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The Bloc Power Hour with Sarah Harris is a weekly conversation at the intersection of business, culture, and community, exploring how collective action builds economic mobility and lasting power. Hosted by Sarah Harris, the show features entrepreneurs, executives, creatives, and civic leaders sharing real-world insights and strategies that turn ideas into impact. More than a conversation, The Bloc Power Hour is a mic-to-movement—amplifying voices, advancing opportunity, and activating communities through intentional dialogue.
Host Description – Sarah Harris
Sarah Harris is the President & CEO of the Black Business Association (BBA) and a longtime business leader, media publisher, and economic-development advocate in Los Angeles. Known for bridging business, policy, and storytelling, Sarah brings decades of experience championing entrepreneurs, building partnerships, and advancing equity through collective action. On The Bloc Power Hour, she uses the mic to spark conversations that inform, inspire, and move communities from insight to action.
Welcome. Alright. Good evening, Los Angeles, and welcome to The Bloc Power Hour with Sarah Harris right here on KABC 790 where we talk about business, culture, vision, and grind. I'm Sarah Harris, and it's truly good to be in this seat with you tonight as we launch a brand new weekly conversation every Monday from 6PM to 7PM focused on the people, ideas, systems shaping economic power, opportunity, and ownership across Los Angeles and beyond. This program is furnished by Elevate Media Collective, the media division of the Black Business Association, an organization that spent more than five decades advocating, building, and standing in the gap for underserved business owners, workers, and communities across Los Angeles.
Sarah:This show is recorded in advance, but we are live on social media. Welcome everybody. So if you're watching us right now, drop a comment or let us know where you're tuning in from and share your questions. We will be pulling those into the conversation later in the hour. If you want to stay connected beyond this hour, follow us @blocpowerhour and @blackbusinessassociation.
Sarah:That's where we will continue the conversation, share clips, and post updates on upcoming guests. So you've heard our theme song at the top. It was our first time airing it. We debuted it publicly on MLK Day at the King Day Parade, which is presented by the Bakewell Company and the Los Angeles Sentinel, and it felt right to bring it home here. So welcome to our show.
Sarah:And in the rhythmic words of Craig Mack, here comes a brand new flavor in ya ear. That's not about nostalgia. It's a signal because this hour is about bringing new perspectives to the conversation that shape real lives, where people live, how they work, and what kind of future gets built. So let me ground us in the mission. The Bloc Power Hour exists to spotlight the people, ideas, and systems shaping economic mobility, ownership, and influence while bridging culture, commerce, and community to inspire collective action.
Sarah:And that word, bloc, B L O C, is important. A bloc is not a place. It's not a party. It's not a label. A bloc is alignment.
Sarah:It's what happens when people stop moving in isolation and start moving with shared awareness and intention. This show exists because Los Angeles is full of brilliance, but too often that brilliance is fragmented. The Bloc Power Hour is where we connect those dots. Tonight's episode is titled Building the Bloc: Housing, Affordability, and City-Shaping Insights. And before I bring in our guests, let's look at a moment where we're in.
Sarah:Each week, the Bloc Brief looks beyond headlines or to the signals underneath what they tell us about power, capital, and opportunity. Here are a few things shaping the landscape right now.
Sarah:First, housing policy is shifting at the state and local level. California has passed a series of housing reforms designed to speed up production and encourage density, especially near transit and job centers. At the same time, here in Los Angeles, city leaders are actively debating adjustments to policies like the real estate transfer tax because of concerns about slowing new housing construction. These decisions directly affect whether housing gets built and who it's built for.
Sarah:Second, affordability pressure is still very real. Across Los Angeles County, renters and would be homeowners are spending a growing share of income just to stay housed. I know that's so real. Even as some parts of the market soften, the gap between wages and housing costs remains one of the defining economic challenges of our region.
Sarah:And third, development decisions are happening faster than public understanding. Whether it's post disaster rebuilding, new transit orientated projects or institutional investment returning cautiously to the market. The decisions that shape neighborhoods are often more long before the public conversation even catches up. Which brings us to tonight's question. How do housing decisions actually get made and who has the knowledge and power to shape the cities we're building?
