In this episode, Sarah sits down with Miguel Santana, a veteran public servant and current CEO of the California Community Foundation, to discuss what it takes to build a more equitable Los Angeles and how Measure A is redefining affordable housing and the role of community in local government.
About Our Guest
Miguel Santana is the current President and CEO of the California Community Foundation (CCF), one of the largest philanthropic organizations in Southern California. The CCF has served Angelenos for over a century, stewarding $2.3 billion in assets and managing nearly 2,000 charitable foundations, funds, and legacies. Miguel is a renowned advocate for systems change and has over three decades of experience tirelessly working towards a more equitable Southern California in government, nonprofit, philanthropic, and community sectors.
As City Administrative Officer for the City of Los Angeles, Miguel managed a $9 billion municipal budget and spearheaded the city’s first comprehensive strategy addressing homelessness. His efforts led to a successful voter-approved $1.2 billion housing bond, substantially expanding the city’s investment in housing and homelessness solutions.
Earlier in his career, Miguel served as Deputy Chief Executive Officer for Los Angeles County, overseeing vital social service programs supporting children, families, veterans, and individuals experiencing homelessness. He began his public service career with the Mexican-American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF) and as an aide to L.A. County Supervisor Gloria Molina.
Miguel currently serves as Chair of The Angeleno Project, Second Vice Chair of the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Authority (LACAHSA), and Commissioner for the CALACCOUNT Blue Ribbon Commission. He holds a Bachelor’s degree from Whittier College and a Master’s in Public Administration from Harvard University.
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Transcript
Miguel Santana 0:00
From the year before to this year, there was a 10% reduction of street homelessness. That is significant because up until, you know, 10, 15 years ago, the number was increasing exponentially. And around the country, the numbers continue to grow. So for the fact that here at Ground Zero, the place where we get the most street homelessness, we’re actually seeing a reduction, means that we’re doing something right.
Sarah Johnson 0:32
Welcome to the Pathway Podcast. I’m your host, Sarah Johnson, and thank you for joining us for this episode. Pathway to Tomorrow is a nonprofit with initiatives in housing, environmental conservation, and water security. In this podcast series, we engage with leaders working on solving some of the world’s most challenging problems by exploring innovative solutions being implemented by leading NGOs, nonprofits, think tanks, companies, and institutions focused on issues like homelessness, environmental conservation, climate change, and water security.
Sarah Johnson 1:06
Our guest today is Miguel Santana, President and CEO of the California Community Foundation, one of Southern California’s largest and most active philanthropic organizations, having served Angelinos for more than a century. CCF stewards $2.3 billion in assets and manages more than 1900 charitable foundations, funds, and legacies. Previously, Miguel served as president and CEO of the Weingart Foundation, which partners with communities across Southern California to advance racial, social, and economic justice. Miguel also served as president and CEO of Fairplex, a nonprofit community benefit organization based in Pomona, California. Miguel has more than three decades of expertise in the government, nonprofit, private, philanthropic, and community sectors, and is renowned as an advocate for systems change, and making Southern California a more equitable place for all its residents, especially those who have been historically marginalized.
Sarah Johnson 1:58
Miguel was also the city Administrative Officer for the City of Los Angeles, where he oversaw the city’s $9 billion budget and designed the city’s first ever comprehensive homelessness strategy, resulting in a $1.2 billion voter approved housing bond and a doubling of the city’s general fund investment on programs to end homelessness. Prior to joining the city, Miguel served as one of five deputy chief executive officers for Los Angeles County, overseeing all social service programs supporting children, families, veterans, and persons experiencing homelessness. Miguel began his career as a community liaison at the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, before working with LA County Supervisor Gloria Molina.
Sarah Johnson 2:39
He engages in numerous civic efforts and currently serves as the chair of the Angelino project. As well as on numerous nonprofit boards, including the New York based Surdna Foundation. Miguel is also currently the second vice chair for the LA County Affordable Housing Solutions Authority and Commissioner of the CALACCOUNT Blue Ribbon Commission. He earned his BA in sociology and Latin American Studies from Whittier College, and an MPA in public administration from Harvard University. Miguel, it’s so wonderful to have you on today. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us.
