If Housing Was a Human Right in U.S. Law

Public Programs

If Housing Was a Human Right in U.S. Law

Sunday, March 19, 2023, 2–4 PM

This free workshop will explore systemic housing inequities, the push to add a right to housing to the California state Constitution, and the critical role of grassroots community action. These subjects will be unpacked by Leah Simon-Weisberg, the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE) Legal Director, and Dominique Walker, a founding member of Moms 4 Housing, who will also discuss M4H’s occupation of a home in Oakland. The workshop will be held inside artists Alex Strada and Tali Keren’s ongoing exhibition at YBCA, Proposal for a 28th Amendment? Is it Possible to Amend an Unequal System?, which asks visitors to critically engage with the U.S. Constitution. Participants will be invited to reflect on the discussion by adding their voices to the project’s oral archive.

Dominique Walker

Oakland is Dominique Walker’s home. Her family has been in Oakland since migrating from the rural south in the 1950s. She attended Castlemont High School before co-founding and graduating from the School of Social Justice & Community Development. She earned a B.A. in Sociology from Tougaloo College in Jackson, MS. After moving back to Oakland on April 3, 2019m, she saw how the housing crisis had impacted her community. Walker became homeless while working full-time. Together with several other Black mothers, she co-founded Moms 4 Housing in 2019 to bring attention to the shocking number of homeless families in Oakland while hundreds of corporate-owned homes lie empty. They started a movement to claim those homes for the community. Walker is currently taking prerequisites for medical school at Berkeley City College. She also serves as the Commissioner for the Rent Board for the city of Berkeley, while organizing with Moms 4 Housing through advocacy, service, and policy to make housing a human right.

Leah Simon-Weisberg

Leah Simon-Weisberg is an expert and statewide leader on rent control, landlord-tenant law, and housing policy. She is the legal director for the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). She represented Moms 4 Housing in court, fighting for their right to live in an empty corporate-owned home on the grounds that housing is a human right. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, she helped close the Alameda and San Francisco courts and organized elected officials to pass eviction moratoria, including devising the strategy of separating rental debt from the ability to evict during the pandemic.

Moms 4 Housing

Moms 4 Housing is a collective of homeless and marginally housed mothers. Before they found one another, they felt alone in their struggles. But they discovered there are thousands of others like them in Oakland and across the Bay Area. They come together with the ultimate goal of reclaiming housing for the community from speculators and profiteers. Moms 4 Housing declares: “We are mothers, we are workers, we are human beings, and we deserve housing. Our children deserve housing. Housing is a human right.”

Alex Strada & Tali Keren

Alex Strada (she/hers) and Tali Keren (she/hers) are NYC-based artists and educators who have been collaborating together since 2016. Their projects have been shown at the Queens Museum, NY; Anthology Film Archives, NY; Socrates Sculpture Park, NY; Goethe-Institut, NY; Museum of Moving Image, NY; MuseumsQuartier, Vienna, Austria; Kaunas Biennial, Kaunas, Lithuania; and on the screens of Times Square with Times Square Arts’ Midnight Moment.

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Proposal for a 28th Amendment? Is it Possible to Amend an Unequal System? is organized for YBCA by Martin Strickland, Director of Curatorial Projects & Public Experience; Amy Kisch, Chief Producer; and Fiona Ball, Manager of Curatorial Projects & Public Experience.

Proposal for a 28th Amendment? Is it Possible to Amend an Unequal System? is an iterative installation and will take on many forms at many institutions. It originated at the Queens Museum and was first on view October 2, 2021 – February 13th, 2022. YBCA is grateful for the work they put into the installation and the programming.

YBCA Programs are made possible in part by MacKenzie Scott and Dan Jewett, California Arts Council, #StartSmall, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Tambourine, the San Francisco Arts Commission, the Institute of Museum and Library Services, Marilyn Conrad Trust, Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, William G. Irwin Charity Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Walter & Elise Haas Fund, The Bernard Osher Foundation, In memory of Kevin King,The Sato Foundation, New England Foundation for the Arts, Gaia Fund, and YBCA Members.

Generous support provided by Blue Shield of California. Blue Shield of California is an independent member of the Blue Shield Association.

YBCA is grateful to the City of San Francisco for its ongoing support.

Lead images: 1. Moms 4 Housing action. Courtesy of Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group and 2. Proposal for a 28th Amendment? Is it Possible to Amend an Unequal System?, installation view, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, 2022. Courtesy the artists. Photographs by Alex Strada and Tali Keren.