ACC together with the Development Action Group (DAG), will be hosting a seminar entitled Housing Opportunities for All, presented by Dr Krista Paulsen and Dr Vanessa Fry, both fellows of the Mandela Washington Fellowship Programme. The Seminar, on Thursday 22 September 2022, from 15:30 to 17:00 will be chaired by Ryan Fester, project coordinator for DAG, one of Cape Town’s leading land and housing NGOs.
Dr Vanessa Fry and Dr Krista Paulsen, of Boise State University, are currently working with Ryan Fester of DAG to explore the challenges and solutions to providing affordable, accessible housing. Both Boise, Idaho, and Cape Town, are confronting accelerated growth and housing disparities associated with amenity-based migration and legacies of inequalities. Both scholars will share accounts and analyses of the Boise housing markets as well as the detailed strategies being employed to increase housing access in the region. With Fester, they will work to draw parallels to the Cape Town context and discuss with participants possible common solutions.
Dr Krista Paulsen, is a trained urban sociologist and practitioner of qualitative research methods. Krista has published and presented on dimensions of urban and neighbourhood change including processes of gentrification, tourism incursion into neighbourhoods, and social inequality and exclusion – all of which will be addressed in this exchange. Through her research and her role as Programme Lead for Urban Studies and Community Development, she has developed numerous community partnerships that benefit both students and the larger Boise community, including multiple community-engaged research projects on housing access and affordability. She has experience developing international collaborations between universities and is positioned to integrate products of this exchange into the curriculum within Boise State’s Interdisciplinary Programs.
Dr Vanessa Fry is the Director of Idaho Policy Institute and Associate Research Faculty at Boise State University in Boise, ID, and Adjunct Faculty at Presidio Graduate School in San Francisco, CA. She leads students, staff, and faculty in providing innovative and objective mixed-methods research to help public sector, private sector, and nonprofit leaders overcome challenges and navigate change. She has focused both her work (both research and teaching) and education on utilising multi-sector, evidenced-based solutions to address persistent social, environmental, and economic issues and meet the current and critical needs in communities. Her work requires identification and equitable engagement of collaborators, flexibility, creativity, and tenacity. She holds a BA in biology and fine art from Wittenberg University (Ohio, USA), a MBA in sustainable management from Presidio Graduate School (California, USA), and a PhD from Boise State University (Idaho, USA).
WHEN | Thursday, 22 September 2022
TIME | 15:30 to 17:00
VENUE | Davies Reading Room, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT
