| Notes |
Chancellor Blumenthal introduced Assistant Professor Rebecca London, who dedicated her career to understanding the challenges faced by disadvantaged children and youth. She used qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the ways in which communities and organizations support young people. Ms. London described the ambitious Silicon Valley Regional Data Trust that would serve California’s most vulnerable children by supporting more than 400,000 children in Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, and San Mateo Counties. This pilot project integrates data from education, juvenile justice, juvenile probation, child welfare, and behavioral health, and makes that information accessible to the people who work directly with children and youth. Professionals would have secure access to confidential information about children’s school performance and attendance, and school professionals would have secure information from agencies serving youth, enabling collaboration to create a real safety net.
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This project was the brainchild of UC Santa Cruz Emeritus Professor Rodney Ogawa. UCSC was collaborating with the Santa Clara County Office of Education, the hub for this initiative. The project is sensitive to issues of confidentiality associated with sharing private information about children and youth. The project has a legal team working closely with the County legal teams to ensure compliance with all local, State, and federal mandates.
Following the launch of the pilot project this spring, the role of UC Santa Cruz would change to research in three main areas: understanding how this infusion of information can better serve children and youth and partnering agencies; analyzing this source of big data to answer questions posed by community partners and researchers on campus; and, in partnership with the UC Santa Cruz Baskin School of Engineering, considering these data from a data science perspective. This model was gaining traction through the local community, the state, and nation. State legislation signed by the Governor designated the Silicon Valley Regional Data Trust a tri-county pilot project in California. UC Santa Cruz has a community engagement collaborative comprised of faculty, researchers, staff, and students, across departments and divisions, that meets regularly. There is a proposal to put together a Center for Community-Engaged Scholarship at UCSC that could formalize these kinds of partnerships.
Chancellor Blumenthal then introduced UC Santa Cruz Professor Miriam Greenberg, an urban sociologist, co-organizer of No Place Like Home, an in-depth exploration of the affordable housing crisis in Santa Cruz County. Ms. Greenberg said that California and Santa Cruz were in the throes of a housing crisis. Santa Cruz was currently the least affordable small city in the nation, where the disparity between the average income in the County and housing costs was greater than in any other metropolitan area. This housing crisis affects UC Santa Cruz students, faculty, staff, and community in numerous ways, yet little was known about how the crisis is experienced by renters, who comprise 60 percent of the City of Santa Cruz.
The No Place Like Home Project, launched in 2015 and aided by support from the UC Office of the President, the Blum Center on Poverty, Social Enterprise, and Governance Capacity at UC Santa Cruz, and the UCSC Social Science Division, was a multi-year interdisciplinary investigation of the housing crisis. The Project used a model called community-initiated, student-engaged research to undertake this study. The primary research questions were generated by the project’s community partners, who identified the lack of affordable housing as their most pressing current problem. More than 200 UC Santa Cruz undergraduate students had been engaged in this research project, working in teams in field surveys and interviews, data analysis, policy research, digital mapping, and storytelling. Students went door-to-door, conducting more than 1,700 surveys of often difficult-to-reach populations of renters. No Place Like Home was beneficial to the students engaged in hands-on community-based research, to UCSC researchers, and to UCSC’s community partners. Key findings were that 73 percent of survey respondents experienced rent burden, defined as spending more than 30 percent of their gross income on rent, with over one-quarter of respondents spending over 70 percent of their income on rent; 27 percent experienced overcrowding, defined as more than two people sharing a bedroom; housing conditions were frequently poor; big rent increases prompted unplanned moves;
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evictions without just cause were common; and tenants were afraid to report violations for fear of retaliation. With these findings in hand, the project hosted six large events and ten smaller events, sharing its data, with the largest event attracting 600 people to the Civic Auditorium. No Place Like Home received a commendation from the City of Santa Cruz and prompted a community discussion and debate about these issues and various possible policy solutions. These research opportunities have led to internships, jobs, and graduate programs in a wide range of related subjects for UCSC students.
UC Santa Cruz student Alma Villa described her participation in the No Place Like Home project, interviewing community members about their rental situations. She was inspired by her experience to continue her education in a UCLA master’s degree program in Urban Planning.
Chancellor Blumenthal introduced Doron Comerchero, founder of Food What?!, a farm- based, nonprofit youth empowerment organization that supports low-income and struggling high school teenagers. UC Santa Cruz created the nation’s first university-based program in agroecology 50 years ago. Since then, UC Santa Cruz had pioneered organic farming methods and its apprenticeship program had trained more than 1,500 organic farmers and gardeners. In 11 years, FoodWhat?! had become a Santa Cruz County treasure.
Mr. Comerchero described FoodWhat?! located on the UC Santa Cruz campus under the umbrella of the UCSC farm at the Center for Agroecology and Sustainable Food Systems. FoodWhat?! serves low-income teenagers from across the county, prioritizing those not succeeding in school, young mothers in foster care, teens who have had contact with the juvenile justice system, or who are housing-insecure. FoodWhat?! has two farms sites, one at UCSC, and grows, harvests, cooks, and builds community around the basic need of food. Mr. Comerchero shared examples of the success of several FoodWhat?! participants and the program’s dramatic effects on young people’s lives and futures. Mr. Comerchero thanked UCOP for its generous support. FoodWhat?! is a unique, proven model that is replicable and scalable, and can deeply connect a university to its community.
Chancellor Block asked if the Santa Cruz housing shortage was caused by politics or restrictions on water resources. Ms. Greenberg said contributing factors were changes in demand for housing, the lack of new housing production, elimination of State and federal redevelopment funding, and the lack of protection and preservation of existing affordable housing.
Student Advisor Sands asked about the community engagement strategy of the No Place Like Home Project. Chancellor Blumenthal said the biggest issues for the Santa Cruz community were water, traffic, and housing. The campus needed to work with the community on these legitimate issues, as it has, for instance, on campus water conservation. The issue of building housing on campus was crucial, as it would help alleviate pressure on community housing and traffic. UC Santa Cruz’s strategy is to accomplish things it can to ease the burden on the community, while helping UCSC students, faculty, and staff. Chancellor Blumenthal expressed pride in the communication established with the
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community in many areas, such as the merging a few years prior of the UCSC and Santa Cruz fire departments.
Regent-designate Morimoto asked if any surprising information had been learned through the pilot Silicon Valley Regional Data Trust. Ms. London said the project revealed the importance of building trust with community partners in handling important, confidential information about children and youth. It was important to listen and respect the knowledge of community partners.
Regent Mancia asked how other campuses could start programs like FoodWhat?! Mr. Comerchero advised using existing campus farm and food programs as a basis. Also having a strong community partner was important. FoodWhat?! was open to sharing its curriculum with other programs.
The meeting adjourned at 11:50 a.m. |