Kate Leifheit

"This order does nothing to lower the cost of housing or help people make ends meet. The safest communities are those with the most housing and resources, not those that make it a crime to be poor or sick."

Full statement at homelesslaw.org/statement724...

Housing Discrimination is Illegal in California Landlords cannot discriminate based on race, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, religion, disability, source of income, or other protected characteristics. Landlords are never allowed to harass or retaliate against a tenant by disclosing their immigration status to law enforcement. Tenants have the right to housing documents in a language they can understand.

Californians: remember it is illegal for landlords to discriminate and retaliate against tenants or push tenants to move out by threatening to disclose a tenant’s immigration status.
 
CA tenants — no matter their immigration status — have a right to safe housing.

Latino tenants sued their landlord. A lawyer told them they would be 'picked up by ICE.' When a Latino tenant filed a lawsuit against a landlord and real estate agent for selling the home she was evicted from, an opposing lawyer suggested she'll likely be deported by ICE before trial.

Latino tenants sued their landlord. A lawyer told them they would be 'picked up by ICE.'

Criminalizing homelessness doesn’t reduce it. A new national study proves that bans on sleeping outside don’t work.

Read: bit.ly/4nyBRPU

#housingpolicy #endhomelessness #shelterforce

A Year for the Record Books: The State of the Nation’s Housing in Perspective It has been a record year for housing. Our latest State of the Nation’s Housing report highlights an eye-popping list of milestones that were set in

✅ The highest monthly mortgage payment on record
✅ The highest median existing home price
✅ A record number of renters with cost burdens
✅ A record number of billion-dollar weather-related disasters in a 2 year span

2024 was a year full of housing records.

www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/year-re...

The Trump administration is working on a plan for time limits on rental aid A housing agency rule would also allow work requirements. Supporters say a time limit would help spread limited funds to more people, but critics warn it would leave some homeless.

"It would have a devastating impact on families.”

www.npr.org/2025/06/04/n...

By @npr.org's @jenniferludden.bsky.social
#housing+ #urbanism+ #urbanism

Expanded child tax credit helped middle-class families pay energy bills, but not the poorest

Press release here: www.uclahealth.org/news/release...

New from @dgsomucla.bsky.social National Clinician Scholar Program fellow Cecile Yama: The 2021 Expanded Child Tax Credit reduced energy insecurity (difficulty paying utility bills) among US families. Open Access at @amjpublichealth.bsky.social ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/epdf/10....

📣 Poor housing conditions like mold, cockroaches, peeling paint, & dilapidation harm health. States have policies to protect tenants from those exposures, but until now, no one ever tested whether they work. In a new paper, we find these policies are failing: 🧵 #episky 1/

Excess US Deaths Before, During, and After the COVID-19 Pandemic This cohort study examines trends in excess deaths in the US before, during, and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

For 40 years, Americans have lived shorter lives than people in other rich countries.

For 10 years, that's been rapidly getting worse.

New research: in 2022-2023, there were 1.5 million "missing Americans," who died--but wouldn't have, if America didn't have such uniquely high death rates.

News outlets aren't doing nearly enough to sound the alarm about Trump's proposed decimation of federal housing programs.

We're talking catastrophic cuts that would put millions at risk of eviction and homelessness—making an already brutal crisis even worse.

And it's barely being covered.

By the Numbers: House Republican Reconciliation Bill Takes Food Assistance Away From Millions of People | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities The House reconciliation bill would dramatically raise costs and reduce food assistance for many millions of people by cutting federal funding for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) ...

What would House Republicans' $300 billion #SNAP cut mean? Millions of low-income people would lose some or all of the food assistance they need to afford groceries.

We've started crunching the numbers on the deepest cut to food assistance in history:

How and Why Does Redlining Matter for Present-Day Health? Critical Perspectives on Causality, Cartography, and Capitalism | AJPH | Vol. 115 Issue 5 Recent years have seen an explosion of public health research on associations between historical redlining maps created by a US government agency, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), and present...

Belatedly introducing a new piece on racial capitalism, redlining, causality, and public health that I was lucky enough to work on with coauthors @snmarkley.bsky.social, Shannon Whittaker, and Amy Hillier! ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/10.2105/... 1/

Prettier version of my chart + a Difference in Differences showing changes in the supply of market rate housing have large impacts on prices.

