Welcome
Caroline Bhalla
Director of Civic Engagement, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate
Caroline Bhalla is the Director of Civic Engagement at the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate. She is skilled at building strong and lasting partnerships with community-based organizations, pairing university resources with community expertise to maximize impact for collaboration and social change. At the Neighborhood Data for Social Change Project, she has built a culture of inclusion, diversity and overall excellence: training students, diversifying staff, and co-creating and managing community-based research and data projects.
Caroline was most recently the Executive Director of the Price Center for Social Innovation, whose mission is to develop ideas and strategies to improve equity and quality of life for people living in low income urban communities. In this role, she directed all activities and operations of the center while helping to expand the strategic vision and impact of their work. She spearheaded and launched the Neighborhood Data for Social Change (NDSC) initiative in 2017.
Before returning to California in July 2011, she was the Associate Director of the New York University Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, where she began as a research assistant in 2002. At NYU’s Furman Center, she was the project lead on the annual State of the City’s Housing and Neighborhoods report. She is currently pursuing her Doctorate in Educational Leadership at the Rossier School of Education at USC.
Cielo Castro
Chief Officer, Policy and Programs, California Community Foundation
Cielo V. Castro is Chief Officer of Policy and Programs at the California Community Foundation (CCF), where she leads program strategy and policy advocacy across key issue areas including civic engagement, education, health, housing, immigration, and arts and culture. She oversees major initiatives such as the PIVOT pooled fund and public-private partnerships that advance trauma prevention, youth development, and economic resilience.
Previously, Castro held leadership roles at Fairplex, guiding the transformation of its 500-acre campus into a mixed-use community hub with affordable housing, commercial space, green areas, and transit access. She also helped establish the Pomona Emergency Intake Site for unaccompanied minors during the COVID-19 pandemic.
With a career dedicated to public service, Castro has worked at the local, county, and federal levels—including at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Obama Administration—and in national nonprofit organizations like NALEO and the National League of Cities.
A proud Angeleno and daughter of immigrants, Castro holds a B.S. in Business Administration from Boston University and an M.P.A. from the Harvard Kennedy School. She is a 2024 Eisenhower USA Fellow and serves as Chair of the Housing Authority of the City of Los Angeles.
Report Findings
Richard Green
Executive Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate
Richard K. Green, Ph.D. holds the Lusk Chair in Real Estate and is a professor at USC’s Sol Price School of Public Policy and the Marshall School of Business. He recently served as Senior Advisor for Housing Finance at HUD and is a Trustee of the Urban Land Institute. Previously, he held faculty positions at The George Washington University, University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Wharton, and served as principal economist at Freddie Mac.
Dr. Green’s research focuses on housing markets, policy, and finance. His work has appeared in top journals such as the American Economic Review, Journal of Urban Economics, and Housing Policy Debate. He co-authored A Primer on U.S. Housing Markets and Housing Policy and Introduction to Mortgages and Mortgage Backed Securities. He has testified before Congress, spoken at major policy forums, and been cited in national media. Dr. Green holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an A.B. from Harvard.
Elly Schoen
Associate Director, Neighborhood Data for Social Change
Elly Schoen (she/they) is the Associate Director of Neighborhood Data for Social Change, a project of the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate. Prior to joining the Lusk Center, Elly worked at the USC Price Center for Social Innovation for six years. Her various roles included building out the Center’s data infrastructure, launching the Homelessness Policy Research Institute (HPRI) and the Neighborhood Data for Social Change (NDSC) platform, and training graduate research assistants in foundational data and research skills. In their current role, Elly continues to manage the NDSC platform, where they work with community-based partners to use data to inform equitable policies and build power in Los Angeles County neighborhoods.
Elly received a Master’s in Public Policy (MPP) from the USC Price School in 2018. She is originally from New Orleans; and prior to moving to Southern California, she worked at Catholic Charities and helped launch a start-up culinary and hospitality school in the city. Elly is passionate about advancing systems-level solutions to intersectional social problems and is an advocate for anti-racism in both their professional and personal life.