Sarah:That's exactly what we're unpacking tonight. So keeping your questions coming in. And when we come back, I'll be joined by Matthew Gates, a brokerage associate and entrepreneur to start breaking this down.
Song:Yeah. Sarah Harris. Turn the mic up. Turn the power up. Welcome to the Bloc.
Song:We on the rise, feel the power in the hour— The Bloc ain’t stoppin’, every minute gettin’ louder. Stand tall, stand strong, let the whole city watch Welcome the Bloc.
Sarah:Welcome to the Bloc.
Sarah:Welcome back to The Bloc Power Hour with Sarah Harris on KABC And tonight, we are talking about how do housing decisions really get made and why is it so hard to build homes people can afford. I'm joined by Matthew Gates. Matthew works across commercial real estate brokerage, research, education, and strategy.
Sarah:He currently serves as a research lead for the Urban Land Institute's Building Healthy Places initiative, where he focuses on translating research into real world decisions making around development, health, and equity. Matthew, welcome to the Bloc Power Hour.
Matthew:Thank you, Sarah. I appreciate you having me on and congratulations to you. First episode, major moves, and couldn't happen to a better person. I've watched you, obviously, for the last several years kind of build in the work that you're doing with BBA. So honored to be a guest today.
Sarah:Thank you. I appreciate that so much. I just believe that it's so important that we give opportunities to be able to raise our voice and increase our outreach on that. So, this is one way we're doing that. Absolutely.
Sarah:Thank you so much. So tell me, Matthew, you wear several hats in commercial real estate, brokerage associate, educator, researcher, and entrepreneur. For listeners meeting you for the first time, walk us through your journey and what ultimately drives your work.
Matthew:Yeah. So I think my day job, best way to describe it, is I'm a sales associate. I focus primarily on commercial assets and multi family value add multi family properties in South Los Angeles. I've been in commercial real estate for a little over a decade now. Have a fairly nontraditional path.
Matthew:I went back to school relatively later in life after living a whole different kind of professional journey. And while I was at UCLA, I really got interested in economic development and trying to identify ways that community could take a more active role in kind of solving some of our own problems. Right? And so that put me on the path to commercial real estate. I viewed that as one of the most attainable vehicles that we had at our disposal in order to kind of rearrange, reorient the way that we imagine community, the amenities that we have, and kind of just the the built environment and the lived spaces that we have in South LA and other communities like that.
Matthew:And so when I got out of college, went to work for one of the largest shops, worked for Cushman and Wakefield for several years as a research analyst, and kind of just launched my career that way. And I've been on the sales side of the industry now for about five years. Just prior to that, in 2019, I launched a digital media platform called In The Building LA. The goal there was to really just share news and information with community so that we could be more proactive and less reactive to change.
Matthew:Change is coming. Change is inevitable. But learning how to position yourself and your family to benefit from it, to take advantage of all the benefits that are coming from change, I felt was important. So I've done that for several years. Most recently, we launched a course where we worked with 17 South Los Angeles business owners, helping them kind of understand how to navigate commercial real estate, either as a lessee or as a to buy, kind of as a vehicle or means of supporting their business.
Matthew:Most recently, had you out for an event we did in August where one of our tenants or one of I'm sorry.
Sarah:That was on Crenshaw.
Matthew:Right? Yeah. One of our students, Kika Keith, who is the CEO of GorillaRx, is probably how most people might know her, but she's also has a nonprofit called Life Development University on Crenshaw. And she came through our program and recently closed on acquiring her first commercial project or commercial property. It's a 3,000 square foot space that she'll use as a campus to do workforce development and training. And, you know, she's kinda gone through the whole thing of not only buying, but now redeveloping the the parcel, build doing a really phenomenal, beautiful build out on the inside and making it a great space for community work to happen. And that's really like the goal of of the program, and that's kinda why I got into the work with In The Building
Matthew:LA. And then finally, just you touched on it, for the last two years, I've been the research lead for the Urban Land Institute has a project called Building Healthy Places, where the goal is to figure out how to stimulate more equitable development activity in underinvested communities. Our research is really focused on the Crenshaw Corridor, but using that as a conduit for how do you look at other similar communities where for decades they've kind of been undercapitalized, under resourced across the country.
