Hello, hello, hello, everyone.
Welcome back to the bold and the brave parent leader podcast.
We are so excited to have you all back.
I want to introduce my cohost for today is going to be Melvet Hill.
How are you doing Melvet?
Hey, good morning, everyone.
Good to be back with you again.
I'm a parent leader.
I'm also a great supporter and friend of our National Parent Leadership Institute.
I work at the Commission on Women, Children, Seniors, Equity and Opportunity, where I'm
the executive director.
So we're holding it down here in Connecticut on this very cold winter's day.
Awesome, awesome.
And before we get started, I'll introduce myself as well.
My name is Hobson McCain.
I'm the operations and special initiatives associate with the National Parent Leadership
Institute and the leader of legislative advocacy and policy teams.
I'm very excited to be back with you all.
I think we have an exciting podcast planned for you this week.
I know that we're going to start it off just talking about Black History Month.
So happy Black History Month.
Happy Black History Month.
You know, for me, Black History is 365.
But I appreciate that we do have a month where we can really highlight and focus on people
in the African diaspora and really hone in on how they have contributed to and continue
to contribute to our society and our world.
So this month, the theme for Black History, this is a national effort, the theme for Black
History this month is African Americans and labor with a focus on the various and profound
ways that work, labor and work of all kinds intersects with the collective experiences
of our people.
And you know, for those who don't know, and who might not be watching or might not know
you and I, Hobson, but we both identify as people on the African diaspora.
I'm a Black woman and I know you identify as an African American male as well.
So for this, this is very meaningful to us.
But I know MPLI has historically celebrated Black History Month by doing a number of things
what's happening this year.
Yeah, I know that we have had our series on our Hidden Heroes series that used to be our
Hidden Heroes series, but we've changed it to Hidden Figures to be a little bit more
inclusive lingually.
So we have brought that back this month and have highlighted some amazing African American
leaders throughout history who have contributed to the movement through civil rights and labor
in various areas.
So highlighting some of the less known heroes who may not have been highlighted in your
school history class or on social media.
So I definitely would encourage everybody to go check out our social media and review
some of those Hidden Figures.
Because as always, it's just great information to know, it's really good to understand the
intricacies of the history of racial discrimination in this country and how some of those things
are rearing their head in today's world.
And I know that we also this month are going to get into housing.
So I wonder about, you talked about the history of segregation and contributions that Black
people have made in connection with labor.
And I wonder how some of those things may connect back to some of the housing conversations
that are happening in today's world.
Yeah, I think that historically we've seen and have understood that when this country
was built and with the economic platform that it had, Black people were already a part of
the equation, except for they weren't the beneficiaries of the work and of the system.
And so historically, Black people and people of color have worked together to advocate
for many people's fight for civil rights, to fight against injustices, not just in the
human rights space, not just against slavery, not just against voting rights, but really
for housing rights.
NPLI has done a lot of work with housing, with their parent housing policy table.
And one of the things that we did together, Hobson, you and I and others at NPLI was really
dig into the book, The Color of Law, right, and help parents understand how these systems
were built and how redlining started and what that looks like today and how redlining allowing
certain people to purchase homes in the prime real estate areas, the nice neighborhoods,
and how they were able to get mortgages and insurance.
And while people of color were regulated to other parts of cities and towns that weren't
so nice, that did not have good housing stock and weren't able to get mortgages and things
like that.
And so how has that historically continued to play out?
I mean, we see, especially in New York City and big cities, that that's how housing projects
started because they didn't want people of color in the suburbs.
So like, we'll build you these nice, big, pretty buildings.
You'll love it.
And so that's how housing projects started and all of these other things.
We still see it play out today in homeownership and even how infrastructure happens in urban
planning that they would people of color in neighborhoods.
And then when they wanted to develop, they put a highway right through that neighborhood.
And so we see the environmental factors that happen when you put highways and dumps and
landfills and places where community of colors live, you see the health effects.
So all of this is a ripple effect and quite frankly, lands us in that place of social
determinants of health and why certain peoples have the health issues they do have the economic
issues and pressures they do.
All of this ties back to the inequities that exist and primarily one of them is housing,
right?
Housing we see as a human right.
It's not something that people should have to fight for, but that everyone should have
housing just like they should have food and clothing.
So I'll stop there.
