{"id":65627,"date":"2024-06-26T08:22:33","date_gmt":"2024-06-26T15:22:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=65627"},"modified":"2024-06-26T08:22:33","modified_gmt":"2024-06-26T15:22:33","slug":"liz-glenns-career-advocacy-for-human-settlements","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/?p=65627","title":{"rendered":"Liz Glenn\u2019s Career Advocacy for Human Settlements"},"content":{"rendered":"
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By<\/span>Khalil Abdullah<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Glenn has spent her career fighting for the right to housing, which she says encompasses and embraces far more than the physicality of shelter.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Elizabeth Glenn is is chair of the US Africa Collaborative, which will host its second Pan African City Symposium at Bowie State University in Maryland from June 26-29.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Reflecting on her decades of advocacy for humane and decent living conditions as a fundamental human right, Elizabeth Glenn said that housing encompasses and embraces far more than the physicality of shelter. \u201cHousing represents a place where you raise children, where you age, where you take care of seniors and the vulnerable. It\u2019s where we live life in all its forms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glenn, a Maryland native, is Chair of the\u00a0US Africa Collaborative<\/a>, an organization due to host its second Pan African City Symposium at Bowie State University in Maryland from June 26-29.<\/p>\n

A key cohort of attendees will be a delegation of government officials, educators, and members of the private sector from the housing, human settlements, science, and innovation sectors in South Africa. Durban, the major city in South Africa\u2019s Kwa Zulu Natal province, was the site of Glenn\u2019s first Pan African City Symposium in 2022.<\/p>\n

\u201cHuman settlements,\u201d as a term of art, dates to the United Nations\u00a0Habitat I conference<\/a>\u00a0hosted by Vancouver, Canada in 1976. A key topic was the challenges facing the world\u2019s cities due to increasing overpopulation. Human settlements, rural or urban, embrace access to energy, water, clean air, and other resources that contribute to a humane existence.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1990, Nelson Mandela was released from prison in South Africa and by 1994,\u201d Glenn said, \u201cI was really struck by the possibility of being engaged there as I felt a strong kinship to Black people living in South Africa under apartheid, for one, because Baltimore had the first\u00a0land restricted areas acts<\/a>\u00a0in the United States. The imposition of those laws and policies in America happened, coincidentally, or not, over the same period apartheid laws went into effect in South Africa, so that\u2019s in part why I feel this affinity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glenn notes that Baltimore\u2019s templates for redlining and segregated housing policies are documented in \u201cNot in My Neighborhood<\/a>,\u201d a book by Antero Pietila. \u201cPietila shows that Baltimore was ground zero for housing segregation by design, including the Federal Ownership Loan Corporation\u2019s creating a redlining map. That first originated in Baltimore and became the model for the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glenn counts herself fortunate to have participated in the\u00a0Habitat II conference<\/a>\u00a0in Istanbul, Turkey. \u201cBy 1996, I was the director of the\u00a0Baltimore Housing Roundtable<\/a>\u00a0where part of my portfolio was to coordinate technical assistance for Baltimore housing developers.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Baltimore Housing Roundtable was part of the U.S. network for Habitat II and we helped to organize, convene and host the first town hall meeting in Baltimore in preparation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe created a format and a template for the other 12 town hall meetings that were held in the U.S. before Istanbul. And when we went to Habitat II, then Baltimore Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke and I, we were part of the delegation negotiating and contributing to the document that became the U.S. position on Habitat II. And while the U.S. network for Habitat II was advocating for housing as a human right, our advocacy was contrary to our government\u2019s official position, which did not support housing as a right and still does not support it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Glenn explains that the U.S. formal position on \u201cthe right to access decent housing\u201d is not the same as having the right to decent housing. \u201cIt is a distinction with a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2016, she traveled with HUD Secretary Julian Castro to the\u00a0Habitat III conference<\/a>\u00a0in Quito, Ecuador, and her professional horizons continued to expand. Glenn has been an active member of\u00a0NAHRO<\/a>, the National Association of Housing and Redevelopment Officials, which represents most of the public housing authorities and community development professionals in the United States. Her advocacy work has taken her through the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia, and Africa.<\/p>\n

She chaired NAHRO\u2019s Diversity Equity and Inclusion Advisory Committee but notes that DEI has fallen out of favor in today \u2018s heated political discourse.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to learn to recognize each other\u2019s humanity and not be so quick to want to categorize each other into some palette, as if we\u2019re colors in a watercolor box. That\u2019s not who or what we are.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThis colorism impacts our children to the point that they\u2019re always being asked, \u2018What are you? Where are you from? Where\u2019s your family from?\u2019\u00a0 Isn\u2019t it enough that I\u2019m human?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always hear folks in real estate talk about location, location, location. And that word has become painful. It has become painful for Black folks when you can predict someone\u2019s life expectancy based on what census tract they live in. If you can\u2019t live together with folks in a community, there\u2019s scant hope for the future of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ByKhalil Abdullah Jun 21, 2024 Glenn...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65627"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65628,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65627\/revisions\/65628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lapost.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}