Sarah:Anything in particular with that current initiative that is most top of mind for you that you're getting out of that?
Matthew:It's it's really been like PhD level work for me from a learning standpoint. I you know, having been in the industry for a while, I think I came in with a certain set of assumptions and understandings about the kind of the challenges and how we arrived at this place. This research and having the opportunity to sit down with CEOs from some of the largest and most successful developers, particularly community based developers and community based real estate professionals across the city has really shaped and informed, given me maybe a little more nuanced perspective on the challenges and the opportunities.
Sarah:It kind of leads me to my next question where it's when people hear real estate development, they usually focus on buildings, but, not on how decisions actually get made. From your vantage point, what are you what are the real, forces shaping development today?
Matthew:That's a great question. You know, money is probably at the center of most conversations, right? So you gotta start there.
Sarah:I think it's always.
Matthew:Cannot ignore that component. I think that we're kind of in a very kind of unique period in time. For the last, you know, we didn't get to a housing crisis overnight. This is decades in the making. A lot of well intentioned policies, A lot of thought went into coming up with solutions, and the reality is that there is no silver bullet that's gonna get us out.
Matthew:Right? And so it does require a good deal of coordination and collaboration, some new ideas. We kinda gotta listen to everybody. I think that there are some good things on the table. You mentioned one in your intro kind of debating how to look at Measure ULA and the so called mansion tax, how to view that and how it maybe can be altered or modified or better implemented in a way to stimulate development.
Matthew:And so I think, you know, there's lots of smart people trying to trying to get it right, but it's challenging. It's challenging. California is there's not a lot of land, especially in Los Angeles.
Sarah:Right.
Matthew:The cost of labor is higher. And so it's not an easy fix.
Sarah:It's crazy because a lot of the as far as housing is concerned, especially the development is now we're getting these boxes. So everybody's living in these cubes or that's kind of what they're creating. And then the debate too is about, the development around, our transit systems and encroaching upon, spaces where others don't want in their backyard, but yet we put it in the places on, like say, down Crenshaw or something, and they're just like right there. It's a big debate upon, where do we put these developments up? Yeah.
Matthew:Let's talk about it.
Sarah:So, hey. So what say you about about that?
Matthew:I do think that when it's convenient, the the first solution to solving crisis is usually placed on communities that have that don't have the the the voice Or the proximity to power, right, to kind of fight back or at least to present push back a little bit on direction. Right? And so because of that, you'll see places like South LA, Willowbrook, Watts, Wilmington, Pacoima, right, become kind of destinations for affordable housing. And that's not that we don't need affordable housing in those places, right?
Matthew:And that's not that they maybe shouldn't have a larger share just because the denseness of those places. But then when, you know, conversations about, you know, placing affordable housing in more affluent beach cities comes up. Right? There's a lot of carve outs even in the state policies that allow for cities to kind of decide whether or not they're going to allow for more dense population and whether or not they're gonna force, you know, these places to have a, you know, their fair share, I guess, of affordable housing. And that's kind of where, you know, the disproportionate burden of solving the problem or solving the crisis tends to fall on communities like South LA.
Sarah:Yes. And I agree. Thank you for those perspectives. One of the thing too, in terms of your background as a researcher and in mining and bringing all of this information and data as it's a big part of your work. So why does access to information change outcomes so dramatically?
Sarah:And not just for developers, but for everyday people. Who tends to be in the room when data is driving decisions?
Matthew:That's a great question. I come from a research background. Like, I got into the industry because of that work when I was in college, started my journey as a professional practitioner in research. And so always kind of understood the value of the data. When I was at at when I was working for large brokerage shops and would spend the vast majority of my time, you know, drafting up reports that analyze, you know, submarket trends in Pasadena or whatever for office.
Matthew:What I realized is that I was sometimes the only one who was looking at the data. Right? A lot of the brokers, they would take the information and they would pass along to their clients. But they weren't necessarily all that concerned about, you know, what was happening. Particularly when, you know, at that point in time, most things were up into the right. Right? Most you know, the economy is doing relatively well, is getting better year over year. Rents are growing every year or every quarter.
