ABOUT THE PROJECT: Where you live really matters. Whether we’re talking about a neighborhood, a building, a city or a state. Where you live determines your access to the things that most shape your life: from education, to jobs, to good health. That’s why we centered our podcast in California, where so many people are struggling to afford a place to live.

Through SOLD OUT’s five-episode season, host/reporters Molly Solomon and Erin Baldassari weave together history and narrative storytelling to unpack major problems in housing and shine a light on people who are finding their own solutions. This series was created as a global pandemic ravaged communities of color and during a summer of racial justice protests that reemphasized just how precarious and inequitable America’s housing system has become for Black and brown families.

Over a period of eight weeks, Solomon and Baldassari reported, wrote, and produced the SOLD OUT series using a systems-reporting lens to highlight the inequities built into the housing system. They reveal how those systems were not built by chance, but through policy and deep racial animosity that fed and created the neighborhoods we live in today. One of the episodes delves into the origins of single-family neighborhoods, which helped create our suburbs. It analyzes how local development rules were weaponized to keep out low income residents and people of color, and contributed to racial segregation that still exists today.

Since its launch in September, SOLD OUT has become the most downloaded podcast in KQED history, with more than 415,000 new listeners. It was picked up nationally by NPR One, was highlighted on Apple Podcasts homepage, has been used as curriculum in Oakland public schools and college journalism courses, and has been shared and commented on by the highest local and state decision makers, including Governor Gavin Newsom. And a Berkeley city councilmember cited SOLD OUT in new legislation to undo the racist legacy of exclusionary zoning and end single family zoning citywide. Most importantly, it has contributed to our community -- and the nation’s -- understanding of where we live today, and our work has inspired people to examine their own roles in the housing system.

If we are going to move the needle on stories about housing, we need to interrogate the root causes of the housing crisis to understand how we got here. By illuminating possible paths forward, our series challenges the status-quo thinking that these systemic barriers are impossible to overcome.

RUNNER UP: Heidi Shin, Shaina Shealy, Renzo Garrio, Mark Ristich and Glynn Washington, “Haenyeo,” Snap Judgment