Liberty Hill at Move LA Conference

Earlier this summer, Liberty Hill CEO & President Shane Murphy Goldsmith and Senior Director of Housing Justice Mike Dennis joined leading housing advocates, government agency representatives and others at Move LA’s Community Conversation and Policy Conference. The conference brought L.A. thought leaders together for a day packed with insightful discussions on transportation, affordable housing, climate action, and more.

As guest speaker, Shane joined panelists from the Beneficial State Foundation and the Natural Resources Defense Council to discuss the intersectionality of housing justice and transit justice, and its impact on frontline communities fighting for equitable transportation-oriented housing in the region.

In a special panel on “Real Strategies that Address the Affordable Housing & Crisis of Homelessness in L.A., Senior Director of Housing Justice Mike Dennis joined Liberty Hill partners at United to House LA and other housing justice advocates in a discussion on the tenants’ rights and affordable housing movement in Los Angeles.

“We’re at a pivotal moment in LA’s organizing history where we’ve shifted our power building strategies away from asking our elected leaders to create systems change, to bringing our ideas directly to voters at the ballot box. This panel unpacked a lot of the monumental gains our housing justice movement has been able to secure over the past 8 years. From creating new tools to build affordable housing faster and cheaper, to crafting countywide tenant protections, to creating new revenue sources to properly protect what we already have,” Mike shared.

With homelessness on the rise and the housing crisis becoming more severe, local efforts by housing justice movement organizers and leaders have been vital to providing equitable and community-led solutions. However, these victories have also been met with stark challenges from large corporate real estate interests and outsiders—including a challenge to Measure ULA, a tax measure that provides funds to invest in prevention of homelessness and production of affordable housing in L.A. County.

For Liberty Hill, housing justice is front and center in the work we support. As new challenges to housing justice arise, Liberty Hill is committed to continue supporting our frontline community partners in the fight to put a roof over every head.

Learn more about our Housing Justice work.