Matthew:And so you can make some baseline assumptions about the direction that the market was gonna go. And from a brokerage perspective, what we're really concerned about is the transaction, right? Where it's gonna help me sell and get to the transaction, I'm here for it. Like I said, that's great when things are going well. As we've seen over the last three or four years, as interest rates have risen, that's not necessarily the case.
Matthew:And so I think that it's important just broadly to kind of understand why things are happening. And so the data is one piece. Right?
Sarah:Mhmm.
Matthew:As Jay Z talk about, you know, men lie, women lie, numbers don't. Right? The data says what it says. Exactly. Right?
Matthew:But the way we interpret the data is is a little bit different. Right? And so one of the reasons I think at a community level that I think is really important to understand the numbers, when I started digging in and kind of building out my own database of transactions, multifamily transactions in South LA, what I realized was that there were a lot of legacy landowners who were selling properties as 60 to 70¢ on the dollar compared to what the market was paying. And I think that that just comes from a lack of information. Right?
Matthew:Relying on your aunt or your friend's sister's cousin, who is a real estate agent, who may not have the technical capacity to steward and safeguard your largest investment, right, and the thing that you're actually using to pass down generational wealth your to the next generation is just, you know, it bears out in numbers. Right? And so you have a lot of folks who a lot of investors who are savvy, many of them who don't come from community, who understand where the value is.
Sarah:Well, you've touched upon something especially in light of the wildfires and the devastation happening there were
Matthew:Absolutely.
Sarah:You know, people being taken for that.
Sarah:So we're gonna go to break. But before we go, I want you to, if people are watching us live, put your comments in, and we'll get back to them after the break. But we'll be back. This is The Bloc Power Hour with Sarah Harris.
Song:This is the Bloc Power Hour. From the heart of the city where the hustle runs deep. Building up the future while the whole bloc speaks. Money moves, culture roots, legacy in action. Purpose in the people, that's the real chain
Sarah:Welcome back to The Bloc Power Hour. I'm Sarah Harris. We're on KABC and we're here with Matthew Gates. The topic is Building the Bloc: Housing, Power, and City-Shaping Insights. So as you were listening on KABC, we wanted to revisit the conversation where, we share it with some of you who are can hear it.
Sarah:The full episode will be available on podcast platforms after it airs. Just search The Bloc Power Hour with Sarah Harris on your favorite streaming platforms. And remember to follow us on social media @blocpowerhour and the black business excuse me, and @blackbusinessassociation. So Matthew, I had a question, but I kinda wanted to revisit from before the break regarding the legacy land and the, situation happening there in terms of not being able to retain and hold on to that many times given different situations. What, if anything, that you would give advice to or something to really help people to keep ahold of their property?
Matthew:Yeah, I would say first and foremost, be proactive, right? The process, good decision making usually takes much longer than we think. And so, you know, I'm working with a family now that has some properties that they hold through their nonprofits and trusts, and, you know, they're thinking about succession planning. And, you know, they've been having this conversation for two or three years, and I've been working with them now for the last year and a half, and they're probably still six months to a year away from an actual decision, right? But that just goes to the intentionality that's required to kind of understand, particularly when you're talking about multiple generations, right?
Matthew:You have, you know, so much has changed. You have just a lot of information to process and digest. So I would start with vet. Secondly, like hire competently, like vet people, get referrals, talk to multiple people
Sarah:Right.
Matthew:And then make the decision that you think is best for your family at that point in time. And then I think the last piece is particularly important in a market like this where values are not up into the right and just growing exponentially. Sellers, even buyers need to be mindful of that the data may not tell you the story that you wanna hear, but you have to be receptive to the story that it is telling you. Right? Seen some folks lose pretty heavily just because they were resistant to the new information because it didn't feel good, right?
Matthew:It was counterintuitive to kind of the narrative that we've all been sold about the values of real estate in Los Angeles that are always go up, and that's true. But if you have a timing issue, right, and you need to make a decision in an off cycle when it's not the most advantageous time to go get new financing. When there's not a it's not a great time to take your property to market because of this kind of disconnect. And then you layer on top of that an unrealistic expectation for your properties, particularly, you know, I have yet to meet a seller who doesn't think that they have a trophy asset.
