Denim has long been referred to as the fabric of American lives, and Levi Strauss & Company’s plan to become publicly traded once again in early 2019 merely reinforces that point.

Although the brand Levi Strauss & Co. was hugely popular throughout the mid to late 20^th century, the denim maker’s clothing started to decline in popularity in the late 1990s, causing the company to go private. Today, however, Levi’s has experienced a full comeback, with the iconic label clearly pronounced on the jeans and jean jackets of many Americans as well as consumers across the globe.

Thanks to the return of Levi’s products to mainstream fashion, the company is well-situated financially to return to public markets. In its most recent quarter, revenue grew 11%, with the entire brand delivering 12% growth over the quarter. Furthermore, the company’s women’s business grew for the 13^th straight quarter. The most recent earnings report also boasted strength in the direct-to-consumer area, thanks in part to the fact that the chain opened 65 new stores over the course of the last year.

Levi Strauss & Co.’s 2017 annual report also demonstrated its strong financial position. In addition to strong net revenue, gross margin, earnings before income taxes, and free cash flow, the company reported having its lowest net debt since 2000. Source: 2017 Annual Report

But what propelled Levi Strauss to go from America’s forgotten brand to being set to issue an IPO in 2019 that will purportedly raise between $600 and $800 million, and value the company at $5 billion? First, denim’s fashionableness seems to be back, with jean jackets and bell bottom jeans being worn by many once again. In fact, the denim market is expected to reach $79 million by 2023, thanks in part to the growth and transformation of the Asian retail clothing industry. For Levi’s in particular, however, the money that the company invested in a research and development center in the early 2010s, called Eureka Innovation Lab, seems to be paying off. Levi’s recently unveiled new technology that allows it to automate new parts of the denim-making process, ranging from design to manufacturing, which not only saves time and effort, but also creates less waste and thus is more sustainable.

Levi’s now uses lasers to distress its jeans, not people. Source: Wall Street Journal

Levi’s also diversified its products by expanding its women’s wear recently, causing sales for women’s clothing to rise from $800 million a year in 2015 to over $1 billion in 2018. On top of all of those factors, it certainly helps that celebrities have come to love Levi’s, with the Kardashian family all wearing different pairs of Levi’s in their 2017 Christmas card.

The company continues to diversify its products, focusing less on men’s wear and pants. Source: Quartzy

But beyond those factors, something that has undoubtedly attracted consumers to Levi Strauss & Co. products over those of their competitors has been the company’s values. Self-described as “values-driven,” the CEO of Levi’s, Chip Bergh, has been an outspoken supporter of various highly politicized and relevant issues. In November 2016, he wrote an open letter asking gun owners not to bring their weapons into Levi’s stores after a customer was accidentally shot. Bergh has since defended the company’s gun policy and asked other business leaders to stand up against gun violence, while also taking a variety of steps including establishing the Safer Tomorrow Fund earlier this year which directs money to support nonprofits working to end gun violence. The company has also partnered with like-minded clothing maker Patagonia to create MakeTimeToVote.org, an initiative that gave employees time off to vote in the recent midterm elections also encouraged other large corporations to follow in suit. Furthermore, in late summer of 2018, the company announced its 2025 Climate Action Strategy, an aggressive and detailed plan that includes achieving 100% renewable electricity and a 90% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions at all of its factories in less than a decade.

At a time when consumers care not just about how their clothes look but also about how they were made, where the materials were sourced from, and what the seller believes in, Levi’s has managed to cultivate an ethically-minded fashion brand supported by aggressive values-driven initiatives. At the same time, the company has found increased cultural relevance, and has willingly taken the plunge into the world of automation in order to improve its processes and create better products. While other companies fear mechanization or stagnate as they try to figure out how meaningfully decrease environmental impact, Levi’s has forged a unique path for itself by embracing the current challenges posed to businesses in the modern economy. Given their carefully-devised and multi-faceted approach, it seems highly likely that Levi’s will easily raise its projected $600 million—and perhaps even more—when the time comes in 2019.

Increasingly warm summers, terrible wildfires, destructive hurricanes—these are just three visible and tangible impacts of our warming planet. But these symptoms of climate change also have another destructive impact, which is an economic one. A 2017 estimate by the Universal Ecological Fund found that the “economic loses from weather events influenced by human-induced climate change and health damages due to air pollution caused by fossil fuel burning are currently costing an average of $240 billion a year—or about 40% of the current economic growth of the United States economy.” Furthermore, researchers have found that if we managed to slow the rising earth’s temperature to be 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures instead of 2.0 degrees, “per capita GDP would be 5% higher by 2100.” Thus, the higher the temperature rise, the greater the negative impact on GDP.

