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Photo of artist Christine Wong Yap standing with her back to the camera at an elevation overlooking a large, green grassy area with some trees and brown buildings further in the background in what appears to be a university campus.

Haas Institute Welcomes First Artist in Residence


The Haas Institute is excited to announce Christine Wong Yap as its first Artist in Residence. Yap is a project-based artist who explores psychological well-being through mediums that include printmaking, drawing, sculpture, installation, and social practice.

Over the year-long residency, Yap will oversee a participatory, site-specific project that aims to reveal the pivotal places, activities, and experiences that shape Bay Area residents’ connectedness to a neighborhood and region. She will ultimately build an "atlas of belonging" featuring maps and participants’ descriptions in their own words. 

Christine Wong Yap with participants, Belonging Sign #1: 2nd Street SW, 2017, hand-lettered sign on wood, nominated by Jessamyn Lovell, 18 × 11 inches"I've been exploring belonging as a way to understand how people feel connected to a place and a country, and how this connection shapes their authentic selves and subjective well-being," Yap explained. 

The Artist in Residence is a new position created to further the Haas Institute's work in Othering and Belonging and advance our vision of inclusion and belonging through the arts. The residency supports artists to create original work that illuminates and advances our understanding of belonging in new and complex ways. 

Learn more about Yap's work and the Artist in Residence program here.

Rent Control Report Featured in Top Dailies

Image of report cover and inside page on NBC Bay Area

Our report published last month on rent control in California continues to generate coverage from influential media organizations including, most recently, the New York Times. Below are some excerpts from recent articles on the report. For a full list of coverage visit this page.


Why Rent Control Is a Lightning Rod
NY Times

"Given that, rent control is an easy and off-the-shelf policy tool that many people are familiar with — one that does help some renters and doesn’t appear to cost taxpayers money. 'It is the best anti-displacement tool around,' said Stephen Barton, co-author of a recent report that called rent control a key measure toward stabilizing California’s housing market."


It's expensive to be a tenant in California. Will Proposition 10's rent control expansion help?
LA Times

"More than half of California’s 9.5 million tenants are burdened by high rents, spending at least 30% of their income on housing costs, according to a recent analysis of U.S. census data by UC Berkeley’s Haas Institute for a Fair and Inclusive Society.

The UC Berkeley Haas Institute report contends that rent control is the only way cities and counties can keep costs down cheaply and immediately."


So, you got an eviction notice and have a few weeks to find an apartment ...
San Francisco Chronicle

"'The damage that gets done to people by displacement and by being forced into poverty by high rents taking so much of people’s income is much more severe than people normally seem to think,' Barton told me.

According to their analysis, they estimate that 54 percent of the state’s renters are overburdened by housing costs. What’s more, they found that 73 percent of all jobs in California pay too little to cover rent."

An image grab from soundcloud shows a play bar for the rent control episode of Who Belongs?

Related: Who Belongs? podcast with housing researchers Nicole Montojo and Stephen Barton


Nicole Montojo and Steve Barton, co-authors of our research brief on the housing affordability crisis in California, discussed their research with Marc Abizeid, host of our new podcast Who Belongs? Montojo is a housing research analyst at the Haas Institute and holds a Master's degree in city planning from UC Berkeley. Barton is a former housing director for the city of Berkeley who holds a Ph.D. in city and regional planning from UC Berkeley. Listen to the podcast.
Video still from Shahidi Project video

New Shahidi platform documents influence and power structure of corporations in global food system

Shahidi: Corporations Decoded” is a new online platform from the Haas Institute that aims to demystify the power structures and capacities of corporations within the global food system through an interactive database focusing on ten of the largest food and agricultural corporations in the world. The interactive database provides multi-layered data on these corporations with information about the each company's scale of operations around the globe, its lobbying influence in legislatures and academia, its monopoly over many products consumed in the food and agricultural systems, and more. Check out the new platform.

In The News

A talk on how Bay Area housing rules perpetuate racism and segregation with Haas Institute senior fellow Richard Rothstein was covered by the Mercury News. “If you understand that the communities with these zoning ordinances were created in an unconstitutional fashion, then I don’t think it’s unreasonable to conclude that the zoning ordinances themselves are unconstitutional because they perpetuate a civil rights violation,” Rothstein was quoted as saying. The event was organized by pro-development advocacy group Mission YIMBY. Read the recap.
Research by UC Berkeley economist Michael Reich was cited in a Wall Street Journal article about a proposal in New York City to implement a $15 minimum wage for ride-share drivers. "Michael Reich, a co-author of the study and an economics professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said that the cost increase could be absorbed through better driver productivity, app-based companies charging lower commissions, and a “modest fare increase” of between 3% and 5%," the author writes. Reich is a member of our Economic Disparities research cluster.
Christopher Kutz, member of our Diversity and Democracy research cluster, was quoted in a Daily Cal article about 40 members of the Berkeley Law faculty who signed a letter to the Senate opposing Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court. "The letter intends to appeal to about five senators whose vote may be swayed, according to Berkeley Law professor Christopher Kutz, who also signed the letter. He said Kavanaugh’s behavior is 'not even remotely close' to what should be expected from any judge, let alone a Supreme Court justice."

Events

Oct. 25, 2018: Citizenship community dialogue with cast members of Barbershop Chronicles. This event event will feature a dialogue with the actors from a Cal Performance production of Barbershop Chronicles, which runs October 26-28 at Zellerbach Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. It will also include a short video clip from the production. Attend the dialogue.
Flier for the Family separations event
Oct. 26, 2018: 
Family Separations: From Herstories of Violence to Building Belonging. This event will present diverse perspectives on the political, legal, social, economic, and health impacts of historic and current family separations in US immigration and incarceration systems, and will identify and discuss alternative strategies to advocating for inclusive policy in order to advance belonging and build community. Join us.
Nov. 3, 2018: Citizenship Public Forum: The Journeys of Belonging. Jordi Savall's far-ranging program pays tribute to the enormous contributions of enslaved Africans to world culture. This public forum features an artist talk with Savall, a musical activity led by vocal activist Melanie DeMore, and a panel discussion exploring how outsider/subversive culture becomes part of the public sphere; how music is a key to how people understand each other; and, in the words of Jordi Savall, “What we share is more than what divides us.” Learn more.
See all upcoming and past events here.

Work with us

The Haas Institute is looking to fill the following position:

Find all our job openings posted on this page

Othering & Belonging 2019

The next Othering & Belonging Conference will be held April 8–10, 2019 in Oakland. Registration is now open! 
colorful image with watercolor background announcing dates of next Othering & Belonging conference April 8-10, 2019
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