Jorge De La Roca
Research Director, USC Lusk Center for Real Estate
Jorge is an Associate Professor at the Sol Price School of Public Policy, University of Southern California. He is also the Research Director at the USC Lusk Center for Real Estate and co-director of LAUrban, LACEA urban economics network.
Jorge’s research fields include urban economics, labor economics, and economic geography. I am an Editor of the Journal of Economic Geography. His research studies agglomeration economies, urban inequality, skill sorting, and urban migration. I also study the consequences and underlying mechanisms of racial residential segregation on minorities.
Dr. Randall Kuhn
Professor of Community Health Sciences, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health
Dr. Randall Kuhn (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1999) is a demographer and sociologist focused on the social determinants of health among vulnerable populations. He is an expert in survey design, longitudinal analysis and counterfactual research design. In the field of migration and health, Dr. Kuhn has designed new approaches to estimating the impact of migration on health. In global health, Dr. Kuhn leads a 35-year longitudinal study of the impact of health and development programs in Bangladesh. In the area of homelessness, Dr. Kuhn conducted some of the earliest quantitative research on health and substance use risks among chronically homeless adults. He led recent studies of COVID-19 mortality by homelessness status and race/ethnicity, unsheltered homelessness and health; and COVID-19 vaccination among unhoused populations. He currently leads the Periodic Assessment of Trajectories of Housing, Homelessness and Health Survey (PATHS), a representative, monthly survey of Los Angeles County’s unhoused population.
Dr. Kuhn is a fellow of the California Center for Population Research, where he serves as Chair of the Executive Committee. He also serves on the advisory boards of the UCLA Center for the Study of International Migration and the Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Kuhn previously chaired the Population Sciences Subcommittee of the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. For 10 years Dr. Kuhn was Director of the Global Health Affairs Program at the University of Denver, where he developed an innovative curriculum, tripled enrollments, and built a programmatic emphasis on the health and human rights of disabled, LGBTQ, indigenous, and migrant populations as an essential component of achieving global health justice and equity. Dr. Kuhn founded the Goal 18 campaign for inclusive UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Panel Discussion: The Future of Housing Production in Los Angeles County
Corey Matthews
Vice President of Global Philanthropy, JPMorganChase
Corey Matthews is a social change leader with more than 15 years of experience guiding cross-sectoral initiatives to strengthen economic mobility, public health, and education outcomes for underrepresented communities. He currently serves as a Vice President of Global Philanthropy with JPMorganChase where he directs a grant portfolio in Los Angeles to advance economic inclusion strategies. He also plays a key role in building partnerships to bolster the company’s broader Corporate Responsibility initiatives in the region. Previously, Corey served as the Chief Operating Officer of Community Coalition – a permanent community-based institution in South Los Angeles – where he participated on the executive team to execute a robust policy agenda, manage operations, and facilitate organization-wide strategic planning.
Throughout his professional career, Corey has designed and executed programs to leverage the collective expertise of public, private, nonprofit, philanthropic, and academic partners to address social issues; and he has worked in think tanks, local government, and nonprofits focused on changing systems and reducing poverty. He holds both a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Master of Arts in Urban Education from the University of California, Los Angeles and a Master of Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley. A native of South (Central) Los Angeles, Corey is committed to solving some of society’s most urgent issues.
Lourdes Castro Ramirez
President and CEO, Housing Authority City of Los Angeles
Unanimously appointed by the HACLA Board of Commission, Lourdes Castro Ramirez leads the second-largest public housing authority in the nation, serving over 200,000 individuals. As President and CEO, Castro Ramirez is strengthening the agency’s collaborative commitment to people, place and pathways by expanding affordable housing, creating greater access, investing in people and building strong communities. Before joining HACLA, Lourdes served as Chief Housing and Homelessness Solutions Officer for Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. In this role, she led the Mayor’s comprehensive citywide priorities focused on preventing and reducing street homelessness, fast-tracking affordable housing production, forging partnerships that lead to increased housing and service coordination, and developing unified regional solutions by working closely with city, county, state, and federal partners. She continues to serve as housing advisor to Mayor Bass. Previously, she was the Secretary of the California Business, Consumer Services and Housing Agency under Governor Gavin Newsom. She led 12 entities, including 40 boards and bureaus, responsible for preserving and expanding affordable housing, advancing statewide efforts to prevent and end homelessness, protecting consumers, and safeguarding California’s civil rights.