Sarah:A trophy asset?
Matthew:Yeah. Like a class a premium grade a trophy asset. Right? Everybody thinks their their property deserves top dollar.
Speaker 4:Oh, okay.
Matthew:And the reality is you haven't even put any money into that thing in the last fifteen, twenty years.
Sarah:Right?
Matthew:And so just being, you know, practical and pragmatic. And, again, you know, when you're taking information from different people, then if you know, be mindful of the agendas and ulterior motives that some people may have for telling you what you want to hear.
Sarah:Oh, wow. I think that right at the top that you said about being proactive and leaning into it as opposed to waiting for somebody to, you know, come save the day for you or what have you, really understand what you have, what you can do with it. Because I think that a lot of people just tend to put stuff off or don't really, like I said before, lean into knowing what they have and the opportunities that they could be able to hold onto it or either if they must sell, then how best to sell it, you know?
Matthew:Correct.
Sarah:So really just understand it. And that's where that data comes in. Right?
Matthew:It's helpful.
Sarah:Okay.
Matthew:It's my North Star. Everybody has their own kind of way of doing things, but it doesn't steer me wrong. And I think that, you know, again, like the number is the number. I try to spend a lot of time figuring out why the number is doing what it's doing.
Sarah:For me, and we were talking about affordability, right? And so, you know, the thing is that have rents keep going up because it's mainly about rent. We have prices of homes too kind of going up, but most people, a lot of people are renting. And so we're in that cycle. And so, but there are people who are building that are charging those high rents.
Sarah:How much on those who are the developers who are charging those high rents? Because we understand that there are high there are permitting costs, there are all kind of things, the price for lumber and and everything else has gone up and all that kind of stuff. So we understand that they have the cost too. But how much of that is layered upon how much they end up charging in the rents versus what really should be where we can have a decent market for people to be able to have affordable housing?
Matthew:Yeah, we could probably spend an entire episode just on that question right there because there's a lot to unpack. I will say that there's a few different things that are driving market. I always start with just supply and demand. There's 10,000,000 people in LA County.
Sarah:Yeah. Well, we definitely need to build more. Right?
Matthew:Right. We need to build more. The challenge is figuring out how to build more and what's being built.
Matthew:Right? Particularly in community, like, you have legitimate fears and concerns about what gentrification, which is, you know, turning a blighted area into something new.
Matthew:Like, impact does that have on displacement? Right? And so I think that that's a legitimate questions. You have a lot of investors and maybe social media has fueled this, I don't know, but a lot of unseasoned investors who made assumptions on what a property was worth based on the idea that rents were gonna just grow exponentially forever.
Matthew:Right? And most working families have been tapped out on what they can afford for a long time. Right? And so there does need to be some sort of market reset. I think, honestly, that's probably why you're seeing a lot of pressure from the administration in Washington to lower interest rates as they're trying to artificially force activities so that people who made bad decisions and bad bets can refinance at a much more palatable number, so that they don't lose value. Right? That's just that's part of that. I think as it relates to new development, we have we've adopted a lot of policies, and this is this was founded in the research that that we did. So it's not necessarily just me just kinda winging it.
Matthew:But we've adopted a lot of policies that were great intentions and serve a purpose to make sure that communities are stabilized and protected, particularly in emergency. Right? And so eviction moratorium being one. Right? Rent control being another one.
Matthew:Coming out of the or going into the pandemic, right, and coming out of that with the rate with which markets were changing. Right? Policy professionals, electeds were right to try to put a put the brakes on activity while we could work through a more long term permanent solution. Right? But those are stopgap measures. They can't operate into perpetuity and solve the problem. Right? You can freeze rents.
Matthew:When you freeze rents, you're also freezing landowners' ability to put capital improvements into their properties. And so now the the quality of my living experience as a renter is just continuing to diminish, but I'm still paying, you know, dollars 2,000 a month for a single. Right?
Sarah:Right.
