Is it possible to be both extremely local and extremely online with our politics? Housing activist Darrell Owens has been trying to figure this out since he was 19 years old and joining city council discussions in his hometown of Berkeley, California, while drawing a Twitter audience for his insights on urban planning. After seeing his family join the stream of Black households being priced out of their gentrifying Bay Area neighborhood, Owens began exploring why areas known for their progressivism, like San Francisco and New York, still make it difficult for most people who aren’t wealthy or white to find shelter, and why this matters.
You can see the results of his explorations on The Discourse Lounge, Owens’ Substack, which is populated by a mix of hot takes and thoughtful, data-backed opinions. Owens takes time to work through national headlines and connect them to decisions made locally, writing about the relationship between topics like housing policy and murders on public transit, segregation and anti-Asian violence, and real estate development and Black flight. He responds to the comments, regardless of their tone or position, with thoughtfulness. Owens says he aims to “never assume malice where there may just be naiveté.”
Now 26, he is a policy analyst for California YIMBY (Yes In My Backyard), an advocacy group working toward more equitable and affordable housing through state-level legislation. He is becoming a voice for progressives who believe our physical environments can promote goals like racial equity and climate justice. Teen Vogue caught up with Owens over Zoom to discuss America’s housing crisis and the tools we can use to understand and combat its effects.
This conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.
Teen Vogue: Obviously, there is a lot going on in the world right now. With the number of problems that seem to be breathing down our necks on a daily basis, why is it important for young people to be thinking about housing policy?
Darrell Owens: Because young people are the ones who are basically the most screwed when it comes to housing. We’re at, what, [more than] 330 million Americans? That’s like, an 80 million increase in people since 1990. We haven't built the housing necessary to house that new generation of people. The byproduct is that you're seeing more people living at home for longer periods of time, which isn't a bad thing, but it is a bad thing if it becomes an involuntary thing in overcrowded conditions. You're seeing people require roommates for the rest of their lives. You're seeing young people going to college and having to drop out because housing markets near certain universities are unaffordable.
I just graduated from the University of Santa Cruz, and the problem of housing is a major issue I'm seeing in terms of student debt now. Even if you have Pell grants and student grants to pay off your tuition, you may need to pull loans just to pay rent — and that's if you can find a place. Students may be unable to get even a lease offer because they’re competing with dozens of other people.
This is a massive problem that young people are going to have to confront. They're having their opportunities curtailed by our nation’s housing problem. They’re having difficulty moving to cities where they can find good employment because housing costs are astronomical, lowering mobility across the board. The current state of our housing policy is going to foreclose a lot of opportunities for young people that they would otherwise have if we had more housing, so this to me is a very important issue.
TV: That makes sense. I noticed California YIMBY, the advocacy group you work with, offers multiple resources to help people see the link between housing and other issues they may be passionate about, such as climate change or systemic racism. How are you currently thinking about the connection between housing policy and other large-scale political or social problems?
DO: A lot of climate researchers have been saying the big problem in environmental justice now is urban planning. For example, the majority of California's carbon emissions come from transportation, and the majority of that is from automobiles, suburban sprawl, and endless development going outwards and outwards from job centers. This is creating a tremendous climate catastrophe because we basically can't get people out of automobiles.
Cool Climate Network shows that people who live in multifamily housing, people who live in denser areas where there's public transit and cycling lanes have significantly smaller carbon footprints than people who live in suburban areas. The problem we're now facing is how we make our cities carbon neutral. We can't do it if the vast majority of our cities are zoned to only allow one-family homes.
Most cities across the United States prohibit multifamily housing and require that every new home is built with a parking lot or a garage, which creates more need for automobiles. We have a federal government that's not funding our public transportation. So we have even more people forced to buy automobiles because they're funded by fossil fuel industries and by automobile manufacturers. This is the big climate crisis of the 21st century.
TV: You’re also vocal about America’s need to think more deeply about the link between urban planning and racial inequity. Tell me more about that.
DO: Because we live in a country [in which] many of our institutions were created by white supremacy and injustice, it permeates through all forms of life and that includes housing. That’s something that I wish more kids understood growing up.
When I was in high school, I was a very curious kid, and I wondered, Why do all the Black people live in this neighborhood and all the whites live in that neighborhood? The problem with children is that they grow up with these things always being there and so the inequities they see are assumed to be inherent, right? It's never questioned.
I didn't learn about redlining till I was 19. I had heard legends my grandparents told me — Black people weren't allowed to buy homes past this line, you know, and then I was kind of like, Okay, maybe this is why things are the way they are. But then it wasn't till I got older that I actually saw the redlining maps. There are some really great interactive maps if you want to see how a lot of cities segregated themselves with effects that have lasted to this day.
