The Translator

A couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to present to a big group of local elected officials and civic activists from around LA County—everything from mayors to city council members to county supervisors to non-profit executive directors. After 8 years on the HHH Citizens Oversight Committee and 6 years as the Chair, I was there to present my thoughts on what we’ve learned from the program and to offer ideas on what we might do going forward in the fight against homelessness.

For those unfamiliar with the HHH program, it was a $1.2B bond measure passed in 2016 in the City of Los Angeles designed to produce 10,000 units of permanent supportive housing (PSH) over 10 years. The idea was to provide an additional form of subsidy to incentivize developers—mostly non-profits—who use the Federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credit Program (LIHTC) to create affordable housing—to produce housing equipped to serve the needs of our most vulnerable populations (i.e. formerly homeless individuals and families). PSH buildings are not that different from a normal apartment they just require some well-planned spaces and amenities to provide areas for caseworkers, social workers, and, in some cases, medical professionals to administer critical services and support for residents. 

Note: the LIHTC Program provides a subsidy (in the form of tax credits) to incentivize private developers to build affordable housing. Qualifying projects are awarded tax credits which are then sold off to investors who are looking for write-offs to reduce their tax bills. LIHTC-funded buildings are deed-restricted, meaning they are set up so that by law they can only be rented to households that qualify as low-income. The program has been around since 1986 and is responsible for almost all of the affordable housing that gets built in America each year. 

Most people don’t realize this but LA County is an absolute behemoth and kind of a mess from a governance perspective. It’s a county with almost 10M people run by 5 elected county supervisors and an appointed CEO. It’s home to 88 cities, of which Los Angeles, which has a bigger population than most states, is just one of! One of the reasons that the homelessness crisis has been so hard to deal with here in the LA area is the incredible fragmentation in terms of both power and resources that this structure has created.

Anyway, to address this problem, local leaders from both the cities and the county are trying an innovative new approach that involves centralizing, to a degree, some critical resources to combat homelessness. They’ve created a new joint-powers entity called the Los Angeles Country Affordable Housing Solutions Agency (LACAHASA) and are attempting to get a ballot measure passed that would provide a permanent source of funding for homelessness solutions. The ballot measure, if passed, would increase the sales tax from a quarter-cent to a half-cent and provide over $1B a year to LACAHASA. 

For what it’s worth, I think this is a great idea and am supporting it wholeheartedly. We cannot allow a lack of resources to hamstring us from doing what is absolutely necessary. We’re dealing with a humanitarian crisis here and thus must act accordingly, which means we do whatever it takes, no matter the cost. The future of our city is at stake here.  

I won’t bore you with all the details of my presentation. If you are curious, you can actually watch the presentation here! For now, here’s the cliff notes version:

 This problem has become so big— with over 60K unhoused and counting across LA County) and a region where over 70% of households are rent burdened—we can neither build our way out of this (would have to 5x-10x housing production) nor subsidize our way out (estimated that we need something like $40B-$80B to subsidize away the problem). Our previous attempts, like HHH, have relied too heavily on the LIHTC program, which is ultimately a good program but just too slow and costly. Therefore, going forward we have to think differently and pursue policies aimed at dramatically changing the incentive structures of the local development landscape (e.g. be really aggressive about by-right zoning and streamlining) and try to get the private sector to do the hard work of building by either establishing a buying program with an aggressively low cost per unit metric or experimenting with a rental subsidy guarantee program.

I walked away from that meeting on fire with the energy that comes from finding your sense of purpose. It’s not just that my presentation was well-received—though it mostly was—but rather that I realized that I really do have a role to play in this effort to create an ever-more perfect Union. And I don’t necessarily have to win elected office to do so.

You see, what I realized that night is that the fundamental problem here is more a matter of communication than it is a conflict of values. Whether they understood all the nuances and intricacies of my pitch or not, or agreed with my ideas or not, everyone in that room was receptive to the core principles of what I’m calling the practical progressive movement:

• Compassion for those who need our help

• A steadfast commitment for open-mindedness and constructive dialogue

• Courage to face the truth and fight for justice

• A desire to focus on outcomes first and to pursue ideas that are likely to be the most effective

This, I think, is the common ground for a new political majority, one not defined by party but rather by a belief that enough is enough and that now is the time to change. 

What’s been holding us back is a profound failure in communication. Most of the time, relevant stakeholders aren’t even speaking the same language. The government is off in its world with business and ordinary citizens in another. 

Who’s to blame for this? Everyone really. On the government side, we’ve allowed an ever-growing web of complexity and inanity to proliferate in almost every key process and function. We’ve created an increasingly dysfunctional bureaucracy, to say the least. At the same time, businesses and ordinary citizens have been content to just ignore public problems outright or to do a lot of complaining about the government but little else. It’s like the old days when tribes would get separated for one reason or another and after some generations end up speaking different languages. 

If you want to see what I’m talking about, attend a local government meeting. You’ll see rather quickly that there’s an entirely different way of speaking and thinking about things inside of government. The same is true in the reverse. For a government employee, a corporate meeting wouldn’t make much sense at the start. 

Meanwhile, there are profound implications to this communication breakdown. Without the necessary pressure that comes from citizen engagement in the halls of power, not only does the problem get worse but the void it creates allows special interest groups, who study and know the language of government and politics, to wield inordinate power and influence. Problems fester and our system becomes more and more unfair as a result. 

Anyway, I realized that night that there was huge potential for someone like me—i.e. someone who knows both languages reasonably well—to play the role of public translator. This is something my civic mentor and former podcast guest, Miguel Santana, once told me but I didn’t truly understand the opportunity or the need until now. Government and business are not naturally at odds with each other. We only think that way because we’ve been living for too long in a world where the two sides don’t know how to talk to each other. They are actually meant to work together.  Everyone is on the same team ultimately, right? 

I used to think that the missing voice in our political dialogue was the reasonable, rational, and civil one. To be sure, that’s still very true but there’s something else missing too: people who actually know what everyone is talking about. We live in a complex world and have some rather complex problems. The only we can solve these things is to bring the best ideas to the table. And we can only do that if we can effectively communicate with each other.  So, what we need today are translators, people who can speak both languages and mediate between the power players in the private and public sectors to help get things done. This is a role I am determined to play! 

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