Matthew:I think that in talking to all the developers that we spoke with for the Building Healthy Places project, what we should really start considering is how do we incentivize the type of development that we want to see.
Sarah:Mhmm.
Matthew:Right? There are policy levers that can be used. We, you know, we're talking about measure ULA, maybe an exemption to ULA if you build x type of property. Right?
Matthew:If you have minimum design standards, excuse me, for the projects that you build. So if it costs more for you to put windows in a building. Right. Okay, cool. People deserve windows.
Matthew:Particularly if you have a view of downtown, you shouldn't be locked in a box. If it costs more
Sarah:Incentives work.
Matthew:So If it costs more because of tariffs or if it costs more because of whatever else Mhmm. Then we need to find ways to incentivize and bring the cost down.
Sarah:Well, we'll keep this rolling over into the next one because I have another question to ask you. This is The Bloc Power Hour. We will be right back.
Song:Yeah. Sarah Harris. Turn the mic up. Turn the power up. Welcome to the Bloc.
Sarah:Welcome back. Welcome back. This is The Bloc Power Hour with Sarah Harris and our guest, Matthew Gates. We have been talking about so much regarding, affordable housing, development, how things work related to, where where what what moves things. And basically, we know it's money and the data they're in.
Sarah:So we are coming back to continue to talk. I have one more basic question regarding these topics for Matthew. It's something related to, because what this show is we want to really move the needle on economic mobility. And so having said that, there are the use of land trusts and ways where we can come together as a collective and to be able to create opportunities that, especially in the affordable housing lane, I believe SoLA Impact is developing one of those kind of cooperative opportunities.
Matthew:Are they?
Sarah:Yes. And so it can you speak to that in terms of, like, related to at Leimert Park when the whole community there came together to create an opportunity where all can be able to, you know, have a seat at the table?
Matthew:Yeah. So I'm big on we don't need to solve nobody needs to solve these issues. Nobody needs to build wealth individually. Matter of fact, you can't.
Matthew:The I had the opportunity in 2021 to represent four business owners in Leimert Park. Tony Jolly from formerly Hot and Cool, now Ora, Akil West from Sole Folks, Adé Neff from Ride On! Bike Shop, and Dr. Adrian Dove from CORE, in collaboration with developer, Prophet Walker, to acquire the building that they operated out of and become owners in of a community land trust. The land trust provided stability. Right? So now those business owners can think about growing without having to worry about being priced out as Leimert Park starts to come online, when the Vision Theater opens up, and it becomes more of a destination.
Matthew:Right? And so I think it's important, kind of like just rent control in general, it has a utility, right? It has a value of making sure that community can remain stable through change. Right? But from a like pure real estate standpoint, right, the way that we've been kind of taught to think about real estate as being this creator of wealth, right, a land trust doesn't allow for that.
Sarah:Okay.
Matthew:Right? A land trust doesn't allow you to benefit the upside because the cost, the price is fixed, right, over time by design. And so I think, again, it's kind of this idea of having multiple tools in our toolbox, right? South Los Angeles, as you know, is one of the most economically diverse communities in the country. Right?
Matthew:You have folks who live up on the hill, in Baldwin Hills and and Windsor Hills and View Park who are some of the most affluent folks in the country.
Sarah:I was just at one home with the mayor and we could see the whole city. Amazing. Beautiful. Beautiful.
Matthew:Yes. Beautiful. And been like that since the sixties when black folks started to move west into into that area. At the same time, you have a lot of working force or working class individuals and families in the avenues.
Sarah:Mhmm.
Matthew:Right? Then you have, you know, Baldwin Village. Right? Yep. And so you have these tiers of different folks trying to solve and navigate the economic realities of living in LA and trying to prosper and put kids through college and and just to kinda bubble and level up.
Matthew:Right? And so we have to use multiple tools. Land trust being one of them, but also just, you know, hardcore kinda just good decision making around ownership. The the beauty and I think the part that's transferable from the the retail merchants in Leimert Park who acquired their building.
