, I don't know that there's any easy solution to to that quandary but It is something that we need to we need to gut check and sort of say in all that we're doing to protect health and safety Um, you know, have we actually built a beast that that is causing people to be functionally homeless or to be at risk? In other words by investing so heavily in fire protection But raising the cost of housing are we actually exposing folks who now are living in substandard housing because they can't upgrade To more of a health hazard than we would if we if we hadn't gone all in on fire protection I mean those are the those are the kinds of questions that few people are are asking and I think it are very hard to graph Monica, can you address what this looks like to you? Yeah, thank you. So, you know, I I appreciate kwan and and ben's comments and perspective, but You know what what I would like to say, um, is that we all have A role in this right? It's not a solution or something that one Entity can solve not anybody at the low just one entity at the local government at the state or federal level can solve We all all levels of government in partnership with utility companies in partnership With our grassroots organizations in partnership With non-profits I feel we all need to park our personal agendas at the door and work towards solutions, you know I've seen Over the last 26 years, although you you have a great piece Liz, there are other Entities that have come into the community and have have done the same pieces similar to To identify the the issues and all the problems with with The eastern Cotalla valley, but I've yet to see You know partnerships with all of these entities to move Projects forward ideas that would benefit Um The folks that we're all here to serve our our disadvantaged communities and people of color Who have historically suffered for a lot of years. This isn't anything new Who do you need to be partnering with you? We need um The folks I just mentioned all levels of government grassroots organizations Non-profits developers the the private utility companies We all have to have a seat at the table and brainstorm talk about the ideas and projects that will help Our families move into that decent safe affordable housing You and I had a conversation early on I asked you what the level of need was like in In the Cotalla valley Can you tell everybody else what you've said to me? You remember You know The the need is great We have Hundreds of families living in substandard conditions in the eastern Cotalla valley And I believe it's through no fault of their own they Live where they can afford to live and oftentimes are taken advantage of by property owners folks with um again different agendas and um, you know, the the need is huge It is huge Do any of you have thoughts on what Newsom should do with that 9.3 billion dollars Liz can I just say that one of the things that has happened? In the eastern Cotalla valley is for the past 10 years there has been an attempt to build the kind of social infrastructure that is needed in order for Communities to be able to sit at the table and to negotiate with these kinds of agencies I think a lot of the times the conversation within the planning and the policy world There's a lot of discussion about community participation as a way to ensure more democratic decisions but What we know is that participation without power produces a hollowed out form of democracy because people can be ignored All right, we don't need just participation We need the ability to actually shape those kinds of policies And so if the existing landscape has been produced to serve the interests of those who benefit from the leisure economy on the west side Then we need to disrupt that process and what we know is that too often the interest And some of the special interests Are that have been dictating the way that the development happens Facilitates and enables only those people who have political power and are enfranchised in that way And so one way that we begin to deal with that is by Increasing the ability of those communities to advocate for themselves To learn how these systems work And to be able to gain political power. It was not until it wasn't until very recently that you had a growing group of elected officials that actually reflected the The racial and economic makeup of the eastern Coachella Valley for a very long time We've had a mostly conservative mostly white political leadership That has not been very attentive to the needs and the interest of the of the eastern Coachella Valley That is beginning to change, but it's beginning to change because organizing is in fact taking place So this this isn't just a place that's full of Of problems. We have lots of very talented people Who have a lot of skills that are figuring out ways to to build up their political capital in order to be able to Be effective advocates. That's what we need to support Monica, I also just want to say I fully Hear and feel your point every day. I can I can write something and then I go away So I guess a question for Juan and anybody else is like, what does allyship look like what it what is supporting The amazing people on the ground who a lot of whom I spent time with like What does that look like? How do we get there? You want me to answer? Like I said, I we spent I've spent the past 10 11 years working with different groups in the eastern Coachella Valley Doing, you know, one of the things that we have is just a lack of information and data So just doing some basic research Forcing some of these agencies to actually Collect data points that we can actually point to to say, okay These are the issues and these are possible solutions to these issues based on this data point Um, so one of the things that has been happening is, you know, again I don't count myself as an ally because I see myself as part of that community. Many of my family is there but You know, one of the things that we do need to do and and this has been an issue for us Convince funders, especially funders that, you know, in the nonprofit sector to support community-based organizing and and the growth of organizations that can advocate for themselves And that has been something that we within, you know, the university system some allies that are researchers have been trying to make the case that one We need to understand what really is happening in this in this valley Because too much of the time the data is only available at a county level at an aggregate level at the county And so we're not able to see these kinds of geographical disparities because the data doesn't allow us to see it Right the way that it's connected. So we we need to invest more in understanding what's happened But we also need to invest in human capital