We’re excited to announce that Luke Klipp has joined the Abundant Housing LA Steering Committee as our Education Director! Luke has been a leader in LA for years, creating and championing great ideas in housing, transit, and other local issues, so we couldn’t be more thrilled to have Luke join the team.
Luke’s work is a key part of achieving our mission because we strongly believe that many housing issues in LA can be solved with education. In the 60s and 70s, progressive policy was to freeze a city in time in an attempt to maintain its diversity, creativity, and the things that made the city special. But the thing that makes a city great isn’t buildings. It’s people that matter, and people need homes.
Those attempts to freeze a city in time have happened here in LA, but the idea has far deeper roots in San Francisco. As a result, very little housing was built in the Bay Area for decades. But people don’t appear and disappear when buildings are built. New people came anyway, as babies were born and immigrants moved to the city in search of a better life. Without any housing for those new arrivals, every new San Franciscan displaced someone else who already lived in the city. People of color, the poor, much of the creative class – many of the very people who had made San Francisco a thriving cultural center were displaced from the city.
As Education Director, Luke develops and facilitates educational content to make sure that doesn’t happen here in Los Angeles County. He will help ensure that Abundant Housing members and allies are equipped with the information they need to keep LA a diverse, vibrant city for generations to come.
As the past President of the Los Feliz Neighborhood Council, Luke also provides guidance on working with neighborhood councils and encouraging community stakeholders to get more involved locally.
By day (and some evenings), Luke is a Metro Board Deputy to Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia, where he ensures that the Mayor’s objectives for Metro-related items are met. He works closely with Metro staff around the Metro Blue Line, active transportation projects, and budget questions. Luke has worked over a decade in local, state, and federal politics on a range of topics, from transportation and land use, to health care, to student loans. He’s a former candidate for Democratic County Central Committee, and former Chair of the New Leaders Council San Francisco chapter. Luke is grateful to be a graduate of two awesome public schools: the University of Michigan, where he got his B.A. in Music, and the University of California-Berkeley, where he got his Masters in Public Policy.
