Housing Justice: Leah Goodridge
February 23rd, 2023
”Housing justice for me is where people aren't being displaced.”
Leah Goodridge has served on the New York City Planning Commission since 2021 and is the Managing Attorney for Housing Policy at Mobilization for Justice. She oversees a team that provides legal representation to tenants in eviction proceedings. We talk about housing in New York City, ranging from high rents and evictions to land use discussions.
Tenant unions have advocated for tenants’ rights in New York and Albany, which pushed for right to counsel and new rent laws. Developers and landlords have successfully shifted the media narrative to portray them as the little guy and the victim, and the tenant as the villain. Joining community boards is an effective way for everyday New Yorkers to have a voice; community boards vote on the housing proposals before the planning commission sees them. Private developers are being pushed to be at the forefront of building affordable housing, but the City can and does decide how much money it will allocate toward housing. It could decide to fund more affordable units.
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Credits:
Host: Mila Atmos
Guest: Leah Goodridge
Executive Producer: Mila Atmos
Producers: Zack Travis and Sara Burningham
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Leah Goodridge Transcript
Mila Atmos: [00:00:05] Welcome to Future Hindsight, a podcast that takes big ideas about civic life and democracy and turns them into action items for you and me. I'm Mila Atmos. This week we are returning to last week's topic of housing. You'll remember we talked to Gregg Colburn and took in the view of our housing and the homelessness crisis from 30,000 feet. Gregg takes a structural view that is, I think, vital for truly understanding how to tackle the fact that 5% of the US population will experience homelessness in their lifetime. But even Gregg emphasized that the macro view is just one component of any strategy to try to tackle the problem of housing and homelessness faced by so many in this, the richest country in the history of the world. This week, we're drilling down into the more micro aspects of this challenge with a conversation about New York City, where, in short, "the rent is too damn high!" I'm joined by Leah Goodridge. Leah was appointed to the New York City Planning Commission in 2021 by public advocate Jumaane Williams. She's a managing attorney for housing policy at Mobilization for Justice, where she oversees a team, which provides legal representation to tenants in eviction proceedings. Leah also served on the New York City Rent Guidelines Board for three years. Leah, welcome to Future Hindsight. Thank you for joining us.
Leah Goodridge: [00:01:35] Thank you for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Mila Atmos: [00:01:39] One of the things I didn't get to in that intro there is the number
of accolades you've garnered.
Leah Goodridge: [00:01:44] Oh, boy.
Mila Atmos: [00:01:46] 2019 year County Lawyers Association Public Service Award, 2018 New York Nonprofit Media 40 Under 40 Rising Star Award, and the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Earl Warren Scholarship. So I read that and I thought this woman could probably do anything she wanted to. Why is a housing justice what you chose?
Leah Goodridge: [00:02:11] Well, thank you for the accolades. I appreciate it. You know, I grew up in New York City. I grew up in Brooklyn and went to law school at UCLA and was there for three years for law school. And then when I came back, it was
my time to be an adult and look for an apartment. And that was when I realized just how unaffordable New York City was. I think if you grew up in Brooklyn, you know, and you know, you hear about obviously your parents trying to find housing or trying to buy a house. But when I realized it for myself was when I had to find my own apartment and live on my own. It was tough. And I actually experienced a bit of housing instability. I had taken the bar exam and didn't pass the first time and didn't pass a second time either, actually. And actually, you know, lived with friends rent free at some point. I have very good friends that were still friends today, and it really made me realize what it felt like to experience a bit of housing and stability at the same time as having a bad life moment.
Leah Goodridge: [00:03:21] And that's not the same as, you know, almost going into a shelter. But it was the closest I think I have experienced with dealing with depression and trying to move through life and also trying to keep a roof over my head. And so I really wanted to be a housing attorney. A tenants rights attorney. This is what we do. You are working and advocating and fighting for New Yorkers and clients to come in every day. And they, too, are trying to deal with an eviction proceeding. And it is tough, mentally tough, especially if you have children and a job that you're trying to hold down. And some of them may be on public assistance. But the point is they're all dealing with a very stressful situation and trying to navigate it. And the closest I experienced to that, it was tough for me as just a graduating law student. I really bring a lot of passion to the job, and that's why I've been in it for over ten years.
Mila Atmos: [00:04:24] Well, in our interview with Gregg Colburn, he really emphasized how high cost cities like New York are places where bad or difficult life moments are really high stakes. A little stumble can have these really devastating consequences, including homelessness. So I really hear you. But can you tell us a bit about what the Planning Commission does?