But I think that's kind of like the moment that has brought us to today that we still
see people fighting for these, this very basic human right.
And people like Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, people don't understand
that while people had their different ways of fighting for what was needed, they were
all very effective in reaching different groups to continue to keep them engaged in the issues
that were important, including housing.
Yeah.
And I love how you raise those leaders.
And I just want to raise the fact or raise the level of comprehensive understanding that
those leaders had to have of the history of the country in order to even have the foresight
to begin advocating for those things when they were.
You spoke a little bit to the redlining piece when in the 30s and 40s, the federal housing
administration would refuse to give loans to certain communities to purchase housing
within some of these areas where the federal government was building some of these government
funded housing projects and things of that nature.
Those things were originally created to assist the middle class.
But in this country, it was mostly middle class white Americans.
And so black folks were able to get loans to get housing.
And so they were forced into these poverty areas outside of where the cities were developing.
And then as cities developed, they expanded and built upon these black neighborhoods and
kind of forced them to relocate back into the city.
And so, you know, it's kind of been this back and forth where, you know, where the prime
real estate, as the prime real estate moved, certain demographics of Americans were kind
of forced out.
And, you know, homeownership is one of those things that leads to economic freedom.
And so as the civil rights movement evolved and racial discrimination became illegal,
and if you're not watching, I did put up some quotes around that because the policy really
just shifted to where it was more of a discrimination based upon income and that ended up or reared
its head in a racist way.
Right.
Because of the discrimination that prevented black folks from accessing some of this federal
assistance, a lot of black communities were the impoverished communities.
And so when the policies did flip to being financially discriminatory, it was still the
same folks who were being affected.
And we're still seeing a lot of that today.
I know in Ohio, there's a huge push to establish a community redistricting council to some of
the partisan redrawing of lines that results in black people being put into districts and
not receiving as much funding as various white communities.
And this doesn't isn't just limited to housing, right?
This goes into funding for education, funding for public services, even funding for long
enforcement and things of that nature.
It's really a very insidious and complex system that has worked to maintain lower class, lower
income class in America that looks more racially universal and unfortunately has been including
black people.
But yeah, so I want to maybe kind of switch to a more current discussion around how the
federal government, everybody knows we have a new presidential administration that has
come in and they've made some sweeping changes that will affect housing, but realistically
affect how our government is looked at and run going forward potentially.
So I want to start just introducing some things that the federal government may have done
in terms of not celebrating certain holidays and how maybe some local and state action
can combat some of these changes that are happening.
So I think what's interesting in when we're talking about holidays and how the current
administration is not encouraging celebration of particular holidays and things like Black
History Month, you'll also notice, right, that there, you know, this is a public private
situation, so it helps you to better understand or question the authority of the executive
branch, right, so we were kind of established, our constitution gives us three branches of
government so that there is a balance of power, right, and Congress has a lot of power because
they make laws.
And so what's interesting is this conversation around federalism, around balance of power,
like federalism meaning like states power, like how much power do the states have.
And so when it comes to holidays, quite frankly, really that's more in the state's hands.
So the president can say, well, we're not going to celebrate Black History Month, but
in Connecticut we still are, we still have our holiday off, nothing has changed, we're
moving forward with Juneteenth because in our state, our laws govern us.
And so if our state legislature put into effect that we have Juneteenth off as a holiday,
that's what's going to happen.
It also causes us to question public-private partnerships and how much the government can
tell entities to do things.
For example, like renaming the Gulf of Mexico, the Gulf of America, right, who decides that?
And quite frankly, who decides on the Google calendar to remove such holidays?
Google decided because they could have made a decision like we're a private entity, we're
going to keep what we want to keep on our calendar.
So there seems to be a lot of influence from the executive branch in many different areas.
I think your question was how does that play out and what can states be doing and even
what can parent leaders be doing in this time?
And I think we always say like you reach out to the people who represent you, but also
like you have to look at your own values, right?
And quite frankly, we have to have some balance even in our thinking, right?
So instead of being worried about what you might be hearing or what people are saying,
watch the news for yourself.
Tap in, read things for yourself and get your own understanding before allowing people to
tell you what's happening.
And that's what I always say.
And it's the same with these executive orders, right?
On one hand, someone's like, this is terrible.
On the other hand, someone's saying this is great.
