About the Authors

Leah Rothstein’s expertise in the full range of housing policy stems from more than two decades as a community and union organizer and a consultant to housing developers, cities and counties, redevelopment agencies, and private firms. She specializes in community development and affordable housing policy, practice, and finance.

Since Just Action's release, Leah has traveled the country, speaking to community groups, real estate associations, congregations, civil rights organizations, universities, housing professionals, bankers, and many others about how we can all take just actions to redress segregation. She has delivered the keynote address at numerous national and regional housing, human rights, economic development, and real estate conferences. She continues to advise local governments and community organizations on strategies to promote fair housing and challenge segregation.

Leah has worked on public policy and community change, from the grassroots to the halls of government. She led research on reforming community corrections policy and practice to be focused on rehabilitation, not punishment. She has been a consultant on community development and affordable housing policy, practice, and finance. Her policy work is informed by her years as a community and labor organizer.

Leah received a Bachelor Degree, with honors, in American Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a Master of Public Policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

She lives in Oakland, California with her partner, Skye. To resist the isolation of single-family housing, they have created a co-housing compound with friends.

Richard Rothstein, the author of The Color of Law (2017) and co-author with his daughter, Leah Rothstein, of Just Action, has written many books and articles on educational policy and racial inequality. Until his attempt at retirement in 2018, most of his work over the previous 30 years was done under the auspices of the Economic Policy Institute, with a break from 1999 to 2002 when he wrote “Lessons,” the education column of the New York Times.

His work in the 1990s and 2000s on the racial achievement gap in schools led him to conclude that the biggest problem facing American education was the segregation of its schools, that left classrooms overwhelmed by the social and economic challenges faced by low-income, disproportionately African American, children. Recognizing that schools are segregated mostly because the neighborhoods in which they are located are segregated, he decided to investigate how those neighborhoods came to be segregated, and this led him to explain it in The Color of Law.

Previous books include Grading Education: Getting accountability right (2008); Class and Schools: Using social, economic, and educational policy to close the black-white achievement gap (2004); and The Way We Were?: The myths and realities of America's student achievement (1998). He co-authored All Else Equal: Are public and private schools different? (2003); and The Charter School Dust Up: Examining the evidence on enrollment and achievement (2005). Many of his other publications can be found at: https://www.epi.org/people/richard-rothstein/