Areas that saw more homes destroyed during the Los Angeles fires have, on average, seen 4% larger post-fire price increases.

Trump budget would slash rental aid by 40% -- and let states fill the gap if they want The proposal would cut off rental subsidies after two years for able-bodied adults. Advocates warn if enacted, the White House plan would tip many low-income renters over the edge into homelessness.

Congress will decide. But housing aid takes a major hit in the White House budget request. www.npr.org/2025/05/02/n...

HOUSING IMPACTS EVERYTHING: Ammunition from the Research Literature for Fighting Federal Cuts to Affordable Housing ...and for seeking increased support from state, local, and philanthropic sources

New from me:

"...advocates should be prepared to make a compelling case against any cuts to housing programs. Unfortunately, merely arguing that there should be a right to affordable, decent, and stable housing will be insufficient to convince many to maintain federal funding for these programs."

Dr. Achyuth Sriram of @dgsomucla.bsky.social Pediatrics sharing his important work on the Child Tax Credit at #PAS2024

The impact of the PEPFAR funding freeze on HIV deaths and infections: a mathematical modelling study of seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa The sudden cessation of PEPFAR funding likely results in tens of thousands of HIV deaths and new infections. These losses of life and health should compel the United States government to rapidly and f...

“A 90-day [PEPFAR] funding freeze would result in 60K [95% UI: 49–71 thousand] excess HIV deaths”

This increases to 74K excess HIV deaths [95% UI: 63–89 thousand] for a more realistic scenario “assuming near-total system collapse due to program dependencies”

@thelancet.bsky.social

It's illegal, but many SoCal landlords still turn away renters who use housing vouchers Undercover testers were deployed to find out if landlords discriminate against Section 8 tenants. The results suggest voucher refusal remains common.

Undercover tests reveal Southern California landlords are still turning away tenants using Section 8 vouchers, five years after state law made such discrimination illegal.

My @laist.com story breaks down the results of recent fair housing testing.

Important new study by @gabeschwartz.bsky.social & colleagues!

Ok so yeah, this has quickly become the #1 misunderstanding about the canceled grants

the grants are not “subsidies” or “entitlements” to Harvard or Princeton or whatever

they aren’t going into universities’ endowments

they are competitive contracts won by these universities to do research

Families will die without LIHEAP.

The Climate Crisis Hits Tenants Hardest. They're Fighting Back. From California to North Carolina, tenants are organizing to demand protections from natural disasters.

Bee's home filled with ash during the wildfires. Holly pays $350/month to heat her studio apt.

Desperate for safety & change, both turned to a trusted source: the tenant union.

The climate crisis hits tenants hardest, but tenants are fighting back. I wrote about it in @shelterforce.bsky.social

Executive Action Watch | Center on Budget and Policy Priorities The Trump Administration has unleashed a flurry of measures to radically reshape the federal government. Many of these moves are overtly unlawful, and others will reduce and weaken key services to...

We've just launched a new resource that tracks the Trump Administration’s unlawful and harmful actions to reshape the government, highlighting the impacts on low- and moderate-income people and essential programs: www.cbpp.org/research/fed...

Deaths from PEPFAR disruption

A tracker estimating deaths caused by the partial PEPFAR funding suspension: pepfar.impactcounter.com. Methodology here: pepfar.impactcounter.com/methodology.

Evolving the Household Pulse Survey The HPS is a program developed by the Census Bureau to meet data needs for informing emerging policy questions in an exceptionally timely way.

#Data alert: US Census Household Pulse Survey ended in Sep 2024 and is being relaunched this month as the Household Trends & Outlook Pulse Survey. HPS has been a tremendous resource for policy evaluation. Hopefully HTOPS will be maintained moving forward. www.census.gov/newsroom/blo... #epitwitter

FAQs on Price Gouging Links to topics below FAQs about Price Gouging in California [for consumers] FAQs on Price Gouging [for local officials] FAQs about Price Gouging in California [for consumers] What is price gougin...

More info on CA’s price gouging ban here: oag.ca.gov/consumers/pr...

Beware of price gouging, #LosAngeles! The 6BR rental next door to me (which has been on the market and sitting vacant since August) just tried to increase the asking rent by over 50% ! Report bad actors at oag.ca.gov/report