And so we have to decide for ourselves.
How does that affect me, my family, my community, my situation?
So that's what I would say about that.
What would you say, Hobson?
Yeah, I really liked how you touched on the power of the states to kind of maintain some
of these historical practices that have been so important and kind of elevating the racial
history of this country.
I know that when you're in a history class in public school 11 months out the year, we're
talking about George Washington and James Madison and Paul Revere and all the great things
that some of these historical figures have done for this country.
While it seems that the racial dynamic of some of those individuals and the history
of this country is kind of relegated to February, right?
And so, especially if you're in one of those districts that's not elevating Black history
every month, because Black history is American history.
We've been a part of this country essentially as soon as folks got here, brought folks here.
So the importance of cutting out a month to make sure that there's some conversation around
these things is vitally important.
I think it goes into the changing of curriculum.
There's a huge push to eliminate the Department of Education to kind of prevent some of these.
And to be fair, the Department of Education doesn't control state or public funding for
education, but the spirit of these executive orders and these movements to kind of eliminate
some federal employees and federal departments is to eliminate some of these quote unquote
DEI practices or the inclusion of woke histories, what some folks may say.
And so, you know, what that really is, is an elimination of the discussion of Black
history and not wanting to kind of speak to some of those things.
And so, you know, just thinking about the importance of being knowledgeable about all
of the racial and secretary practices that have happened, you know, our community members,
our parent leaders don't speak up to kind of maintain those things.
So I just wanted to raise it in the education aspect.
And then you talked a little bit about executive orders and like the duality between how some
folks may think it's a great move and some folks may think it's not a great move, right.
And especially in terms of housing, you know, there was an executive order to deliver emergency
price relief for American families in defending the cost of living crisis, right.
That sounds on its face like a phenomenal thing that can alleviate some costs.
But if you read through the executive order, it is fairly broad.
It doesn't give specific methods for implementing some of those changes.
But it does have the spirit of trying to alleviate some of those costs.
Now, the methodology of that is going to be important.
And especially when you have other executive orders, mainly tariffs on Canada and Mexico,
who are some of our biggest providers of steel, concrete, lumber, things that are pivotal
in increasing the amount of housing in this country that may make construction of housing
more expensive.
Maybe I'll know that as the production cost of something goes up, that cost is generally
pushed down onto the consumer, right.
We're a capitalistic country, so the folks who are producing houses want to make money
and they don't want to lose money because concrete is more expensive.
And so the prices of concrete go up, the prices of lumber goes up, presumably the prices of
housing might go up.
And then there's been other executive orders that may undermine DEI practices, like we
kind of talked about, and the whole concept of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which
is what DEI stands for, was to make sure that folks were evaluated on their merit, not to
eliminate that requirement, right.
There was a huge discrepancy in the amount of people of color, women, the LGBTQ community
that wasn't getting access to some of these employment opportunities, despite the fact
that they had their credentials and had the experience and ability to perform these tasks.
And so the creation of DEI initiatives was to ensure that our country was representative
and that qualified individuals weren't being discriminated on based upon their race, right.
And so the elimination of those things is actually kind of counterintuitive to the whole
let's evaluate each other based on our merit argument.
And so there's that, and then there's been reduction of staff and executive agencies,
the Department of Government Efficiency, maybe more commonly known as DOGE, is doing widespread
cuts to federal agencies, sometimes eliminating federal agencies altogether effectively or
attempting to- Or accidentally.
Yeah, or accidentally, you know, eliminating folks who have nuclear codes, which could
be catish, you know, clearly- Or trying to solve for bird flu right now.
Yeah, or trying to solve for bird flu.
And so, you know, these executive agencies, you know, serve the purpose of implementing
some of these federal laws, you know, like the Civil Rights Act or Federal Housing Act
that were aimed at eliminating or working towards eliminating some of these problems
because we know that they haven't been eliminated.
But lastly, in terms of the policies, the federal policies that may be affecting some
of these housing issues, there's a lot of conditioning of federal aid on cooperation
with federal policy or conversations around not providing colleges that receive federal
funding.
Their funding may be removed if it's deemed that they're introducing DEI curriculum at
their schools.
Same thing with public schools and private schools on the K-12 level, right?
And so a lot of these things, a lot of these executive orders, you know, while framed around
a certain theme or a certain ideal, you know, they might not have that effect in practice.