Matthew:Most other communities that I've tracked, that's how ownership is groups are put together. You may have people who don't even know each other, but there's a central figure who is the real estate investor or the lawyer, right? As long as the paperwork is right and everybody is protected legally from the downside, you have families who come together. You might have a dentist, you might have a school teacher, you might have a whatever, but they form an LLC and they acquire property. And then everybody's able to kind of punch be above their weight class, right, so to speak.
Matthew:That you can go from owning one to two to four to eight and now you're talking about real transformational like change for a family. And that's how other communities do it, Right? And so it's the idea of collective ownership and collective purpose that your show is really, you know, guided around, I think is core to, like, how we how we change the economic conditions and the prospects for us to kind of build wealth in 2026.
Sarah:Excellent. Excellent. I think we covered so much here today and it's only still just the tip of the iceberg for that. But I feel as though we was able to glean a little bit more insight into this conversation. If there was anything else in particular that came to mind for you, please tell us that either through your research or just your you know, the work you're doing in the field or something coming up for you?
Sarah:Is there anything in particular?
Matthew:I'm optimistic about the potential Right, for folks to really tap in and benefit from from real estate ownership. Obviously, that's why I'm in it. But these are like really challenging times for lots of lots of reasons. Right? Far beyond and more important than real estate. And so I do think that if we can, in Los Angeles, have more collaboration and less gatekeeping, then I think that we can elevate ideas or a bunch of ideas to the surface that can help us kind of take this multi tiered and multi pronged approach and come up with some solutions that really move things in the right direction.
Sarah:Well, definitely look forward to staying in conversation with you about that and others because we want to continue to move the needle on this. It's very important for us not to just kind of leave it here at talk, but to elevate it into action.
Matthew:Happy to come back whenever you'll have me.
Sarah:Oh, yes. Definitely. Definitely. So what I did want to do was move into a little kind of we call it a Bloc Fire. Quick little questions.
Sarah:Okay. Nothing nothing, you know, heavy or anything. Just kinda just where do they land with you? So I'll start off with let's see. Featuring one feature of a community you always notice first.
Matthew:The exterior facades on commercial corridors.
Sarah:Oh, that is actually a pet peeve or a thing for especially going down Crenshaw. I really I mean, I had heard that there was a facade project that was supposed to happen and it's just taken forever. Especially with the transit system. So I'm still hoping with the major games and stuff coming that we can be able to have that happen because yes, we wanna
Matthew:Some new paint and some new signage goes a long way.
Sarah:I agree with you on that.
Sarah:Okay. What's one word you wish people use less when talking about development or thing?
Matthew:Gentrification.
Sarah:Okay. And why is that? Why use less?
Matthew:I think that when that word is thrown out because it means so many different things to different people, we lose sight of like what we're actually trying to get at.
Sarah:Okay. Love that. Alright. Let's see here. I'll do one more.
Sarah:Something people think makes a neighborhood better but actually doesn't. Maybe that wasn't so light.
Matthew:That's deep. Something that people think makes a community better but actually doesn't. I would say just building. Right? Just the idea of just if I put By something just putting a new building over what used to That somehow be parking that's going to spark the change and be better.
Matthew:And it just doesn't.
Sarah:Right. It needs to make sense.
Matthew:In some ways it's worse because it's permanent.
Sarah:True, true. Once it's there, it's there.
Matthew:Right? It's there.
Sarah:Okay. Alright. Good stuff. Good stuff. Well, thank you.
Matthew:That was heavy hitting.
Sarah:I know. I'm sorry.
Matthew:Barbara Walters
Sarah:But they were they were good questions, though. Right?
Matthew:Great. They were great.
Sarah:I hope okay.
Sarah:Alright. So as we wrap up here, this it went quick. This is Sarah Harris. This is The Bloc Power Hour with Sarah Harris on KABC.
Sarah:Please follow us on socials @blocpowerhour and block business, excuse me, and @blackbusinessassociation. And we hope that you support us today and come back next week. We'll see you then. Thank you so much.
Song:Voices on the rise. Put the truth in the air. Power in the platform when the vision's right there. From LA to the globe. Put the fam on your back.
Song:We elevate now. Never falling off track. We rise. We rise. No ceilings in sight. Turn the lights on the city, we'd a spark in the night.