Professor José Loya, Urban Planning Department at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs and Professor Rob Wassmer, Department of Public Policy and Administration at California State University, Sacramento
Faulkner’s assertion that the past isn’t dead or even past has never seemed more true than in relation to wealth inequality. While income disparities can be corrected in a single generation, wealth inequality tends to compound over time. In the United States, a major source of wealth for most people is their home. But home ownership itself is unequally allocated, and the value of homes in areas where Black, Latino, and other immigrant communities live tends to be suppressed. In this special UC Center Sacramento panel presentation, an economist and an urban planner will examine some of the roots of wealth inequality as embedded in housing discrimination beginning long ago and continuing into the present.
Dr. José Loya is an Assistant Professor in Urban Planning at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs and faculty affiliate with the Chicano Studies Research Center. Professor Loya’s research discusses several topics related to stratification in homeownership, including ethno-racial, gender, and Latino disparities in mortgage access. Dr. Loya received his PhD. at the University of Pennsylvania in Sociology and holds a master’s degree in Statistics from the Wharton School of Business at Penn. Prior to graduate school, Professor Loya worked for several years in community development and affordable housing in South Florida.
Dr. Rob Wassmer has served as a professor in the Department of Public Policy and Administration at California State University, Sacramento (Sac State), for 27 years. Professor Wassmer’s current research interest revolves around the causes, consequences, and possible policy solutions to California’s housing affordability crisis. Dr. Wassmer is also a founder and core faculty in the College of Education’s Doctorate in Education Leadership Program (EdD). Professor Wassmer earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics from Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan (1983), a Master of Arts in Economics from Binghamton University in New York (1985), and a Ph.D. in Economics from Michigan State University (1989).