“Housing is a human right”—that’s the rallying cry of representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar, along with other social and economic justice advocates around the country.
Today on the show, Ali digs into the history of housing segregation and the effects of the affordable housing crisis locally and nationally with attorney Heidi Wegleitner from the Dane County Board of Supervisors and history professor Paige Glotzer.
They cover topics like eviction, gentrification, Ben Carson and HUD, the criminalization of homelessness, racism and segregation, landlords, renters’ rights, the connection of the housing crisis and the climate crisis, the promises of community land trusts, and looking to the 2020 election through the lens of housing justice.
Heidi Wegleitner serves on the Dane County Board of Supervisors. For the past ten years, she has worked as a public interest attorney representing low-income tenants in eviction cases and subsidized housing disputes. She has authored legislation for fair housing protections and advocated for increased funding for affordable housing.
Paige Glotzer is a professor in the department of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. She has written extensively about housing segregation in the U.S., the history of housing policy, and urban and suburban development. She is the author of How the Suburbs Were Segregated: Developers and the Business of Exclusionary Housing, 1890–1960, which will be published in April 2020.
You can read Paige Glotzer’s article published in CityLab earlier this year, “What ‘Infests’ Baltimore? The Segregation History Buried in Trump’s Tweets.”