Leah Goodridge: [00:04:47] Oh the planning commission. You know it's any land use decision, or most land use decision.
Mila Atmos: [00:04:53] Tell us what is a land use decision?
Leah Goodridge: [00:04:54] Right. So, you know, like let's say if you want to use a piece of land to build housing on that land, you have to ask a body of law, is this okay? And the reason why is someone maybe next door and say, well, this affects me. I don't want this large building or this doesn't go with the character of the neighborhood or that maybe it might not be a neighbor, but it might be New Yorkers saying the type of housing that's being built has no affordable units in it. So we don't want this. This piece of land shouldn't be used for that. So the planning commission basically sees, approves, or denies any decisions that come through it, most of which are housing that have to do with land use. I'm going to give another example that's not housing. We saw the issue with the borough-based jails. So we're at a place, the borough-based jails that came through the commission. I wasn't on it at the time, but it was a really big deal. The other example that's not housing is the sidewalk use. You know, that's the piece of land that's being used. And a lot of people... I have to say that was actually one of my first votes where, you know, it was a the vote already happened of whether to do it. And then there was a follow up vote. And I remember at the time I voted and I said, Oh, yeah, that's sounds great. Yeah, the outdoor restaurants. Yeah, we should use it. And then I went online and saw all of these comments. People, there are people who really hate it and for valid reasons. So one of the first things I learned as a planning commission is, you can't be inside of the bubble of the Planning commission. You really have to do your research outside of the information you're given. But that's what the Planning Commission does. And part of being a good commissioner is not being just inside the bubble of the commission and stepping outside of it and talking to people and seeing what they think because everyone doesn't show up to the hearings.
Mila Atmos: [00:06:56] Not everyone shows up to the hearings? You mean like the public or the commissioners?
Leah Goodridge: [00:06:59] No, no, I mean the the public. We have hearings there during the day.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:03] Yeah, of course. People are at work.
Leah Goodridge: [00:07:04] Yeah, people are at work. And, you know, sometimes people just don't have time.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:08] They don't have time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I have a question about land use because when you're talking about housing, is there a lot of open land that you can use for housing or like, how does that work?
Leah Goodridge: [00:07:18] Yeah, you know, a lot of it is building new housing. Sometimes the decisions that come before it are existing housing or buildings that they want to build on top of. That's another one. And sometimes that gets contentious because there's someone living next door who just, you know, it's blocking my sunlight or it affects people in different ways, or sometimes it's changing the actual like something was a commercial use and then you want to make it a residential use. All of that is within the purview of the commission.
Mila Atmos: [00:07:51] Got it. Well, the challenges are huge. The median rent in New York City is $4,000, and that is, frankly, bananas. Right. What is the number one biggest problem that your clients face?
Leah Goodridge: [00:08:05] Housing affordability. I have to say, it's you know, when whenever we talk about homelessness, people tend to ascribe all of the things like individual choices. Maybe the person is using drugs, maybe they had too many kids. These are all of the stereotypical tropes that are often put onto my clients. And the reality is, after having done this work for a long time and I've done this for ten years, one of the themes that comes through... The first one is, "I was working on my job and then I got hurt. Something happened and I became disabled in some form." Or it could just be, you know, "I was working on a job for a long time and I got fired and it really shook up my life." But a lot of it is dealing with disability and a new disability, and then it's shaking up someone's life and then they're trying to get back on track. And sometimes it doesn't happen as fast and it shakes things up. And then they're in my office, they're not able to pay the rent and then they get evicted or they're facing eviction. And then the stress of the eviction is also cumulative as well. The second big theme I see coming through is, "My parent died and it really impacted my life and I was not ready for that." You know, either the person became a caretaker, but it tends to really shake people up and shake up a family, especially if it's unexpected and the parent is fairly young and then there are mental health challenges that come with that. And I want to say this happens when people come in my office and I say, well, why do you owe rent? They don't say, Oh, my parent died or whatever. But when I really parse through the stories, these are very
similar themes. And so I guess the one big theme is a life event happens that's unexpected and harsh and shakes things up. And because there was already a bit of financial instability with the housing market and not too many people in that person's family, or perhaps no one has, owns a home or can really provide for them. If something happens, it all falls apart.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:25] Hmm. Hmm. Yeah, Leah Goodridge: [00:10:26] It all falls apart.
