UpFront

Housing Roundup: We host an on-air Tenants Rights Clinic; Plus: Finding housing after being released from jail, how LA is grappling with 60,000 homeless, and the International Rent Strike on May 1

0:08 – New unemployment data released today shows 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment, or 1 in 5 workers – and the numbers are probably

Ben Zipperer is an economist with the Economic Policy Institute, and co-author of the new report ‘Unemployment filing failures

0:25 – KPFA News: Now a look at organizing. Housing rights advocates are trying to build momentum behind a demand they call “cancel rent”–a call to go further than the limited eviction pause ordered by Governor Gavin Newsom under the state of emergency. KPFA’s Scott Baba reports. 

0:34 – Live Tenants Rights Clinic

Leah Simon Weisberg (@Leahfsw) is the Legal Director for Anti-Displacement and Land Use Programs with ACCE Institute.

Sara Hedgpeth-Harris is Supervising Attorney, Housing Team at Central California Legal Services, based in Fresno.

1:08 – Finding housing and resettling after release from jail

We’ve spent a lot of time covering the push to get people out of jails and prisons, before before COVID starts tearing through them. That, obviously, leaves the question of where people go when they get out. KPFA’s Lucy Kang (@ThisIsLucyKang) spoke to Daryl, 

1:18 – Los Angeles: A look at what’s facing homeless people in Los Angeles — where local government has committed to getting enough hotel rooms for about a quarter of the county’s homeless population, but progress seems to be really slow. KPFA’s Danielle Kaye (@danielledkaye) reports.

1:24 – San Francisco: The first is the push to turn San Francisco’s empty hotel rooms into safe places for its unhoused residents to weather the pandemic. More than two weeks ago, The Board of Supervisors unanimously passed an emergency ordinance requiring the city to do so. Not a whole lot has come of it since then – KPFA’s Chris Lee (@chrislee_xyz) reports. 

1:34 – International Rent Strike May 1

Nicole Deane (@sassmasterdeane) is the Lead Organizer of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) – Oakland and Co-Facilitator of the Oakland Rent Strike Committee

1:48 – Listener comments from our off-air phone line.

1:55 – Poetry flash: ‘Glow Up’ by Iris de Anda

Iris De Anda is a poet, writer, activist, and practitioner of the healing arts, based in in Los Angeles.