to be able to get these communities to advocate and organize for themselves So that's what we've been doing, you know There are lots of organizations in the eastern Coachella valley some of them that you Met and talked to that have been doing basic things like going door to door holding community meetings holding forums Talking about environmental injustice and environmental justice around the sultan see Organizing around the polan clothes organizing around water issues that stuff is happening And we need to support more and more of that Also, I think you know part of supporting community is also teaching people how to access the government processes And one of the things we've done is commissioned on the transportation side Is actually go to some of the most impacted communities around the state And actually show people how they can engage with our programs. How can they can apply? And how they actually can use the monies to improve the communities because It can be difficult to access government. So government needs to go to where the people are and make it more accessible So they can actually utilize it better Yes, I'm going to kick this back over to connor for questions from the audience Yeah, thank you. Uh, thank you all that was a great that was a great conversation Now we're going to turn to some questions that the audience submitted Um, and kind of picking up where you all left off You know, there's a few a few folks who ask like Um, you know, I'm an individual and I'm interested in like getting involved with these issues and want to help out And work towards a solution But I don't know where to start exactly. Um, and I'm wondering like how you might advise Someone. Yeah looking to get involved in in their community and work towards solutions I would say connor that, um, depending on where you know how they want to help, right? I would recommend reaching out to the local nonprofits grassroots organizations to see how they can assist with You know the things that they're doing engaging with with their own communities And and to Juan's point I think like just reaching out to the local government sitting down having a Conversation, you know, like look, what's really going on? What are you doing? You know, how can we help you move these things forward? Um, just just Having a real conversation sitting down Talking to us because as Juan mentioned up until recently The landscape has changed and there are more people in power that look like the community right and are interested in moving things forward and, um, you know We definitely would would welcome that And I I want to just stress this is an important time to get involved Every city in california is going through a process right now Updating their housing plans and zoning They have to accommodate certain targets for growth at the state hands down Of all of that requires public participation All of that has to be approved by the local city council for supervisors and by the state It gives a point of entry for folks to engage in the process and Liz as you mentioned There's also just a a lot of funds that are flowing down from sacramento Into these communities and so local governments are going to be making decisions about what the prior does and where to direct it So now's a great time to get a seat at the table And push for for your voice to be a part of how these choices get made Thank you. Um Ben sticking with you for a second One viewer asks a homeowner's insurance is becoming increasingly too expensive in many parts of our state due to fire risk People on fixed incomes are being priced out of the market What is this? What is the solution you see for people who cannot afford to move and also who cannot afford to stay where they are? Oh, it's this is a really tough issue that has bedeviled policymakers I think the the immediate response that we've seen the insurance commissioner in the state of california do is to postpone those Cancelations so there's been a couple of extensions that california has actually prevented insurers from dropping insurance for A limited period of time. I think it's a 12 month window 24 month window So homeowners have some Runway to prepare for this But there's not a good solution here because I don't think the state is in the place to sort of backstop the insurers The insurers are looking at unprecedented fire risk and climate risk And they don't want to be in this position There have been some efforts and discussions within The state legislature to consider What a package might look like that would be something in between losing your insurance and maintaining it at sort of a price One option might be To get to a compromise where if you do a certain amount of climate mitigation work to your structure Whether it's a fire hardening or raising your structure up That the the state government might obligate insurer to take you back on or to not cut you off in the first place I've got to believe that is probably the best path forward. We have in some communities But I also think in in other communities. There just isn't a good solution and homeowners need to either consider ways to To Find you know rent out rooms Add an accessory dwelling unit figure out other ways of income because you know, this this is this they are standing in the path of a future fire There is no way they're going to be able to afford to rebuild Liz can I just jump in and hear um, I think that I think ben is absolutely right and most urban policy around housing is you know I think we can have that conversation in that way I think what distinguishes a place like thermal and Coachella is that we're not we can't talk about adu's as being a solution And you know from the one hand, you know, when we When we talk about the solution being about home ownership We need to realize that most of the people if you look at the the numbers that are available for places like thermal thermalito Coachella all of those places The actual home ownership rate is very low And then when you're thinking about where people are living as monica mentioned earlier in the trailer parks People don't own the the land right? They're renting the land They might own their their mobile home, but they don't own the land So the kinds of solutions that we're talking about in terms of not only affordability of home ownership But also quality of life right and all you need to do is to go down to mecca city park, which is not far from thermal during farm Harvest season and you will see people that are living on the streets or near the canals etc Because there is a lack of affordable housing in that area And that's not going to be solved by some of the solutions that I think are normally discussed Around housing in an urban context So there is a very distinct difference when