Yes, so HACLA is more than an acronym. Uh it's the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles. And we are one of the oldest housing authorities across the country, going on almost 90 years. 1938? 1938, that's correct. So, in 2 years we'll be celebrating our 90th anniversary. Yeah. Uh we're also the second largest housing authority across the country. Uh there are roughly about 30 uh 300 housing authorities across the United States of all sizes, um small, medium-size, and large. We're considered a large housing…
program, which serves just about 6,200 households across the City of Los Angeles. Um so, we're able to provide deeply affordable housing to Angelenos, uh where families are not uh having to pay more than 30% of their income. And it's important for me to mention this because I think oftentimes people think that public housing is government paying everything, um but families pay 30% of their income to to stay housed. We also administer the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher Program, which is done in partnership with…
Yeah. Well, you know, I am old. Um But I I never thought that I was going to make a career in housing, affordable housing, community development. I never thought about that because I was born in Mexico. My family immigrated to the US when I was four years old. I'm the oldest of nine children and the first first to graduate from high school. I went to college to UCLA, got a bachelor's in political science and Chicano studies. As I was in my last year of undergrad, I'm like, what am I going to do with my life? Well,…
…So So, said, I'm going to apply to graduate school and I got accepted to the urban planning program at urban planning principles, social policy, affordable housing. And my first job after um my urban planning degree was actually working in Ventura County for a small non-profit um community economic development group called Cabrillo Economic Development Corporation. They were formed to uh provide affordable housing to agricultural workers in Ventura County. Uh Ventura County uh depends um a lot on agricultural…