Mila Atmos: [00:10:27] Yeah. So knowing all of these stories, having worked in this space for so long. As a tenant advocate, what avenues are available to you for influencing housing policy?
Leah Goodridge: [00:10:41] You know, I ended up joining the rent guidelines board and, you know, someone just sort of floated my name and then then we just went from there. So I didn't particularly, like, seek it out. But once I got on it, I said, oh, okay, this is this is a great way to influence housing policy. And just to provide a bit of background: The Rent Guidelines Board is a body of nine members who are nominated and appointed by the mayor of New York City, and the guidelines board makes a decision about rent regulated apartments in New York City and how much landlords can increase the rents by. So for both rent stabilized and rent controlled, those are under the purview of the Rent guidelines board. So if you're a landlord and you want to increase your apartment's rent renewal lease by, say, 10%, the Rent guidelines board comes in and says no. For all rent regulated landlords, you can only increase it 2% for one year renewal or 5% for two year renewal. So landlords don't like that. Yes, but tenant advocates, we do. And so this was a great way to influence housing policy because I was appointed by de Blasio and I was one of two tenant representatives, and it was a platform in order to speak to what I'm seeing in my office and what I'm seeing as a tenants rights attorney about what's going on in New York City. And I think in a very weird way, that was the first time I learned that at these tables there's not a lot of "me- s," if that makes any sense. There's not a lot of tenant voices specifically that work with tenants as their day job and certainly not a lot of legal services attorneys. It shifted.
Mila Atmos: [00:12:34] Interesting. So New York's rent stabilization laws could be headed to the Supreme Court. Are you worried about that? You're laughing...
Leah Goodridge: [00:12:43] I'm laughing because I was part of, I was named a defendant in that case where when it first came out because I was on the rent guidelines board. I'm worried. I am worried because I think, you know, and it was it was well known that in New York courts that they were not... They were probably going to lose and they did, right. The landlords are the plaintiffs. There are landlord groups, I should say, are plaintiffs. So they represent landlords in New York City, small, some big, and they're suing. The Second Circuit just basically denied them. And so now they'll likely ask for certiorari by the Supreme Court. And we're going to wait to see whether the Supreme Court grants hearing the case. And I am a bit worried about that because one of the things that any lawyer will tell you, especially with a big case like this, is that the political climate matters and narratives matter, media narratives matter. And for the past couple of years, what I've seen is a shift, right? A shift in how we talk about housing. And one of the big shifts is there has been this really successful media narrative by developers and landlords that in fact developers and landlords are the little guy. They are the victim in all of this, in the housing crisis, you know. The eviction moratorium that people go, what about the landlords? You know, they're not getting the rent, What about the small landlords? And then so then when who's the tenant in there? The tenant's the villain. The tenant is really positioned and framed as like the villain in all of this. You know, in the context of landlords and tenants, the tenant is seen as like, "you're not paying your rent, you're ruining this American dream of a small landlord." In the context of tenants and developers, a tenant is framed as what's called not in my backyard, NIMBY, you know. So in many ways, because they're challenging. They have questions about whether new developments are affordable or not. And so just because they have questions, they're called NIMBY. So I think I'm worried because there's a political climate that I think is open to this, but there's also a media narrative happening where this larger question about tenants who are the true little guy, the true little marginalized people here, being in the way of property owners. And I think that's going to play a large role in this.
Mila Atmos: [00:15:12] Mm hmm. So as a tenant attorney, what were you most excited about when you were appointed to the New York City Planning Commission?
Leah Goodridge: [00:15:21] Hmm. I have to say, you know, people who are listening to this who follow me on Twitter are probably not going to believe this, but I actually truly, sincerely thought that this was going to be this sort of like quiet role of where I dug my head down, you know, and quietly like became this planning nerd and sort of just attended meetings and that's it. And I was really excited about that because I was like, oh, this is sort of going to be like this. I'm going to be this planning nerd. And, you know, in a nutshell, I envisioned it as something that was very behind the scenes and quiet, and I was excited about that aspect.
Mila Atmos: [00:16:07] Like policy all the time, behind the scenes.
Leah Goodridge: [00:16:10] Yeah. Just learning policy and becoming this like, policy
wonk. I was very excited about that. Right? It did not turn out that way. It did not. Mila Atmos: [00:16:23] Yeah. Yeah, I hear you.