And so just like Movet said, you know, we always encourage parent leaders to, you know,
look for their own news and form their own perspective in terms of these policies.
The White House website, whitehouse.gov, they have all of the executive orders that have
been passed, the language that's included in them.
And so, you know, I encourage folks when you hear about delivering emergency price relief
for American families executive order, don't just operate based off the title of it.
Go read it, find out for yourself how that information may be applied in community and
whether or not you support it.
Because ultimately, combating some of these things or if you're in support of some of
these things, all of that is going to come down to constituents and advocates making
their voices known and their perspectives known, whether they're dissatisfied or satisfied.
Definitely encourage folks to do your own research.
There's a plethora of sources and sites out there that you can check out to get good information.
And you know, make sure that if you are looking at something and it appears to be partisan,
maybe go to a site that you know has the other perspective so that you can kind of get a
full idea of the picture.
That's where we are.
I would, before we shift, I would offer also another resource to parents.
We've shared this before on other podcasts and some of our other work together.
At allsides.com.
So allsides.com really shows a balanced approach to the media, right?
So it shows it from the conservative side, the liberal side, and right in the center.
And so if you subscribe to them, you'll get a daily email that gives you the news headlines.
But then it gives it to you like, here's what the conservatives are saying about this particular
issue or about this executive order.
Here's what the liberals are saying.
Here's what the news media in the center of this issue, a more balanced approach.
And then you'll kind of see how people might spin something or different word choices and
why words really matter.
This is not to bash one side and the other.
This is just to give you a balanced approach to what might be very controversial or partisan
issues.
So allsides.com, I would highly recommend for folks who are really trying to look through
an unbiased lens at some of these topics.
Yeah, 100%.
We talked a lot about how state and local action can be utilized to combat or support
some of these initiatives and specifically around housing.
We talked about some of our work with our Melville housing table.
And so we have the great honor and privilege to invite one of those housing table members
to join us today on the podcast.
Julie, how are you doing?
Welcome Julie.
I'm doing well.
Thanks so much for having me today.
We are so, so happy to have you.
Would you mind just like giving us a brief introduction of who you are and, you know,
kind of how you got ingratiated with the National Parent Leadership Institute.
So I live here in Littleton, Colorado, just south of Denver with my husband and my three
children.
We've been here for almost 13 years now.
I was able to a few years ago join one of the local parent leader institutes for a session
and really just grew so much.
I've been working in a nonprofit that addresses housing insecurity and many other challenges
in poverty, but I needed a lot more education on how I could use my voice around the challenges
I was seeing.
I needed to learn about spending time with others in that class.
There were many people who identify as part of the Latino community and I was able to
hear their stories and to grow in the challenges that they've seen personally living here in
Colorado.
And then I learned so much about how to advocate in local and state government.
And so that was a life changing experience for me and taught me how I could take the
concerns that I had for the populations that I was working with and use my voice to bring
about change.
Awesome.
Yeah.
And we've been so fortunate to have Julie's voice on the housing table for I think three
years now, four years.
I know I've been working with the table for the last two and a half years or something
like that.
That's the beginning.
Yeah.
So it's been really great to have your voice on the table.
And so, you know, let's just jump right into it in terms of the housing conversation in
Colorado.
Can you speak to just a little bit of the work that is going on in Colorado?
What is the housing crisis look like in Colorado and what's some of the work that's being done
to alleviate some of those concerns for some of our most vulnerable communities?
I want to start with local in my city because I think it speaks to the conversation you
were having earlier about Black History Month and naming redlining.
When I first moved here, Littleton has a really lovely city center that's kind of an old town
area.
It's very charming.
And we, our family, really loved it and wanted to be in this area.
But as I moved in, I realized that it was a very homogenous kind of situation.
I am a female that identifies as white.
And I looked around and realized that primarily it's mostly white people that live here in
Littleton.
And then I began to learn about the redlining that happened in downtown Denver.
There's an area called Five Points and that's the historic community that was the Black
community because that's where they were allowed to live.
And so of course, I wasn't here to cause that challenge, but then you have to ask yourself,
you know, why was that the case and how am I going to make my, the place where I live
more accessible?
And I've learned so much in these last few years about the housing practices and zoning
here in Littleton.
