Alumni BI Fellow Terra Lawson-Remer was recently elected to the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, and she’s pushing for a nascent Berggruen idea: a public bank. A cornerstone of her platform policy, the Public Bank would finance affordable housing construction in San Diego, California. 

Affordable housing construction means below market access to land and capital, effectively lowering rent and house purchasing costs, while placing the risk on the government — a move often utilized at the Federal tier in trade negotiations. Removing the burden of risk from citizens allows for necessary access to wealth gain for marginalized communities, a shift desperately needed to level the increasingly disjointed economic playing field.

For more on Terra Lawson-Remer’s praxis, click here.