I would encourage young people to think critically about why their cities look the way they do. Why do all your Black friends live in one neighborhood? Why is transportation really bad in this neighborhood and better in this other neighborhood? Why are there factories polluting this neighborhood and not the other neighborhood? Don't treat it as intrinsic. Ask questions. These are the fundamentals, I would say, to understand the relationship between housing and racial equity.
TV: Looking closely at parts of our environment that we may see as intrinsic and normal is something you often do on Substack. You did this when you wrote about anti-Asian hate crimes in San Francisco last year and explained why you think the gradual increase of segregation in our urban areas is directly tied to violent interactions between minority groups. What’s it like to write about problems that are not only complex but also emotionally charged?
DO: Some of those articles are really hard to write. The Black and Asian one you’re talking about, for example, I wrote because I grew up in a very multiracial community. I went to a school that was basically 25% white, 25% Asian, 25% Black, and 25% Latino. It was a very well-integrated school. I grew up having a lot of friends of different racial groups and different backgrounds, so when there was so much hate in 2020 to 2022 that showed up as racial conflicts between minorities, I could see the pain and frustration in the Asian community about the attacks that happened to them. And also the fact that some of the perpetrators were Black and that in the Black community the economic success of Asian Americans they felt was at the expense of people who have long been subjugated in this country by white supremacy.
I mean, you had political candidates in Chinatown calling for people to buy guns. You had videos of Black people harassing Asian guys in San Francisco. I wanted to have a conversation about it. So, the first thing I did was I just told my feelings and I really tried to be honest about what I felt was the truth of the matter, which is that both sides don't listen to each other. There's a failure of communication. And when I published that article, I would actually say the overwhelming majority of feedback was positive. A lot of Black politicians actually walked up to me the next day and said, like, “I'm glad you told our side of the story.” I had a lot of Asian American writers and pundits tell me, “I love what you said.” And then I had a bunch of anonymous trolls and death threats.
TV: When we’re not sharing our own opinions online, we’re often drinking from the firehose of information that every social media platform and news site is blasting at us. How do you interact with information on the internet? What are your criteria for information you choose to take seriously and information you choose to dismiss?
DO: In general, my guideline is, Does this claim come from a reputable source? For example, I was just arguing about the homeless policy with a bunch of strangers on the internet, wasting my time of course, but I just graduated and I'm free. I provided empirical evidence showing that homelessness is mostly a product of high rents, not of drug addiction or any other kind of social vice. And people got mad at me and said, “Actually, no. Homelessness is a product of the weather being nicer in another area." I was like, ”Okay, do you have evidence for that claim?" The evidence they provided was a domain that has a .org.
Now, I agree with a lot of advocacy organizations, but a .org is not somebody who's going to be impartial about the information being shown to you, right? It is, by definition, an advocacy organization. So, you need to provide actual evidence, maybe from a .gov or .edu. Domain literacy, I think, is really important. You want to have good literacy about where the sources are coming from and the domains are usually giveaways.
You also need to check information even when it comes from a reputable news source — the New York Times or Reuters — even if they are prone to inaccuracies. A very common news tactic, for example, is to just repeat what the police say verbatim without actually vetting any of it. If the statement begins, “police say,” it is not necessarily an absolute truth.
Finally, wherever you’re getting your information from, don't just read the headline.
TV: How do you balance having a strong presence on the internet with your local housing activism? Can you be very active in online conversations and still have a clear perspective on what is needed in your own neighborhood?
DO: In my opinion, all politics is local. And people may not realize it, but they have way more influence locally than they do nationally. So much of our news media is consumed with national politics. I'm not saying there's no value in it, but trying to move Congress is much harder and probably has less impact on my life in the immediate term than trying to move how my city council votes or how my mayor votes.
Keeping it focused on local stuff is what kind of propelled a lot of my takes because that was just a void that needed to be filled. And I'll try to be real with you: It is hard to be focused on local politics because it seems geared generally toward people who are retired and do not have to go to work. I've been staying at city council meetings till 12 a.m. I totally get why a lot of people can't do it.
But now I'm seeing more local college groups and organizations dedicated to solving the housing crisis at city council meetings, advocating for more housing, for tenant protections, and better transportation policy. If you care about working on these challenges in your own neighborhood, there's interest, if you can find it. If you really care about a local issue, just post about it into the void, and eventually other locals will see you and kind of say, “Hey, I agree with you. I live down the street. Let's do something about it.”
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