And one of the current challenges that we are navigating right now, Littleton is very
expensive.
It is not accessible for all different kinds of people to come live in this city.
And there are some recent efforts around changing zoning policies and allowing for more inclusionary
housing.
And the people that live here, primarily white.
There's a certain cohort of them, I will say, that is really fighting that inclusionary,
those inclusionary housing opportunities.
Of course, there are others who are promoting it.
There are people on both sides, but that's playing out in a very real way right now.
While at the same time, we've seen gentrification happening in that historic Five Points area
and part of that neighborhood that's turning over and becoming a place where lots of people
want to go out to eat or go hear music, they're actually changing the name to this kind of
like hip popular name called Rhino, which comes from River North.
And so just seeing it play out in real time, the ways that the community hasn't been cared
for.
And so that's one of the areas that really real time we can in the city of Littleton
show up and advocate for our neighbors and inclusionary housing.
And then I'll just also add that on a state level, one of our biggest challenges here
in Colorado is a budget deficit.
We are sitting at for this year about a billion dollars that our legislators have to find.
And what we know about that government funding is that it's all dollars that really serve
our population here in Colorado.
And some of the highest, the highest cuts that they might be looking at are in Medicaid and
education.
So these areas that really take care of everyone, but especially vulnerable populations.
And so any new bill that's getting introduced this year, and there are many that are meant
to serve vulnerable populations, the challenge is if it has a fiscal note, if they think
that there's going to be any cost to it, they will not even consider that bill in our legislature.
And so there's some significant concerns about what that looks like for advocacy groups.
There's one that I'm a part of advocating for a program that really serves houseless
people to get restaurant prepared meals.
And the challenge is that if we have any cost associated with that, it will be immediately
struck down.
Yeah, no, well, one, it sounds like there's different communities of folks who are doing
great work in Colorado.
So that's definitely encouraging to hear and encouraging to hear that some of the new changes
haven't affected these efforts, maybe not yet.
But I do want to kind of speak to we talked about how the federal government policies
may affect the ability of or the funding for some of these local initiatives, right?
Have you seen any of that in the community efforts on this point?
Yeah, I have some significant concern about our local organization that addresses homelessness
here in Colorado.
I saw when there was a federal funding freeze that happened temporarily, I saw a note come
out from them that it's called Colorado Coalition for the Homeless, that their funding had gotten
frozen.
And I think that they have significant federal funding that they rely on.
Thankfully, that funding came back and they're still operating.
But they're one of our primary organizations that advocates around housing and provides
resources.
And so some significant concerns about that and about some of the verbiage that caring
for people who are vulnerable like that.
In the verbiage, it said it was a Marxist idea.
And so for me, a concern that coming from the federal government, this idea of caring
for vulnerable populations is some kind of idea that's unhealthy is really concerning
to me.
Yeah.
It's definitely concerning to everyone.
And I think during that federal funding freeze period, there was concern all over the country
around whether or not specific nonprofits or other entities that may receive federal
funding to implement their programs would be able to continue operation.
Because as folks may know or may not know, a lot of these community organizations and
nonprofits that do a lot of this work receive a significant amount of funding from the federal
government based upon some acts passed by Congress and regulations passed by some of
these executive agencies to distribute these funds down to the state level and then how
those state funds are then distributed into individual communities.
That source of income was in jeopardy.
And so that was a huge concern and definitely grateful that the freeze period was temporary
and did not continue, but it's definitely still on the table and still in conversations.
And so there'll be a lot of advocacy required around that as well.
I want to turn it over to Movet and see if Movet has any thoughts or questions.
So I think this conversation around, you know, we're talking about housing, but as Julie
has shared, what's happening in Colorado with their state budget is really important.
And a lot of states will go through this even aside from the changes that are happening
at the federal government and what monies states are concerned about, what monies they
might lose with some of the changes that are happening, especially around Medicaid.
And I think it's important.
I think it's important to say out loud that while Julie has said out loud that Medicaid
takes up a good amount of Colorado's budget, and this is one of the pain points as they're
looking to balance their budget and they're at a $1.2 billion deficit.
In Colorado, Medicaid makes up about one third of the state's budget.
So when we're thinking about the billions of dollars that a state has, that 33% of that
budget is Medicaid, which helps families with health care and with some other things, right?