Miguel Santana 3:09
Thank you so much for inviting me
Sarah Johnson 3:14
To start us off Miguel, you’ve had an impactful career that’s included leadership in both the public and philanthropic sectors. Can you share a bit about your journey with us and what has motivated you to work towards social and economic equity in Southern California?
Miguel Santana 3:29
Well, in many ways, my origin story as a native Angelino reflects that of many people in the community. I’m a son of immigrants. My parents were undocumented through most of my childhood. I’m the first in my family to go to college and to graduate from college. I’m also a young I was a young father. I became a father before 20 and raised four children, was able to navigate being a father and finishing school by working three jobs through the generosity of the government and and in philanthropy and very much, decided to pursue a career in public service after witnessing the community that I love go through the civil unrest in the early 90s.
Miguel Santana 4:30
And so I am a product of Los Angeles. My story is very similar to that of many people here in LA. And so because of that, I feel this great sense of responsibility to give back to the community, to respond to the inequities that our community is confronting, and to really pursue an LA that serves everyone.
Sarah Johnson 4:58
Thank you so much for sharing that Miguel, that’s an incredible background story. My next question for you centers around your work in systems change. Your work has been centered around systems change. Can you explain what that concept means to you and how it’s influenced your approach to leadership in both government and philanthropy?
Miguel Santana 5:19
Well, oftentimes philanthropy thinks about, you know, responding to the gaps in our system, providing food and shelter for those who are hungry and unhoused, providing scholarships to those who don’t have access to higher education. You know, supporting the most vulnerable in our community, and that’s important.
Miguel Santana 5:50
Also important is eliminating the gaps that exist that create those circumstances in the first place. So, much of my career has been about pursuing both supporting those who are the most vulnerable, the most marginalized, those furthest away from opportunity, and at the same time asking the bigger question about what is it that we need to do to eliminate the barriers and the gaps that exist in the way we support our community. So I think philanthropy’s role is really to do both. Is to work with nonprofit organizations that are responding to the inequities in our society, and at the same time identify solutions that are eliminating those inequities for the long term.
Sarah Johnson 6:45
That makes a lot of sense. So this leads me to my next question, Miguel. I’d like to talk a little bit about your experience as the city administrative officer for Los Angeles. You served as the city administrative officer for LA during which there are two different mayors, Mayor Villaraigosa and Mayor Garcetti, and during that time, you spearheaded the city’s first ever comprehensive homelessness strategy. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced in developing this strategy, and what unique insights did this initiative uncover about the nature of this problem and potential solutions, and if you could also speak to how you secured the support you needed to move this forward.
Miguel Santana 7:24
So when I arrived to the city 15 years ago, it was in fiscal crisis. The great recession had a significant impact on the city’s revenues and its costs, and my primary focus was around ensuring that the city remains fiscally solvent. And so, there were a lot of hard decisions that needed to be made, a lot of restructuring of the city as an organization, identifying new revenue streams.
Miguel Santana 7:57
And then so that was largely what my work was like during the first four years under Mayor Villaraigosa, and then in the second half of my career at the city, once the city’s fiscal house was in order and with the you know, a new Mayor who was interested in really responding to the quality of life issues Angelenos are facing. I was able to really leverage my experience at the county of Los Angeles for 16 years, where, among the many things that I did, I worked on the issue of homelessness and housing, and offer the mayor and the city council a structure and a plan to clarify the city’s role around homelessness and housing, and to do so in coordination with the county.
Miguel Santana 8:58
What makes this complicated is that homelessness as an issue really involves significant coordination and collaboration between the government. The county is responsible for the services and the outreach, and the city is responsible for the building of housing. You cannot end homelessness without housing, to be in houses, to be without a home. And so housing is an important equation, part of the but at the same time, particularly for those who are chronically housed, it’s services to support them during, through their addiction or to respond to their mental illness or to other ailments that may have are critically important. So the homeless strategy that we developed was in coordination, and one of the things that we clarified was that the city would take on the task of building 10,000 units of permanent supportive housing to really support the most chronic. The most vulnerable, unhoused members of our community. We presented a proposal to the broader community, and they supported it overwhelmingly.
