Solving California’s Affordable Housing Crisis: Innovative Policy Approaches

Isaac G. Bryan represents California's 55th Assembly District, which consists of Baldwin Hills, the Crenshaw district, Culver City, Ladera Heights, Mar Vista, Del Rey, Palms, Pico-Robertson, Beverly Grove, Mid-Wilshire, and parts of South Los Angeles.

In the Assembly, Isaac serves as Chair of the Committee on Natural Resources as well as Chair of the Assembly's first Select Committee on Poverty and Economic Inclusion. In addition, her serves as a member of the following committees: Appropriations, Government Organization, Judiciary, and Privacy & Consumer Protection. In 2022, he was elected Secretary and Treasurer of the California Legislative Black Caucus. He is Vice Chair and a founding member of the Renters Caucus.

In the Assembly, Isaac secured funding to found the Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy at UCLA School of Law; the first Climate Change Education Center in the California Community College system at West LA College; a stipend program for students in the trades to earn a living wage while studying for certificates, and millions of dollars for other projects across the 55th District. Isaac's legislative accomplishments have included phasing out the Inglewood Oil Field and other oil drilling near homes and communities in California (SB-1137), ending prison gerrymandering (AB-1848), ending punishing fees for parents with children in foster care (AB-1686), protecting students from predatory insurance practices (AB-1823) and strengthening online campaign finance disclosure requirement (AB-1848).

Isaac is a community organizer, highly regarded policy expert, and a published academic. Prior to his election to the Assembly, Isaac led a ballot measure that brought millions of dollars a year to address racial injustice and strengthen communities in Los Angeles. He served as the founding Director of the UCLA Black Policy Project – a think tank dedicated to advancing racial equity through rigorous policy analysis – served as the first Director of Public Policy at the UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center, as well as Director of Organizing for the nationally recognized Million Dollar Hoods project, a community-based participatory research project. He authored the first holistic report for the City of Los Angeles on the needs of the formerly incarcerated Angelenos, and exposed a gap in youth justice policy. For years, his academic and organizing work has been at the intersection of environmental, economic, education and housing justice.

Leo Goldberg is Co-Director for Policy and Capacity Building at the California Community Land Trust Network where he leads policy advocacy and technical assistance activities for 28 community led affordable housing organizations. Leo has held a range of housing research and advocacy positions. Prior to returning to California, Leo was Policy and Research Manager at the Center for NYC Neighborhoods where he led research and program design efforts focused on speculative real estate practices and the racial wealth gap. In other roles he studied housing in the global south, organized tenants, and advocated for policies that benefit unhoused New Yorkers. He holds a B.A. in History and Urban Studies from Columbia University and a M.A. in City Planning from MIT.

Paulina Gonzalez-Brito (She/They) is the Chief Executive Officer of Rise Economy. Paulina identifies as Xicane, Purepecha, Mestize. Their great-grandparents were Mexican Arizona copper miners who took part in the historic Metcalf-Greenlee strikes in the early 1900s and whose father was an immigrant union hotel worker. Paulina has dedicated more than 20 years of their life to leading economic justice organizing campaigns to expand worker rights, immigrant rights, and the rights of low-income and underrepresented communities of color.

Under their leadership, Rise Economy has expanded its work to directly challenge systemic and structural racism within the U.S. financial system and to focus Rise Economy’s work on building collective political and organizing power amongst and with frontline communities to close the racial wealth gap.

Paulina has testified before the U.S. House, Senate and California Legislature on the need for greater oversight and accountability in the banking sector to prevent financial actors from extracting wealth from Black and Brown communities. They are frequently called upon to speak as an expert in the fields of Wall Street accountability, discrimination in lending, equitable reinvestment by financial institutions, racial and economic justice, and democratizing finance through alternative and community-owned financial models, and has been profiled/quoted in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The L.A. Times, NPR, Univision, La Opinion and other national media outlets.

Paulina currently serves on the CalAccount Blue Ribbon Commission and on the board of Community Change, a national advocacy organization based in Washington, D.C.They previously served on the Board of Directors for the National Association for Latino Community Asset Builders as well as on the Community Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, the San Francisco Municipal Bank Feasibility Task Force, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Consumer Advisory Board.

Aboubacar “Asn” Ndiaye was most recently the California Housing and Climate Campaign Manager at PowerSwitch Action. He worked with the organization's California affiliates to create a more sustainable and democratic future by developing campaigns and policies to advance climate equity and housing justice in California.

Prior to joining PowerSwitch, Asn was the Partnership for the Bay’s Future Challenge Grant Fellow, working with the City of San Jose and Somos Mayfair to address displacement through a tenant preference policy, a preservation strategy, and alternative models for homeownership like community land trusts and limited equity co-ops. Before the fellowship, he served as policy manager for Working Partnerships USA. At Working Partnerships, Asn helped secure a $150 million commitment to affordable housing from Google and supported a package of state legislation addressing the “3Ps” of housing: protection, preservation, and production. He has also worked as a strategic researcher for SEIU Local 1, responsible for planning and developing organizing campaigns for building services workers in the Midwest.

Asn holds a bachelor's degree in government from the University of Texas at Austin. He has also written for national publications including The Atlantic and NPR’s Codeswitch.

Outside of work, Asn enjoys long road and train trips, watching Ken Burns documentaries, and hanging out with his nieces.

Dr. Manuel Pastor is a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He currently directs the Equity Research Institute at USC. Pastor holds an economics Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and is the inaugural holder of the Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change at USC.

Pastor’s research has generally focused on issues of the economic, environmental and social conditions facing low-income urban communities – and the social movements seeking to change those realities.