A Beautiful Housing Future…Maybe

Affordable housing and homelessness

Pilot or new project, program, or initiative (testing or implementing a new idea)

Three unhoused people die every day in LA. Seniors are the fastest-growing demographic of the unhoused. By 2030 over 20% of Angelenos will be over 65. Over half of Angelenos renters are rent burdened. A 2023 McKinsey report states that LA is decades behind in creating enough housing at current construction rates. Supportive housing policy makers admit they are losing the narrative battle. So, what are we missing? We suggest that the answer is radical imagination, strategic cross-sector coalitions, and honest reflection on the values that shape our policies and our neighborhoods. To do this must, arts and culture must be woven into our processes. We are making policy choices now that will have generational impact. We are living with the consequences of Proposition 13 (1978) limiting property taxes. The room where you are sitting was someone else’s vision for the future. Without collective civic imagination, how can we ensure that all Angelenos of 2050 will have access to housing?

Mark-n-Sparks is prototyping a model we call: Future Forums. These are unique and uniquely effective in that they function as part think-tank, network weaving, learning exchange, and daydreaming. We propose to host three Future Forums. In collaboration with the 2050 staff, we will work with current and past LA 2050 grantees to imagine a 2050 where LA has abundant, affordable, and safe housing: A BEAUTIFUL HOUSING FUTURE...MAYBE is this learning exchange/Future Forum. Mark-n-Sparks will provide facilitation training to at least 40 grantees to prepare them to be table hosts during the Forums, thereby building facilitation skills and relationships between grantees. The Future Forum will include:
A teach-in about demographic, environmental projections, and housing needs. Stories from grantees about their personal or collective housing visions for 2050. Imagine congregation members from LA Voice, youth from the Peer Health Exchange, and folks from Defy Ventures. Grantees will be table hosts facilitating small cross-sector groups, doing a series of world-building exercises that include personal housing stories, developing policy recommendations, and the creation of speculative fiction from the perspective of a person in 2050. The output from the Future Forums will include: Speculative fiction stories from 2050. LA has the resources to create this future, and by harnessing our connections and imaginations, we can build the cultural and political will to make it happen.

By gathering across sectors to imagine a LA where everyone can access safe housing by 2050, We lay the foundation for the cultural, political, and narrative shifts necessary to make our imagined future a reality.
Cross-sector conversations expand our understanding of what is possible and provide a space to imagine and rehearse the world we want to create. Success looks like emerging collaborations between grantees and increased civic participation in local housing policy efforts. Within a year, imagine if the youth from the Peer Health Exchange and BIPOC birthworkers understood that Housing is Healthcare, grew their skills as facilitators, AND were fluent in the basics of housing and zoning policy! We would see a shift in housing conversations from bootstrap and blame to systemic analysis. Future Future Forums would include community tours, narrative and cultural shifts from NIMBY to neighboring, and eventually abundant housing for all.

The project is early-stage. Last year, we held two Future Forums in Pennsylvania: 1) with artists, organizers, educators, advocates, and city planners and 2) with faith leaders interested in housing development. Participants reported finding the combination of story, data, and world-building to be personally and professionally transformative. After the first Forum, a mom-and-pop landlord launched a cohort of landlords to discuss maintaining affordability. Faith leaders are developing a toolkit to support each other in converting church properties. A housing advocate will spend her sabbatical with us learning to weave imagination and creativity into her policy work—reversing the artist-in-residency model to advocate-in-residence. In LA, we will collect evaluation surveys and host debrief conversations with collaborators. With relationship-building as a vital short-term outcome, we seek to develop mechanisms to document and evaluate the impact of these relationships over time.