Miguel Santana 10:18
It received two-thirds majority vote to have a bond that would result in the building of 10,000 units. Then a few months later, the county went ahead and pursued a sales tax to beef up their service capacity and the way they provide services to the community, and we made a commitment that for every house, every unit of housing, the city would build, the county would commit to providing the services, that commitment still stands today. So we’ve learned a lot since those initial days. From those learnings, we were able to introduce measure A, which was one measure that allowed the region to start building affordable housing, and at the same time provided a permanent revenue stream for the county for the services. And so that’s now starting to be implemented, but it was informed by the lessons learned of the last efforts.
Sarah Johnson 11:25
Thank you for sharing that. Miguel. For my next question, I’d like to dive a little deeper into HHH. So the homelessness strategy that you architected resulted in a $1.2 billion vote-approved housing bond, as you mentioned, for Los Angeles, known as HHH, which is funded 8586 housing units to date. Can you speak to some of the specific lessons learned from the implementation of this program that organizations working today in this space can leverage in combating homelessness in Los Angeles and other cities?
Miguel Santana 12:00
So you know, the building of affordable housing is, unfortunately, very complex, particularly the financing of it. In the past, the main strategy has been to leverage multiple revenue sources from the state, from the federal government, tax credits from philanthropy, and here locally, and really creating a layered cake of funding streams that would allow for the building of affordable housing. It is that complex system that has unintended consequences, such as significantly increasing the cost per unit, and I saw that firsthand when I left the city I was appointed as the chair of the Triple H Oversight Committee, which was really a citizen’s body that was looking at the questions of time and cost. And what we saw was that the requirement for leveraging the investments that the public was making were significantly adding to the cost, because each one of these investments have their own processes, their own expectations.
Miguel Santana 13:50
So originally, the project started off at 350 per unit, the rate increased up to 800,000 per unit. And the challenge with that is that it’s not a scalable program when you have to build at that level. The other thing that we discovered is that it takes a lot of time. Unfortunately, it was taking, on average, between five to six years to build these units, and when we know that the crisis is today. So we intentionally designed measure H and measure A rather to make it much more nimble and not requiring so much complexity, so that housing can be built much faster and more, and in a more cost-effective way.
Sarah Johnson 14:05
Thank you for sharing that, Miguel, that’s really encouraging to hear about Measure A. For my next question, I’d like to ask, in retrospect, what systems change do you feel is necessary to enable the public sector, philanthropy, and in the nonprofit sector to tackle homelessness in the most efficient, timely, and cost-effective manner possible.
Well, one of the requirements in Measure A is that local government work with the community to set five-year goals and, on how the public investment will actually result in a reduction in homelessness an increase in affordable housing, an increase in services. And so Measure A mandates that these goals be adopted and that they be tracked on a regular basis, and that the success and failures in meeting those goals be an important part of deciding. Future funding allocations, and so that has now happened for the first time in the County’s history. We now have goals that have been adopted as a region to reduce the number of unhoused people, to increase affordable housing, to increase access to basic services.
Miguel Santana 15:25
And the goal here is to constantly learn from the successes and the failures of implementing it and making real-life, real-time changes as we move forward. So that kind of systemic approach to create a regional system, a regional plan, regional accountability with regional goals, is a first, and frankly, doesn’t exist anywhere else in the country. So that level of oversight and governance is going to be an important step in ending homelessness in LA.
Sarah Johnson 16:03
Thank you for sharing that, Miguel. It’s exciting to hear, and this iMeasure A is relatively new, so we have some time to see how it will look for the region.
Miguel Santana 16:17
That’s right
Sarah Johnson 16:18
For my next question, Miguel, looking at where we are in Los Angeles in 2025, what progress have you seen in how the city is tackling homelessness and you’ve already spoken to this, but the but I wanted to know if there are recent initiatives or changes that give you hope for lasting solutions to this problem.
Miguel Santana 16:36
Well, I mean, one of the significant milestones is that for the first time in many, many years, the city is actually seeing a reduction of unhoused people. From the year before to this year, there was a 10% reduction of street homelessness. That is significant because up until, you know, 10, 15 years ago, the number was increasing exponentially. And around the country, the numbers continue to grow. So for the fact that here at Ground Zero, the place where we have the most street homelessness, we’re actually seeing a reduction, means that we’re doing something right. And there’s a couple of things that are working. The first is that the units that I mentioned that were supported are finally up. As you mentioned, there’s 8000 and there’s, you know, the other 2000 are on their way. So by the 10-year mark of the adoption of Measure A in 2027, there’ll be 10,000 units of permanent supportive housing.
