August 24, 2017
By Danny Glover
NNPA Newswire Guest Columnist
The history of housing in America is a history of discrimination. Even as people of color have made strides in countless other areas of American life, home ownership—and the intergenerational wealth that comes along with it—remains out of reach for far too many. Even Frederick Douglass, when buying his first home in 1892, noted the importance of home ownership in building community wealth for African Americans. While being committed to economic justice we must also rethink how we cultivate strong dynamic communities of inclusion and belonging.
That is why I have started working with Airbnb and will be serving as an adviser for their efforts to engage communities of color, ensuring members of these communities are taking advantage of the economic opportunity of hosting on the Airbnb platform. I know Airbnb has had its own share of challenges in this arena—but working with them, I’ve seen first-hand how committed they are to getting it right. And I have been incredibly heartened to see the resources, desire, and drive they are directing towards ensuring that their service is used fairly and inclusively.
Over the past several months, I have had the opportunity of meeting numerous African American and LatinxAirbnb hosts, each of whom has impacted me deeply. There are more stories than I could share, but I do want you to know about a couple of the hosts I met.
In Brooklyn, I met Michelle—who has seen the cost of living in the rapidly gentrifying Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood increase tremendously since she moved there twenty years ago. Ordinarily, Michelle would have had to move to another neighborhood. But by renting out her garden apartment on Airbnb, she could not only afford to stay in the neighborhood, but could also help pay her daughter’s way through college.
Cia, a host I met in San Francisco, raised her children as a single mother—and is now raising a granddaughter as well. Today, Airbnb helps her make ends meet for her whole family, and in the years ahead, Cia says Airbnb will make it possible for her to retire.
These are just a few of the many stories I have heard—with people from all different backgrounds using Airbnb as a bridge to financial stability and even homeownership. These stories are not the exception either. In the U.S., the typical Airbnb U.S. host earns $6,100 every year they share their home— supplemental income that can cover expenses like food, rent, caring for a sick relative, and education for their children.
In many cases, Airbnb can even be the difference between hosts having to give up their homes and earning income from them. An estimated 62 percent of United States hosts report that home sharing has helped them afford to stay in their home, while 12 percent of North American hosts say that it actually saved them from eviction or foreclosure.
Airbnb also allows communities traditionally underserved by the tourism industry to reap the financial rewards of travel, with the share of Airbnb bookings in communities of color in some major cities exceeding the share of local hotel rooms that can be found in them.
Yet, Airbnb’s potential benefits also go beyond finances as the service can bring people of diverse origins and walks of life together in a context geared toward hospitality and sharing. The bonds that can form in these interactions are indispensable to the greater project of breaking down the social barriers that make all forms of discrimination so intractable in the first place. These spontaneous interpersonal relationships are the laboratories for transforming relationships among people; the sites at which we begin to implement our highest ideals in practical yet poignant ways.
I recently met Ron, an Airbnb host in San Francisco. Ron and his wife, Renee, have hosted over 200 people in their home over the years through Airbnb. Among their many guests were a husband and wife from Germany. When Renee recently passed away, the German couple she and Ron had hosted were able to reach out online to express their heartfelt condolences. When the husband returned to San Francisco on a business trip, he and Ron went out for a drink and remain in contact.
For hosts like Ron, hosting on Airbnb became a gateway to new passions and a sense of community that is simultaneously personal and global. By melding travel, housing, and the potential for meaningful personal exchanges, Airbnb represents a host of possibilities for marginalized communities, particularly those of color.
African American, Latinx, and other communities of color are some of Airbnb’s fastest growing host communities in the U.S, which is a step in the right direction. But the underlying housing market is still fundamentally unfair—and, disappointingly, even as we have made progress in other areas, the Airbnb community can sometimes reflect the broader discriminatory realities of present-day American society.
Working with the Airbnb community first-hand –which includes its executive leaders, employees, and hosts–has allowed me to witness just how committed they are to addressing these issues proactively. They have issued a report on building inclusion and engaged with civil rights leaders across the country. I see this as a continuation of the work I have done throughout my life, fighting for fairness and equality for working people, including hotel workers and supporting union workers, which both of my parents were.