As we know, Medicaid pays for dental in many states, medical, but also some special services
for people with disabilities, our aging population, people who are retired.
So there's a lot that Medicaid covers.
In Connecticut, for us, it's about 24% of our budget.
That's $7.9 billion.
That's a lot of money.
And conversely, Connecticut is a teeny tiny state.
Colorado is a good sized state, bigger budget than ours, more people, more land.
But if people were to find themselves in between a teeny tiny state in the Northeast and a
large size state in the middle of the country, where does their state sit?
These are things that parent leaders need to know.
What are the Medicaid costs in my state and how does that relate to our state's budget?
Because this is where our advocacy sits.
If we don't have Medicaid, this is the ripple effect.
And people don't have access to health insurance and dental insurance.
And Connecticut, we have a big bill proposal around oral health and how poor oral health
affects people, right?
So quite frankly, if you have a tooth that rots out and you get an infection that can
spread to your brain, right?
These things can become bigger issues, no different than if Medicaid is cut, what are
the implications?
What are the health implications?
And that it will cost more money at some point to care for those people who show up in emergency
rooms without insurance.
What is the effect on families and work?
If people are sick, they can't go to work.
What is the effect on our economy when we don't have workers working, right?
In all the industries.
And so this is a ripple effect that we have to start thinking about when we look at cutting
funding and crucial and critical areas that provide basic care for people.
What's the ripple effect?
When we're talking about housing, back to housing, if people don't have health insurance
and they don't have Medicaid, we need people to build houses.
What happens to those people, right?
Oh, half my workforce and my construction force are down because they were sick and
they didn't have health insurance or they had to wait on medical issues, right?
This affects workforce, this affects well-being of our communities, of our schools, all the
things.
So it's a ripple effect and we really have to be paying attention to this conversation.
All of it is interrelated.
Why is Medicaid connected to housing?
Because of the things I told you.
And what else can it affect as well?
If I could just add one other piece to that, as I worked with many unhoused individuals
who navigated substance abuse challenges and even those who aren't unhoused, having Medicaid
cover the cost of detox and helping them navigate that challenge was essential because if you
have no income and you want to make that positive change, we're asking people to make a positive
change for their health.
But if you don't have the resources for them, asking them to obtain sobriety while living
on the streets is just completely unreasonable.
And I think that that's just another helpful example of people that I sat with who wanted
to make positive change and need these resources to be able to obtain that.
Yeah, no, a hundred percent.
And I like how both of you highlighted how interconnected all of this is.
And I just want to highlight that while I think many believe and I think based upon
the language of some of these actions that a lot of this is targeted towards people of
color, it's not limited in effect to those communities.
A lot of impoverished communities of all demographics are going to be affected by a lot of these
changes.
And so it's important to recognize how these things work, how federal policy kind of ripples
out to the rest of the country and maybe have different differing effects depending on where
you are and what your state legislatures focus and direction is.
And so really just encourage all of our parent leaders who are listening and all of our advocates
who are listening to continue to stay informed, continue to seek out your own perspective
by looking at all of the different perspectives and looking at this bird's eye view and then
narrowing in on these little intricate routes that some of these federal policies and state
level policies, how they may affect your local community.
With that, are there any closing thoughts, either you Julie or you Melvette before we
call it quits for this week's podcast?
Well, I would love to have our parent leader guests have the last word.
So what I'll say is, you know, this has been a great conversation.
I'm inviting all parent leaders to be engaged, to not tap out, but to tap in.
Because as I tell parent leaders here in the state of Connecticut, and as we've experienced
with some of our housing committee, public hearings, and certainly our education, public
hearing committees, those things go into the wee hours of the morning, 2 a.m., 3 a.m.,
5 a.m.
And so what I say to them is that while you're sleeping, people are making decisions about
your life.
So now is not a time to tap out.
It is a time to tap in and to be informed, to inform yourself, and then to take action,
the actions that you think need to happen in order to make sure that your family is
safe and healthy.
Julie.
Yeah, thanks so much for having me today.
And I would just say in this current season, it's easy to feel overwhelmed.
And I would encourage us all to tap into hope and to continue to care for our neighbor because
we all have spaces of influence.
And that's where the on the ground change is going to really happen.
Awesome.
Well, we appreciate you both.
And for our listeners, we will see you next time.