Miguel Santana 17:49
These are units that take care of the most vulnerable Angelenos. But the other thing that’s been significant is that Mayor Bass introduced an initiative that really responds to the street crisis by moving people into interim housing as soon as possible, which is a significant change from the way things are normally done in the past. You know, the idea was that you only put someone into permanent housing, and that meant that you had to tell someone who may be in house that they’re going to have to wait a significant amount of time until that unit is built before they could be moved in, which results in their condition, not only worsening. Certainly, for women, it’s a violent place for them to be on the street. And so what Mayor Bass has led is an initiative called Inside Safe, that takes and house people, encampment by encampment, and moves them into interim housing while permanent housing is being found for them. And that is significant, because what has resulted is that we actually see a decline in the number of unhoused people, and so it acts as a model of what to do. So it means that you have to do both. You have to continue to build affordable housing, permanent supportive housing for those who are most chronic, but also create an expansion of interim housing so that people don’t have to wait on the street before they are housed into a permanent location.
Sarah Johnson 19:27
Absolutely, interim housing is so critical, and the Inside Safe program has been a tremendous success, from what I’ve seen as well. So for my next question, Miguel, I’d like to shift gears and talk about your current role at the California Community Foundation. You were appointed president and CEO of the California Community Foundation in 2023. What were your initial goals when you took on this new role, and how did they align with the foundation’s long-standing mission?
Miguel Santana 19:57
Well, the reason why I came to the California Community Foundation is because community foundations have additional tools that private philanthropy does not, and that’s largely to engage in public policy. So at my first board meeting, I invited the mayor and the chair of the board of supervisors at that time to come and join me in presenting Measure A, which, as you pointed out, was approved in November. And the reason why they did it is because we have been working together on Measure A, a citizen-driven initiative to not only provide an ongoing revenue stream, but as important to provide a level of capability, and from that, the board not only endorsed Measure A but they allowed me to actually be listed as one of the signatures that was proposing it to the broader public.
Miguel Santana 21:02
I was one of four Angelinos who’s listed on the ballot, and also at the end, we end up supporting it, making significant investments in educating the community about why this ballot measure was important, and then explaining the trade-offs, and so, that tool is a significant, has significant power to be able to leverage the investment that philanthropy has with public investment. So we ended up spending about $6 million to get the signatures and get to the Measure A ballot, and from that, we’ve been able to leverage over a billion dollars a year of new resources to respond to the crisis.
Sarah Johnson 21:57
That’s incredible. Thank you so much for your leadership in getting that passed. It’s going to be exciting to see the impact that it has in the coming years. So my last question for you, Miguel, something I like to ask all of our guests is, what would you say are some of the behavioral changes that need to take place in the public and private sectors, as well as on an individual level, to help advance Sustainable Development Goal 1. Ending poverty by ensuring access to adequate and affordable housing, and Sustainable Goal 11, to make cities more inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable for all.
Miguel Santana 22:34
I think the coordination around shared goals becomes very important because most issues require multi-jurisdictional approaches and investments. And you know, the government is not used to working in that way. It often only thinks about their role, their individual role in supporting a member of the community, but don’t quite connect the dots on how someone may be confronting different levels of government and not knowing that they are at different levels of government.
Miguel Santana 23:17
So, establishing a human-centered approach that doesn’t focus on who does what, but rather focuses on supporting that individual in whatever way they need, becomes very, very important. And it’s something that we’re just beginning to develop, but it starts by having shared goals and convening to remove the barriers that people confront as they access services and receive support.
Sarah Johnson 23:52
Absolutely, well, thank you so much for sharing that, Miguel, and for your time today, it’s been a pleasure to learn more about your leadership and insights in the space of homelessness and housing, and your current work and vision for the California Community Foundation. To our listeners, thank you for tuning in, and don’t forget to subscribe to the Pathway Podcast to get alerts on new episodes featuring leaders working in housing, environmental conservation, climate change, and water security.
Miguel Santana 24:18
Thank you.
Sarah Johnson 24:20
Thank you, Miguel.