In March, Airbnb unveiled its Economic Empowerment Agenda—which established the goal of doubling the size of its U.S. host community in urban majority-minority districts and underserved areas within the next two years. This will be achieved through partnerships with national and local organizations and on-the-ground events and trainings to help more people understand the economic opportunity that home sharing can provide. This agenda also includes: The Friendly Buildings Program, bringing landlords and their tenants to the table to jointly set home sharing and revenue sharing terms; and, the creation of a living wage pledge—which will enable hosts to designate that the people who clean their homes are paid at least $15 per hour.
Airbnb and the NAACP have also established a partnership to increase the participation of hosts of color and increase tourism to neighborhoods of color, to diversify Airbnb’s workforce, and to commit a share of Airbnb’s revenue to supporting civil rights initiatives.
Working with partners like the NAACP, we will host information sessions and run online and offline campaigns aimed at engaging the people who can benefit from home sharing the most. As an adviser, I will be on the ground doing whatever I can to promote these efforts—participating in trainings and events, working with local organizations and faith-based leaders, and getting to know more of the hosts who empower our communities.
The fight for fairer housing won’t be easy—and it won’t be over anytime soon. But you can be part of making a difference right now. So I hope you’ll consider investing in your future, signing up to host on Airbnb, and helping us work towards housing equality—one listing at a time.
And I’ll be working closely with everyone at Airbnb to help more people of color benefit from home sharing.
Danny Glover is an actor, director, producer and humanitarian. You can follow Danny Glover on Twitter @MrDannyGlover.
August 24, 2017
By Freddie Allen
NNPA Newswire
The New York Life insurance company recently hosted a panel discussion on bridging the racial wealth gap in Washington, D.C.
New York Life agents were in town for the company’s empowerment plan summit and to celebrate achieving their goal of reaching $50 billion in life insurance plans in the Black community.
The panel featured Dr. Benjamin F. Chavis, Jr., the president and CEO of the National Newspaper Publishers Association; Reverend Delman Coates, the senior pastor of Mt. Ennon Baptist Church in Clinton, Md.; Darryl De Sousa, the deputy commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department; Dr. Bahiyyah Muhammad, an assistant professor of sociology and anthropology at Howard University; Eugene Mitchell, the African American Market Manager for New York Life; and Jeff Pegues, the justice and homeland security correspondent for CBS News.
Mitchell said that he wanted people to know that New York Life and its agents take economic empowerment in the Black community very seriously, because economic disparities breed lack of opportunities.
“The root problem in our community is not crime, it’s not drugs, it’s not non-nuclear households, it’s the economy,” said Mitchell. “Wealth equals opportunity and the lack of wealth creates hard times.”
Mitchell continued: “We’re bringing this tool of life insurance into the Black community so that we can use it like other [communities] have used it for hundreds of years and to create an inheritance and generational wealth beyond covering the cost of the funeral.”
Mitchell said that, with the right policy, when a family member passes away and leaves $100,000 or $250,000 or $1,000,000 that money can be used as an investment to help purchase a house, to fund college education, for start-up capital to start a business or even charitable giving
“The understanding and conversations in the past have only been around burial policies and not tied to your value and worth,” said Mitchell.
Coates said that now that New York Life has reached the $50 billion-dollar goal, the Black community desperately needs a macroeconomic strategy that will help to preserve the value of that investment.
“We would be remiss if 20 years from now the value of that $50 billion is $5 billion,” said Coates. “If we’re going to address the racial wealth gap, we must address the macroeconomic mechanisms that causes money to be controlled by people who don’t look like us, by institutions that don’t represent us and that ultimately issue money as a debt in society.”
Chavis said that if we want to bridge the wealth gap, if we want to replace poverty with wealth, it first starts in the mind; it first starts in the consciousness.
“The problem is we don’t adequately utilize the blessings that all of us have,” said Chavis. “The truth of the matter is, our children are not born hopeless, they become that way. It does take a village to raise a child, but the problem is not the child, it’s the village.”
Chavis said that with the $50 billion dollar economic empowerment campaign, Eugene Mitchell and New York Life have shown that the Black families can instill wealth building into our mindset.
“We not only have to talk about building wealth, we have to show our people how to build wealth,” said Chavis. “We have to express wealth building in our community in a way that people feel the emotional impact of pooling [their] resources.”
Muhammad commended the life insurance agents in the audience for the work that they’re doing in the Black community and implored them to continue their outreach efforts.
“It will be difficult, people will give you attitude, you will get individuals that will call you naysayers or disrespect you; it’s a lack of knowledge,” said Muhammad, adding that sometimes it takes providing the information in different ways.