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Mila Atmos: [00:17:15] Well, when we were speaking to Gregg Coburn last week, we focused on these big systemic questions and Gregg stressed how homelessness is a housing problem and directly correlated with housing costs. What are the policy choices that New York City could make that would make a significant impact on housing costs? Because right now it just seems to be perpetually spiraling upwards. And so how how can we have more affordable housing in New York City?
Leah Goodridge: [00:17:45] Well, I think the first thing to think about is that we make choices. We as a city, we make choices about what we spend our money on. So, you know, whether you believe in and support the defund the police movement, the reality is
that that movement really put at the forefront the idea about what are we spending our money on? Where are we allocating our money? And really shed some light on, okay, well, we're putting our money towards, for example, police. What are they doing? I think we need to have the same conversations regarding housing because what we can be doing is literally funding more affordable units. What's happening now is that private developers are being pushed to be at the forefront of building affordable housing. I don't have any issue with that. I don't think that there should be never be any private developer. What I have an issue with is that it has created a culture where they're the hero at the forefront and so they are the solution. And so what ends up happening is when you have these housing proposals like the one that we had in Astoria with Innovation Queens or the one that we had in Harlem, the private developer is at the forefront. And then the community predictably says this is only 25% or 30% of affordable housing units in these thousands of units. This isn't enough. We don't want accept this. We want more. And then the private developer predictably says, I don't have the money to spend more of this. This is all I've got. Which, you know, look, let me just take a step back and say, okay, it's their money, fine. But this is why I say, what happens when the city pipes in? The city tends to say, well, okay, it's like, okay, this is where you come in to fund more units so that we don't have to have these fights. But even taking it further, the fact that what happens now is. And this is the current, it's what's been happening for some time, is that the city is aware. The city wants the private developers to do most of the funding. And so the way the city pipes in and says, okay, well, we're going to pipe in and knock down all of these rules and processes so that you can build more and faster. So, you know, this is where all these terms come in, like NIMBY, we're going to knock out all these things. So this is what our contribution is going to be. It won't necessarily be more money, but it will be the administrative part. I think we need to be funding more.
Mila Atmos: [00:20:17] Mm hmm. Leah Goodridge: [00:20:17] I think.
Mila Atmos: [00:20:18] Does that come through the commission, the planning commission. Know who decides to spend more? So if I were a developer, and I say...
Leah Goodridge: [00:20:23] The city. The mayor.
Mila Atmos: [00:20:25] I want... So the mayor has budget for this?
Leah Goodridge: [00:20:27] Yeah. I mean, the city gets to make the decision about how much money it will allocate towards housing. And if we wanted to build units that were 100% affordable housing, we could. If we wanted to build a whole bunch of those, we could. And we wouldn't have as many fights that we've had, where you have communities saying... And their main beef isn't I don't want housing. Their main beef is the housing you're building doesn't have enough affordable units. Right. So just to take a step back, the private developer comes in. You have them, being by the city position, to be the hero. Like, yes, you're spending your own money. And then, of course, they predictably say, "well, I don't have more money to spend." And then the city is like," well, I don't. You know, we're not putting in any more money. So I guess it's a fight." And so I guess what I'm explaining is it's become a culture, right? So now this is part of what's driving, right, the privatization of housing. This is part of what's driving a lot of the contention and a lot of the fights, because the way this would look different is if the city were to fund more affordable units so that a lot more of the let's say, a housing proposal has a thousand apartments instead of being like 200 of those being affordable, it would be 80% affordable, it would be 100% affordable, and the city would make up the difference. I think what's driving a lot of the contention in these fights is a lack of funding. But the point is, this I think is is is a big issue for me.
Mila Atmos: [00:22:01] Yeah.
Leah Goodridge: [00:22:01] You know, this is this drives it a lot, right?
Mila Atmos: [00:22:03] Well, it also drives gentrification, right? Basically pushes people out of their communities and neighborhoods. So I'd love to hear about your experiences working with communities affected by gentrification.
