Meet SJPLA's Racial Equity in Homelessness Fellows!
SJPLA Community,
You may remember SJPLA launched, in July 2020, the Racial Equity in Homelessness Initiative with the goal of recruiting, equipping, and retaining talent across the housing and homelessness sector. Our big vision is to radically transform workplace cultures to center equity and inclusion. We are thrilled to introduce the first cohort of Racial Equity Fellows who will lead this charge across the sector. See below for their collective introduction statement and learn more about each of the Fellows here.
Leading from the Inside: Our Collective Vision for Racial Equity
"We are a cohort of peers, allies and colleagues working to end homelessness across Los Angeles County; a county where it is estimated that some 66,000 people sleep on the streets each night. We are leaders of color with lived experience of housing insecurity, incarceration, immigration and other challenges that affect communities of color. We currently hold leadership positions in the homeless services sector and work in every geographic region of Los Angeles County to address housing and homelessness for native folks, youth, formerly incarcerated persons and other individuals experiencing homelessness. We are advocates, organizers, fundraisers, program architects and systems thinkers who are committed to a bold vision of liberation for all.
Over the past 18 months our country has collectively experienced the dual pandemics of COVID19 & racism, the murder of George Floyd, and a series of hate crimes against people of color. As conversations around reopening and a return to normal begin happening we are forced to pause and ask ourselves, “what is the new normal? What are the lessons that we’ve learned during this time? And, as leaders, “what does this mean for us now?” We know that this moment calls for radical reimagining of the future and invites us to explore a new path forward in our workplaces and in the world. For us, this starts with deep examination of ourselves as individuals, connection with peers and community, and most importantly having an honest conversation about our work and the world."
As we begin our journey together as the inaugural cohort of the Racial Equity in Homelessness Fellowship, we used the Problem with Problems Framework created by Equity Meets Design to articulate the problem with homelessness.
“As leaders, We acknowledge that homelessness in Los Angeles is the legacy of centuries of racial oppression, cultural genocide, gentrification, and displacement of communities of color; and that the solutions driven by our current homeless response system are rooted in settler colonialism, white saviourism, and a scarcity model that values profits over people and individualism over collectivism. This staunch legacy of white supremacy has created barriers to pathways in leadership for BIPOC and people with lived experience.”
“We hold ourselves accountable to acknowledging this truth, to having open and honest dialogue about what it means to be leaders in a system that is fundamentally operating as it was designed. A system that perpetuates harm and cycles of oppression within our workplaces and ultimately the world. Throughout this Fellowship, we will be exploring ways in which we can counter some of the most common characteristics of white dominant culture inside our organizations including power hoarding, the relentless pursuit of quantity over quality, perfectionism, a manufactured sense of urgency, and the notion that there is only 1 right way to lead people, teams and organizations."
Change is on the horizon and our collective journey has just begun. Stay tuned.
In solidarity,
SJPLA Racial Equity Fellows