InterActions LA 2025

Advancing Housing And Transportation Solutions

Monday, March 10
The California Endowment
9–4 p.m.

To achieve California’s ambitious goals of addressing the housing crisis, improving the transportation system, enhancing people’s lives, and mitigating climate change, governments and agencies need to adopt new approaches to longstanding policy challenges. Academic research offers some solutions, but how to best implement these solutions remains a tricky question. At InterActions LA, the Lewis Center strives for answers from people who have been successful in their own cities.

By bringing together local leaders with policymakers and government officials from outside of Los Angeles and California, InterActions LA ignites conversations and exchanges ideas to increase equity and sustainability in the state’s housing and transportation sectors.

Registration

Regular: $50
Students & Nonprofits: $10-25

Registration fee includes day’s programming, plus breakfast, lunch and reception.

Register Today

Schedule

Schedule is subject to change as more speakers are confirmed.

8:30 am | Breakfast 9 am | Welcome and Keynote Speaker

  • Darrell Steinberg, former Mayor of Sacramento (2016-2024)

9:30 am | Panel 1 | Housing Affordability at the Household and Community Level Southern California cities must chart a new course on housing and land use policy. They must plan for much more housing production and meet ambitious affordable housing targets, overcoming tensions between these two goals, and they must do so in ways that break down historical segregation patterns. This has proven challenging, with many entrenched interests opposing these changes. These challenges are not unique to Southern California, however, and other West Coast cities have made great progress reforming their policies in recent years. They join us to share the nuts and bolts of their reforms, their early impacts, and the work and partnerships that made them possible.

  • Spencer Gardner, Planning Director, City of Spokane
  • Mahdi Manji, Director of Public Policy, Inner City Law Center

11 am | Panel 2 | Program and Infrastructure Approaches to Transportation Equity Cities and transportation agencies must improve transportation systems to ensure the state meets greenhouse gas emission targets and that transportation access does not further disadvantage people and communities. Delivering innovative improvements requires new transportation management approaches like managing driving and reallocating street space. Cities can also enact programs that help address other transportation barriers and improve safety.  This session explores approaches that innovate using infrastructure and programmatic approaches to better address transportation challenges and find ways to meet stated community needs.

  • Alfonso Directo, Jr., Advocacy Director, ACT-LA
  • Madeline Feig, Transportation Wallet: Access for All Program Coordinator, Portland Bureau of Transportation
  • Greg Francese, Transportation Planner, City of Hoboken

12:15 pm | Lunch 1:15 pm | Panel 3 | Making Change Happen Locally  This session will be a moderated discussion among local leaders to reflect on the themes previously discussed during the day and share how agencies and groups in the Los Angeles region can work to implement new approaches in housing and transportation. Where will leadership come from? What changes can fit within existing processes? Where is the political appetite and opportunity windows to change away from the status quo?

  • Jed Leano, Councilmember, City of Claremont
  • Nithya Raman, Councilmember, City of Los Angeles
  • Darrell Steinberg, former Mayor of Sacramento (2016-2024)

2:15 pm | Closing Remarks 2:30 pm | Reception

Speakers

Darrell Steinberg

Keynote Speaker

Darrell Steinberg is the former Mayor of Sacramento and past Senate President pro Tempore in the California Legislature.

Steinberg represented California’s capital city in the California Legislature from 1998 – 2014 and was the first Sacramentan to serve as President of the Senate in over 125 years. Steinberg earned a reputation for confronting seemingly intractable problems and delivering results for California through consensus-building. Elected to the Senate in 2006, Steinberg became President pro Tempore in late 2008, at the deep end of the economic downturn when the state faced an unimaginable $42 billion deficit. Two years later, he was honored with the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage award by the Kennedy Library Foundation in recognition of his leadership in bipartisan negotiations leading to the state’s fiscal recovery. Throughout his entire career, Steinberg led the Legislature on numerous complex issues, including the 2009 and 2014 state water agreements, criminal justice reform, and reinvesting over a billion dollars in career technical education.

He has been a long time climate, environmental and transportation leader. Among many key environmental laws, he authored the landmark legislation SB 375, the 2007 Climate and Sustainable Communities Act, SB 743, the 2013 Vehicle Miles Traveled and CEQA Reform Act, and the 2014 Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities Cap and Trade Fund, generating billions for transit-oriented housing over the past decade.
Steinberg has been a relentless advocate for mental healthcare, calling it “the under-attended issue in our time and in our society.” Heralded within the mental health community as the “most transformative figure mental health has ever seen,” Steinberg authored Proposition 63, the Mental Health Services Act, creating a multi billion-dollar system for dynamic mental healthcare in California. In 2012, He championed groundbreaking legislation to mandate insurance companies cover treatment of children with autism and related disorders.

Steinberg graduated from UCLA, where he earned a BA in economics, then earned a Juris Doctorate from UC Davis Law School.

Alfonso Directo Jr.

Speaker

Alfonso Directo Jr. serves as ACT-LA’s Advocacy Director where he leads policy advocacy strategy for the coalition’s housing, land use, and transit justice campaigns. Throughout his career, Alfonso has worked to change systems of the built environment so that communities can thrive. Before ACT-LA, he designed rail transit projects as a civil engineer and contributed to transportation policy for an elected official. Alfonso is proud of his family’s Filipino American working-class roots in Southern California.