we're talking about rural housing the kinds of infrastructure That we've been talking about is it's a much more difficult issue an entrenched issue to deal with And and we do need to sort of think about it in different ways And Juan sticking with you for a moment earlier. You mentioned, you know There's not necessarily a lot of data on mobile homes And be curious to hear if there's any like new research that's happening in this area and monica feel free to chime in as well Yeah, I mean, I think and this is where I'd love to have a conversation with people In the county people who are working on housing issues There is data that's available that is connect that is collected by state agencies But that's not normally accessible to people who are working on these issues And so there are some issues around privacy concerns But I think that there would be a good conversation to have with with policy people and systems people to talk about What data is available what data is collected and can be made accessible to tackle some of these questions outside of that There are organizations that are sponsored through For example the cal and virus screen or the california endowment that has funded the california health Survey that's run out of uc la those things are Available there are some graduate students and some faculty members professors who are conducting research on some of these sites because These trailer parks are not just in places like the cochella valley, but they're also A big issue or in the borderland and southern texas They're called colonias there and so there are lots of people that are beginning to think about these things researching them but we still don't I think have a grasp of A lot of the information that we need You know and this is a it's a it's an a touchy issue The reason I say about the county is because there have been lawsuits That have been filed and won against the county for enforcing housing codes violations that discriminated against poor mexican people in the eastern cochella valley And and so this is this is a fraught issue that has a lot of history That I think we're sort of as again monica said changes have happened changes are happening, but you know, it's been a very slow process to unfold So you're absolutely right on there were lawsuits that occurred early late 1999 early 2000s related to enforcement issues But but as a result of that lawsuit You know, there were programs Established to benefit our farm worker community. So, you know, we we actually created programs so that Polanco park owners the owners of unpermitted mobile home parks Were able to access grant funding to bring their parks parks into compliance And in addition to that there was a program developed our mobile home tenant loan program Who that provided for many years? um, and it's still an active program just we don't have resources to um to backfill that program at this time, but but we're looking into that but Though that program specifically provided replacement mobile homes to owners of Delapitated unsafe units in exchange for a brand new one So they would be placed in a permitted park with a brand new unit And so what I would like to add is that, you know, sometimes we may feel or see that That that a mobile home may not be Maybe the quality or standard that that someone else would like to see But but we've taken the community into consideration and and it might not be What we call or what other members of of society make may call a true home owner ownership opportunity but A large population of our farm workers Really really have utilized and expressed The interest of of that type of of unit It it is a type of home ownership and we like to use it as a stepping stone, right? So you're you're leaving an unpermitted unsafe situation going into a permitted safe situation with the hopes that you will graduate from that and that we've provided that affordable opportunity and and some assistance to allow folks to do that and it's happened. So so again, it may not be You know Perfect, but it definitely is a step up Darnell, I'd like to bring you into this. Um, I'm wondering if uh, uh, if there's any, um, you know barriers to data that you face as a transportation expert but also, um, you know, if you could comment on what the, uh, california department of transportation is doing to address, uh, climate change and perhaps Affordable housing as well Absolutely. I think that last part of your question is very, uh, timely very interesting is something that i'm involved by So the governor has been pushing, uh, a program called the climate action plan for transportation investments And what this is meant to do is I call it provide another generation of the california dream A lot of our investments that we made prior to this have not not been climate friendly But it definitely has created a state that is economically powerful. We have a very diverse economy. We have Uh, a lot of opportunity for people but that opportunity is not widely spread. It is not equitably spread So the way that we do our next our next round of investments in this generation Can actually provide access to more people and that's what this cap tie is what is known as Can actually do this fully implement So essentially what the plan is is to try to find a way to make sure our future investments are not as focused on climate inducing uh investment such as focused on highways only highways will be important obviously because a lot of people will drive is very important for the freight industry But also how can we shift it to other things that will have a smaller impact in the climate and that should be more equitable Provide spaces for more affordable housing provide access to opportunity to get cheaper access to electric vehicles and providing electric vehicles sharing programs so that low-income communities have a way to tap into The network that is going to be built going forward. So We're talking about billions of dollars here. We're talking about great opportunities But it's going to be very quickly fraught and it's being brought to the commission on transportation right now And we're going to be evaluating ways to actually implement cap tie In a way that can actually move us forward But it's going to be difficult because there's a lot of people who have differing opinions on how to do this properly Great. Thank you for that Well, that's about our time for today So I want to thank each of our panelists Juan, Monica, Darnell and Ben and of course our moderator Liz for this excellent conversation Thank you to climate one for partnering with us. And finally, thank you to the audience for joining us We really appreciate you being here And all your thoughtful questions Have a great rest of your day, and we hope to see you next time