Micro-Seminar: Housing and Homelessness in LA County: a Unique Way to Create Affordable Homes PART ONE

Micro-Seminars have two parts. Attendance to both parts is required. Registering for the PART ONE session will automatically enroll you in the PART TWO session on Friday.

Part 1: Thursday, August 22, 2024 from 3:00 – 4:30 pm (PST)
Part 2: Friday, August 23, 2024 from 10:00 – 11:30 am (PST)

OVERVIEW: Homelessness is an obvious problem in Los Angeles that can be seen on a daily basis, especially for those of us who live, work or go to school at UPC/DTLA. The government and civic non-profits implement a variety of interventions to support and house people, including creating affordable housing. This seminar will explore these interventions from a professional social work perspective, and will also share a case study demonstrating how the public school district LAUSD created housing for its low income employees on its campuses, the first initiative of its kind in the US.

EXPECTED LEARNING OUTCOMES:
(1) Students will develop a professionalized understanding of the causes of, and successful interventions to prevent or solve, homelessness.
(2) Students interested in creating positive change in their community will be further empowered to continue on that path by the previously unthinkable results of the case study shared.
(3) Students will be introduced to nuts-and-bolts skills needed to effectively create change, including framing, action research, collaboration across stakeholders, and working within a bureaucracy.

DAY ONE PLAN: Overview and discussion of homelessness in L.A., and the various (successful and unsuccessful) implementation tactics used to interact with this social injustice.

DAY TWO PLAN: Presentation of an interesting case study that created affordable housing on active public school campuses, with particular focus on effective tactics that are useful to reform many different social problems in addition to lack of housing.

TARGET AUDIENCE: Students interested in professionally understanding social problems and in effectively helping create social change. Also, students interested in easing homelessness in L.A.

Lead By: Professor Sam Mistrano

SAM MISTRANO joined the faculty as an adjunct in 2004 and was elected to full-time status in 2011. He teaches both on campus and in the online Virtual Academic Center, and was voted the 2016 Jane Addams award by students; a link to his resulting commencement address is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RCFXryt_RQ. Mistrano specializes in policy practice, organizational leadership, and fundraising. He was a senior facilities project manager for the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) from 2008 through 2010, where he created on-campus affordable housing for lower-income teachers and staff by leveraging district-owned land to form public-private partnerships. There are four resulting projects. Before joining LAUSD, Mistrano was director of the state-wide agency Housing with Heart, which provides job training, education and case management services to more than 5,000 low-income families living in affordable housing throughout California.

Previously, he was deputy executive director of the Southern California Association of Non-Profit Housing, where he helped draft state legislation, reform the statewide tax credit allocation system worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and worked on numerous local and regional efforts to simplify and fund the production of affordable housing. He also served as founding executive director of the Human Services Alliance, which helped create social service policy at the regional and state level by organizing hundreds of non-profit agencies in Los Angeles County to impact welfare, healthcare and child care for low-income families. During this time, Mistrano was named one of the 25 most effective young executive directors in the nation by The Chronicle of Philanthropy, and one of Los Angeles' most effective advocates by L.A. Weekly. Mistrano started his career at the ACLU’s National Legislative office in Washington, D.C., from which he transferred to Los Angeles to become the ACLU’s legislative director in Southern California. He holds a juris doctor degree from the University of Minnesota Law School and is a licensed member of the Pennsylvania and New Jersey bar associations. Mistrano graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a B.A. in Political Science.

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