Madeline Feig

Speaker

Madeline Feig (she/her) is the program coordinator for the City of Portland’s Transportation Wallet: Access for All program, providing free transportation benefits to Portlanders living on low incomes. Madeline has a multifaceted background in transportation demand management (TDM), public engagement, and strategic communications. Madeline is passionate about equitable mobility solutions that allow people of all ages and abilities to move safely, access opportunities, and connect with one another.

Gregory Francese

Speaker

As the City of Hoboken’s Transportation Planner, Greg Francese manages the City’s shared mobility programs, complete streets implementation, curbside management planning, and the Vision Zero initiative, which aims to eliminate all traffic deaths and injuries by 2030. He is also currently managing the build out of New Jersey’s largest on-street network of electric vehicle charging stations. Through his role as a member of the Hoboken Planning Board he also works to further the goals of the City’s Master Plan and transportation plans and initiatives.

Spencer Gardner

Speaker

Spencer Gardner is the planning director for the City of Spokane, Washington. He has overseen major changes in the city’s development code to increase housing choice and expand the housing market in all areas of the city. In his time the City of Spokane has also removed all minimum parking mandates.

Dory Hellyer

Speaker

Dory Hellyer is the Development Incentives Manager at the City of Portland’s Housing Bureau, where she leads implementation of Portland’s Inclusionary Housing Program. Dory connects policy goals with desired development outcomes using a multitude of indirect financial subsidies to promote the creation of affordable housing. Recently, Dory carried out updates to the incentive programs supporting Inclusionary Housing after a lengthy analysis and study of the program’s impact on development activity within the current market.

Jed Leano

Speaker

Jed Leano is an immigration attorney and second-term council member in the City of Claremont. He serves as Board Chair of the San Gabriel Valley Regional Housing Trust, Chair of the Tricity Mental Health Governing Board, and represents the San Gabriel Valley on the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency Board.

Mahdi Manji

Speaker

Mahdi Manji is the Director of Public Policy at Inner City Law Center. ICLC advocates for land use policies to increase the production of affordable housing, increase revenue for affordable housing, end segregationary residential patterns, keep people in their homes, and protect the rights of all housed and unhoused Angelenos.

Nithya Raman

Speaker

Nithya Raman (RAH-men) is an urban planner, a mother of two, an immigrant to America, and a member of the Los Angeles City Council representing District 4. She ran for City Council in 2020 and won a historic victory, becoming the first Asian-American woman and the first South Asian ever to serve on the City Council. In March 2024, she was elected to her second term. Since taking office, Councilmember Raman has prioritized delivering people-centered and effective services for people experiencing homelessness, building more affordable housing, and moving with greater urgency to meet our city’s climate goals. She serves as Chair of the Housing and Homelessness Committee, Vice Chair of the Ad Hoc Committee on Governance Reform, and member of the Transportation and Energy and Environment Committees. She also represents Los Angeles on the Governing Board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District, and was recently nominated by Mayor Karen Bass to serve as Vice Chair on the LA County Executive Committee for Regional Homeless Alignment.

Evelyn Blumenberg

Speaker

Evelyn Blumenberg is the director of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and a professor of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Her research examines the effects of urban structure — the spatial location of residents, employment, and services — on economic outcomes for low-wage workers, and on the role of planning and policy in shaping the spatial structure of cities. Her recent projects include analyses of the residential location and travel behavior of low-wage workers, child care access and travel, driving cessation among older adults, and automobile finance and expenditures. Blumenberg was honored in 2014 as a White House Champion of Change for her research on the links between transportation access, employment, and poverty.

Madeline Brozen

Moderator

Madeline Brozen is the deputy director of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies where she works with a community of scholars understanding how people live, move, and work in the Los Angeles region. Her research focuses on the transportation needs of vulnerable populations and how transportation connects people to opportunity, most recently focusing on transportation needs to healthcare. Her previous research includes work on parklet design and evaluation, park design for older adults, and street performance metrics. Madeline is a lecturer in GIS for the UCLA Urban Planning Department, a former manager of the UCLA Complete Streets Initiative, the founding editor-in-chief of Transfers Magazine, and a member of the Investing in Place advisory board.

Michael Lens

Moderator

Michael Lens is an Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy at UCLA and Associate Faculty Director at the Lewis Center. 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. His research on housing subsidies and crime has challenged conventional wisdom regarding the housing voucher program, showing that those who receive those subsidies live in much safer neighborhoods than those living in housing constructed with supply-side subsidies.

Thank You to Our Sponsor

About the Conference

InterActions LA is an annual conference showcasing evidence-based solutions to the transportation and housing challenges facing people and communities in Greater Los Angeles. Each year, speakers from outside of Los Angeles share their experiences advancing policy and program solutions in different regional contexts. These case studies are supported with demonstrated positive outcomes in program evaluations and data. At InterActions LA, the Lewis Center hopes to inspire attendees to pursue progressive change and remain optimistic about the opportunities to make a difference with their work.