Gloria Magallanes

Gloria Magallanes (she/her) is a Master of Public Policy student concentrating in community development and social inequality. She is currently a policy fellow at the Latino Policy and Politics Institute and a nonprofit leadership intern at StepUp. While at UCLA, she worked in the Chicano Studies Department as a teaching assistant and participated in Luskin City Hall Day, analyzing the impact of Proposition HHH. Gloria has a background in homelessness and immigrant services, mediation, and restorative justice. She is a first-generation graduate of UC San Diego, where she earned her bachelor’s in global health.

Gloria is working on this project alongside students Jack Kearns, Andrew Rock, Ana Rodriguez, and Sydney Smanpongse.

Project Overview

Our projet is focusing on the intersection of housing and labor. Our client, Unite Here Local 11 (UH11), has made the housing crisis central to their work, advancing a range of strategies to make housing more affordable, stable, and proximate to work for its members and the rest of the working poor. The project’s research questions include: How can UH11 advance initiatives to transition small hotels and motels into temporary, emergency, or permanent housing or addiction treatment centers in the Los Angeles metropolitan area? And how should UH11 structure initiatives to purchase housing that can be turned into cooperatives to be rented or owned by the union’s members in the Los Angeles metropolitan area?

Why is this topic, specifically, important to you?

I am passionate about community development and social justice as a result of my personal and professional experience. I have worked extensively with unhoused communities in San Diego and come from a background in which I was directly impacted by disinvestment and low socioeconomic status. I view work in this field as a means by which I can reshape and affect the systemic inequities that have shaped my family. I am invested in this project specifically because of its intersectional approach to housing issues. The housing crisis is presently a hot-button issue, and most work to improve these conditions is aimed at streamlining production funding. Though this is absolutely necessary, I believe our project will contribute to more complete housing solutions by addressing needs from a nuanced angle.

Who are the partners involved in this project and how will you be working with them?

We will be working with Unite Here Local 11 to address housing issues impacting their members. This will involve leveraging available institutional data and member knowledge.

Victor Narro, Project Director at the UCLA Labor Center, and Gary Blasi, a public interest lawyer and affordable housing advocate, will be advisors on the project and help guide our research. 

How do you hope that this project will impact the field moving forward?

The housing crisis continues to be a critical issue in Los Angeles and beyond. Most work to improve this issue centers around streamlining production funding and lowering the overall cost of housing production. Our project will add to existing work by considering how other industries can contribute to the construction of affordable housing solutions. Given the history and complexity of this issue, long-term solutions will necessitate intervention from a variety of stakeholders.