Leah Goodridge: [00:22:18] I see this all the time in my daily work as a tenants rights attorney and I experienced it myself. I was born in Brooklyn. I've sort of like never left. That's not true. I lived for a time in the Bronx and in Manhattan, and I was like, No, I got to go back to Brooklyn. But, you know, just to provide a little bit of background for folks: gentrification is a process where higher income residents move in to an area and then
eventually displacement happens. The second part of, after gentrification, displacement happens where the existing residents are pushed out, and that tends to happen by secondary displacement. There are studies that show that when wealthier and particularly whiter residents move in, the cops are called more. There are all types of push outs, there's all types of harassment. But the cops being called and there being regulation. And the change of a culture of a neighborhood is a big key part. More expensive restaurants obviously take root and then the neighborhood becomes more expensive overall. And if you're a renter as opposed to a homeowner, if you're going to get pushed out, then you don't actually benefit in the end result. So I've seen this play out with my clients where they have been living in their rent stabilized apartment for a long time, for many years, and the neighborhood changes and then the landlord is like, "Oh, you're paying $900 for a studio and everyone else is paying $2000, you know, in this area." And then they start harassing them to get out. Any little thing, you know. Two weeks late with their rent, a month late, they're ready to start a housing case. Little things that they might have let slide before are not overlooked now. And so pressure happens. And this is how neighborhoods change.
Mila Atmos: [00:24:10] Yeah. Yeah. So how has New York City's tenant right to counsel law that was passed five years ago, how has that affected the landscape for renters and landlords?
Leah Goodridge: [00:24:24] It is a five year anniversary. I mean, technically we're now going into the sixth year. And I remember when this was just passed and I had been practicing for a number of years. And the big thing at the time was, you know. This is by the inside world of tenants rights attorneys, we were like, oh, my God, we don't want...
Mila Atmos: [00:24:44] No? We don't want this?
Leah Goodridge: [00:24:44] Wait. You know, like, of course it helps the clients. But I think at the time we were so used to selecting our cases that we sort of looked at it like, Oh my God, we're not going to have any control. It was a control thing. We're not going to have any control over our cases. It's already a very stressful job. And so basically every single case we're going to have to take and this is going to... How are we going to handle this?
Mila Atmos: [00:25:06] Right. So much.
Leah Goodridge: [00:25:08] But what ended up happening, obviously, is with that
funding. It was funding more attorneys. Because that was the main concern, you know. Mila Atmos: [00:25:15] That you would not have enough.
Leah Goodridge: [00:25:16] Yeah, not.
Mila Atmos: [00:25:17] Enough people to do the work.
Leah Goodridge: [00:25:19] You know, just to provide some background. Being a tenants rights attorney to me is like the equivalent of being an ER doctor and doing the triage. Like you're literally seeing people come in and they're all facing eviction and everything is an emergency because one minute you might miss one thing and then they get evicted. And you know you're a lawyer and you have to, you know, follow a whole process. We have legal rules. So it's all extremely traumatic even for the attorney, you know, and it's it's a lot of secondary trauma for the attorneys. I think the right to counsel changed the game by providing more attorneys. And so culturally, what happened is people were ready to play ball a lot more before the right to counsel. It was very common to settle and not go to trial. I remember when I had first started, only a few people in the office that I was in had gone to trial because it was like, "Why aren't you just settling?" Like this is sort of the way the train moves. You get these cases out and then move on. Then the right to counsel happened. More attorneys came in and with more attorneys, a field even on the tenant side that had been majority white became a lot more racially diverse, a younger crowd. And some of the stuff that went on in housing court like being disrespected. There's a lot of racism and misogyny and transphobia and all of that in housing court. People weren't taking it anymore. And so then part of that culture filtered over into the cases where we're like, "You know what? You want to go to trial? Let's go to trial. Let's go to trial. Let's take this to trial." And so there's a certain level of boldness that started happening in the actual substantive part of the law, as well as the culture, part of how housing court operated. And it shifted, you know.
Mila Atmos: [00:27:10] Yeah. So the COVID pandemic eviction moratorium ended a little over a year ago. Did we learn anything from that experience?
Leah Goodridge: [00:27:16] Having the eviction moratorium was helpful. Obviously, when the eviction moratorium happened, the sort of narrative of like this is really impacting small landlords. And it was right, yes, but small landlords are often used as a face of New York City landlords. And that's, I have a problem with this because they're not the majority of New York City landlords. And when these fights come up like good cause eviction, like the eviction moratorium, they are the face. But what happens is this housing market is so large that we really do need to think about the fact that there are millions of people who, if we had during the pandemic no eviction moratorium, and people were just getting evicted left and right, or moving around left and right, this would have been such a deep health crisis. And I don't think we would have gotten out of. I don't think we would have gotten out of that. I mean, there were larger concerns at play there.
Mila Atmos: [00:28:12] Right. Well, let's talk about the big ideas here, because you're working towards housing justice. What is that in your mind?