Rayman (Ray) Mathoda
CEO, Anchor Loans; Board Chair, Desi Rainbow Parents & Allies
Ray is a purpose driven CEO and board director with a strong track record of building and transforming organizations – private, public or non-profit – strategically, operationally, and financially to deliver exceptional growth, impact, and value creation. Ray successfully led and transformed 6 companies, 3 of which were acquired by Fortune 500 level industry leaders; she also played a key role in the growth and transformation of the Housing Authority of the City of LA (HACLA) and the LA LGBT Center during her Commission and Board tenures at those organizations. Ray is currently CEO of Anchor Loans, one of the nation’s pre-eminent residential real estate renovation and construction lenders, which she is charged with growing and transforming to make a substantial contribution in adding to the nation’s supply of renovated or new market rate and affordable housing.
Prior to leading Anchor Loans, Ray was Founding Chief Business Officer of AntlerA Therapeutics (acq. By Roche 2024), CEO of Xome, co-CEO of Genesis Capital (acq. by Goldman Sachs, 2018), and President of Hudson & Marshall (acq. by Fidelity National Financial, 2017). Ray is Board Chairperson for Desi Rainbow Parents & Allies, the national non-profit serving families of LGBTQ South Asians in America. Ray started her career at McKinsey & Company where she was co-leader of the West Coast Healthcare practice. Ray has an A.B. Honors from Princeton University and a M.B.A. with Distinction from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University. She lives with her wife and two sets of twins in Los Angeles, CA.
Tommy Newman
Chief of Staff, Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency
Tommy Newman is an advocate for housing justice and the holistic systems change it requires. He brings more than a decade of experience in public affairs, coalition building, and policy innovation to his role as Chief of Staff at LACAHSA. Born and raised in L.A., Tommy has dedicated his career to addressing the root causes of homelessness and expanding access to affordable housing across Los Angeles County.
Tommy holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the George Washington University and a J.D. from the University of San Francisco School of Law. He is a member of the California State Bar. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two daughters and remains deeply committed to creating equitable and inclusive communities across the county.
Conversation: The Future of Black Homeownership in Los Angeles County
Michael Lens
Associate Faculty Director, UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Michael Lens is Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy, and Associate Faculty Director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. Professor Lens’s research and teaching explore the potential of public policy to address housing market inequities that lead to negative outcomes for low-income families and communities of color. This research involves housing interventions such as subsidies, tenant protections, and production. Professor Lens regularly publishes this work in leading academic journals, and his research has won awards from the Journal of the American Planning Association and Housing Policy Debate.
Dr. Lens’s book Where the Hood At? Fifty Years of Change in Black Neighborhoods was published in November 2024 by the Russell Sage Foundation. Professor Lens’s research has received funding from the MacArthur Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and has active projects funded by the Arnold Foundation, the Hilton Foundation and Wells Fargo. He teaches courses on quantitative analysis, poverty and inequality, community development, housing policy, and research methods.
Saba Mwine-Chang
Deputy Chief Community Opportunity Officer, Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority
Saba Mwine-Chang (She/Hers) is the inaugural Deputy Chief Community Opportunity Officer at the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA). In this role, she leads strategic initiatives and fosters collaboration across LAHSA, the Los Angeles Continuum of Care, and city and county partners to advance culturally informed approaches to homelessness. Her work focuses on healing-centered service models, data-driven implementation, and community support. Previously, Saba was the first Managing Director of the Homelessness Policy Research Institute (HPRI), where she helped transform it from a start-up into a nationally recognized research collaborative. At HPRI, she supported cross-sector partnerships, research, and community learning focused on homelessness solutions.
With over 20 years of experience in housing justice, Saba has led racial equity initiatives at the Corporation for Supportive Housing and facilitated the national Housing Discrimination Study under the Obama Administration. Her work integrates policy, research, and lived experience to promote housing access and justice. A classically trained actor with an MFA in theatre, Saba believes in the arts and somatic practice as tools for healing and community building. She serves as board chair of Housing Works California and is a key voice in advancing liberatory, community-based housing collaborations locally and nationally.