Muhammad continued: “We can’t blame one another for a lack of knowledge, if we don’t do everything we can to impart that knowledge.”
August 17, 2017
By Niele Anderson
Contributing Writer
Congressman Ted Lieu (CD-33) joined officials from the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) and Skanska USA Civil on Aug. 11, to tour the recently completed Exposition Light Rail Transit Phase 2 (Expo 2) project, which extended service from Culver City to Santa Monica.
The project tour began at the La Cienega/Jefferson Metro station where Phillip A. Washington, Metro CEO, Jacque DuPont Walker (Mayor Garcetti appointee to the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority), Inglewood Mayor James T. Butts and Brian Freund, vice president of Operations at Skanska USA Civil, gave presentations.
Congressman Lieu commented on the need for continued investment in our nation’s rail transit systems. “It was a pleasure to see, firsthand the completed Expo 2 line, which connects many diverse neighborhoods in California’s 33rd District from Santa Monica to downtown L.A.,” said Congressman Lieu. “The project demonstrates the value of supporting transportation infrastructure investments.”
While locally, Angelinos voted to pass sales taxes last year to cover some of the infrastructure cost. Metro CEO Phillip A. Washington provided and overview of how successful infrastructure must work.
“I call it the three-legged financing and funding stool”, he stated. “The federal government is one leg of that stool - federal funding, the private sector is the second leg of that stool and then local investment is the third leg of that stool. All three of those legs have to work together to get infrastructure done, right now the federal leg of that stool is wobbly.”
Washington continued, “We were a little discouraged by the proposed budget from this current administration on transportation, and concerned because the talk of one trillion dollars for infrastructure was not really reflected in that proposed budget. There were actually cuts in that budget and there was actually a call out of Los Angeles, Seattle, and Denver as being places that may not need federal dollars because we went out for sales tax initiatives. So, we are concerned but have not lost hope though and we still want to work with this administration on infrastructure investment but we were a little concerned with that proposed budget that came out a few months ago.”
The group discussed the need to increase budget allocations for domestic discretionary investments and, more specifically, transportation infrastructure investments. They also emphasized the importance of the Capital Investment Grants Program and the Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) Grant Program that support rail infrastructure investment as well as transportation, housing, and urban development goals.
Phase 2 of the Metro Expo Line project is 6.6 miles long and connects Santa Monica by rail to downtown Los Angeles and the rest of the 105-mile Metro Rail system that extends to the San Fernando Valley, the San Gabriel Valley, the South Bay, Long Beach and many points in between. Major construction began in 2012 and was completed in 2016.
Also in attendance were: Rick Meade, Executive Officer of Program Management, Metro; Frank Alejandro, Senior Executive Officer, Metro; Jonathan Hofert, Senior Engineer, Metro; Marisa V. Yeager, Senior Manager of Federal Affairs, Metro; and Will Resch, VP of Grassroots Advocacy, NRC. Additional information provided by Metro.
Be sure to visit the Los Angeles Sentinel Facebook page to see an exclusive interview with Congressman Ted Lieu where he discusses Metro, Trump, Infrastructure, North Korea.
August 10, 2017
City News Service
The percentage of Los Angeles County residents who could afford to purchase a median-priced home dipped to 28 percent in the second quarter of the year, down from 30 percent the same period a year ago, according to figures released Wednesday by the California Association of Realtors.
According to CAR, the median price of a Los Angeles County home was $514,220 in the second quarter, meaning an estimated monthly mortgage payment of $2,580, including taxes and insurance. The minimum qualifying annual income for home buyers was estimated at $103,070.
The estimated monthly payment assumes a 20 percent downpayment and interest rate of 4.09 percent, according to CAR.
In Orange County, an estimated 21 percent of buyers could afford a median-priced $788,000 home, down slightly from 22 percent the same quarter last year, according to CAR. Buying an Orange County home would require an annual income of $157,950, with estimated monthly payments of $3,950.
Statewide, just 29 percent of would-be buyers could afford a median priced home of $553,260 in the second quarter, requiring a minimum qualifying income of $110,890. The monthly payment for such a median home would be $2770, according to CAR. The statewide percentage of people who could afford a home was down from 31 percent in the second quarter of 2016.
CAR noted that home prices in the state have nearly doubled since affordability reached its highest level five years ago, meaning home buyers need twice the income to purchase a median priced home. In the first quarter of 2012, buyers needed a minimum annual income of just $56,320 to purchase a home priced at $279,190, according to CAR.