Leah Goodridge: [00:28:20] I mean, housing justice for me is where people aren't being displaced, where people have a place to live and retire. You know, I don't know a lot of people who are like, yeah, I'm really going to stay here and retire in New York City. That's changed. I'm one of the last people in my family who, you know, as I said, I grew up in New York. I was born here. My mother came here from Barbados when she was 11. And my father, he's Black American. He he's been here him, his family. He's been here. He grew up in Marcy Houses, in NYCHA. And I'm one of the last people here, one of the last people in my family. Everyone has moved down South for housing, to be able to buy housing. And the main thing that's said is, "I can't afford to retire here. I would love to stay here, but I can't afford it." So housing justice for me looks like people who have built these communities who have stayed in them, who have made them vibrant, are able to remain, and retire here.
Mila Atmos: [00:29:20] Right. Right. So as an everyday New Yorker, what could we be doing to advance the cause of housing justice?
Leah Goodridge: [00:29:31] I think one big thing is letting your local and big politicians know. One thing that's effective that landlord groups do is they are very "at the table." So they make their issues and concerns very well known. And I think that if more New Yorkers really expressed that this is my number one issue to their local city council member, to their local assembly member, to the mayor, to the speaker, this is my do or die issue. And so "if you don't advocate for more affordable housing, I don't want to vote for you. This is like the voter not issue for me." I think more New Yorkers can do that. You know, I see all of the other issues like schools and so forth. And, you know, Quinnipiac, they recently did a poll and actually a crime was the number one concern. And then affordable housing was the second. But in terms of really letting elected officials know, because I think that it's just commonplace where when these developments come through the housing developments. Even if people in that community are reticent or hesitant about the lack of of affordable housing units, they'll still push it through. And I think that more people saying this is really a do or die issue for me will change that. The other thing is join the community boards if you have time. I think that that's really helpful to have a voice. The community boards, I should note, actually vote on the housing proposals before it gets to the Planning Commission. So it's a great voice to have.
Mila Atmos: [00:31:14] Two really fantastic things and very doable for a lot of New Yorkers. Very doable. So, last question. Looking into the future, what makes you hopeful?
Leah Goodridge: [00:31:24] I am hopeful by tenant unions and the voices that have advocated for tenants rights and really had a huge movement. I'm a tenants rights attorney. I'm what's considered a legal services attorney, and that's actually one small dot of the whole tenant movement. It's really led by organizers, and I am so hopeful by how much work they've done. I mean, honestly, they run New York City. They are the reason why we had right to counsel. It's not because lawyers fought for it in court. It's because people organized for it. They're the reason why we have the HSTPA, why we have the new rent laws. I mean, all of these things have come about because of tenant organizing. And I think if you're not in the tenant world, you may not hear about it. But let me just say that it's big. It's really big. Throngs of people get on buses and go up to Albany and shout and, you know, talk to the governor and the assembly members, and
pack the the courts and, you know, the state floors. And it's a big deal. So there are a lot of people out there fighting for New Yorkers, and I want them to know that.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:34] Yeah, that's really hopeful. I'm happy to hear that people get on buses and go to Albany.
Leah Goodridge: [00:32:39] Oh, yeah,
Mila Atmos: [00:32:40] And shout
Leah Goodridge: [00:32:42] With signs... Oh, yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:42] This great that people are active.
Leah Goodridge: [00:32:44] Yeah.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:45] Well, thank you so much for being on Future hindsight. It was really a pleasure to have you.
Leah Goodridge: [00:32:49] It was a pleasure being here. Thank you so much for inviting me.
Mila Atmos: [00:32:53] You're welcome. Leah Goodridge is appointed to the New York City Planning Commission by public advocate Jumaane Williams, and she's the managing attorney for housing policy at Mobilization for Justice.
Mila Atmos: [00:33:09] Next week on Future Hindsight, we're joined by Daniel Squadron, a former New York State senator and co-founder and executive director of The States Project. We talk about what it takes to win state legislatures and why it's so important.
Daniel Squadron: [00:33:23] "I need to stay knowledgeable" people say, "but I'm not going to fix things." Well, in state legislatures, the results of 2022 show you can fix things!
Mila Atmos: [00:33:35] That's next time on Future Hindsight.
We're also active on Twitter and would love to engage with you all there. You can follow
me @MilaAtmos. That's one word: MilaAtmos. Or follow the pod @futur_hindsight.
This episode was produced by Zack Travis and Sara Burningham. Until next time, stay engaged.
The Democracy Group: [00:34:10] This podcast is part of the democracy group.