Source: CarbonBrief

One potential solution that seeks to curb both the negative environmental and economic effects of climate change is a carbon tax. According to the World Bank, a carbon tax sets a direct price on carbon by defining a tax rate on greenhouse gas emissions, or the carbon content of fossil fuels. If implemented across the globe, $200 billion in potential revenues could be created to be re-invested into the economy to reduce emissions, promote energy efficiency, and move away from our world’s destructive reliance on fossil fuels.

Source: The Economic Case for Climate Action in the United States

Some countries have already employed such a tax. In 2012, Japan implemented a carbon tax, but to some, “at less than $2 per ton it provides a weak incentive.” This year, Canada has also set plans to implement a carbon tax. Perhaps the most robust supporter of such a tax has been the Nordic nations, where in Denmark the tax is $25 per ton, in Norway and Finland around $50 per ton, and in Sweden a whopping $130 per ton. Carbon is also taxed in some capacity in other nations like Ireland, Chile, Australia, and New Zealand.

With no sign of such a policy in the works by Congress in the United States, states are taking action. In Boulder, Colorado, where a carbon tax has been in place since 2007, emissions have been reduced by over 100,000 tons a year and $1.8 million is raised by the fee. Tomorrow in Washington, voters will evaluate a carbon tax on the ballot—for the second time. In 2016, citizens said no to a similar initiative on the ballot because it was “revenue neutral,” meaning that the money raised from the duty went back to poor households. This year, Initiative 1631 puts the proceeds of the tax to programs specifically focused on reducing the impacts of global warming, such as lowering greenhouse gas emissions, preserving environmental habitats, improving public transit, and upping the use of clean energy.

The benefits are theoretically twofold—a tax forces people to slow their use of unsustainable energy sources, and also redirects funds from those who continue to burn fossil fuels towards addressing global warming. In this key difference, the ballot this year does not propose a tax, but instead a fee – it’s a regulatory mechanism that can collect revenue to specifically address climate change.

Those skeptical of carbon taxes argue that such a levy would hurt our nation’s economy, since fossil fuels produce around 85% of the energy we consume in the US. In Washington specifically, supporters of the tax have been up against the entire oil industry, which has spent over $31 million to get voters to vote against the initiative. Furthermore, The Seattle Times came out in opposition to the tax after concluding that the initiative would originally cost a suburban family with two vehicles around $240 a year. However, that argument assumes that families will continue to use the same amounts of gas, electricity, and other sources of energy that they do currently, even though the entire purpose behind the levy is to get corporations and regular people to think twice about how they can better incorporate renewable sources of energy into their lives.

Ultimately, Washington’s choice tomorrow comes down to whether the state wants to be a progressive leader on climate change in our country. While experts admit that the measure isn’t perfect, those serious about combatting climate change agree that Initiative 1631 seems like a reasonable way to address the environmental—and the resulting economic—impacts of global warming while still funneling money back into the economy. While the shift towards sustainable sources rather than harmful fossil fuels is sure to be an upward battle, given the current state of our planet, it’s also one worth fighting.

While the economy of Los Angeles is booming right now, finding an affordable place to live is increasingly difficult for many residents. If the mounting housing crisis is not addressed soon, the city’s future will likely be fraught with economic turbulence and crippling infrastructure.

Data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition indicates that on average, a worker in 2017 would need to earn $29.71 an hour in order to afford a 2-bedroom apartment. In the case that a worker can’t find a job at that wage, they would instead have to work 113 hours per week—almost 3 times the number of hours worked by the average American—at California’s minimum wage rate of $10.50 in order to afford a 2-bedroom. Additionally, over the past year, the average price per square foot in Los Angeles rose 8.7%, from $584 to $635. And that increase is indicative of a larger upward trend in cost over the past few years.

Source: LA Times

Rising unaffordability should be a point of major concern. The higher cost of buying or renting pushes the working poor out of the housing market all together, leading them to slip into homelessness, and also keeps those without a home at all on the streets. It also is causing more people to leave California than the number currently moving to the Golden State. Plus, unaffordability means Angelenos are living further from where they work and enduring a grueling commute, which Alan Greenlee, Executive Director of the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing, notes has “all kinds of bad outcomes” ranging from greenhouse gas emissions to straining infrastructure. Thus, these implications equate to growing inequality and pose a long-term threat to the stability of the city’s economy.

Los Angeles is not alone. Rather, the city is one of many major metropolitan areas that is experiencing extraordinary unaffordability. In Denver, builders cannot keep up with the pace of migration into the city, which is one factor causing the housing market to slow. In the now notoriously-expensive Bay Area, the New York Times’ Karen Zraick reported in summer 2018 that the “the federal government pegs the ‘fair market rent’ for a two-bedroom in the San Francisco area at $3,121” where the median home price “has climbed above $1 million”. On the other side of the country, the majority of homes in Boston cost between $500,000 and $1 million. In Miami, the city offers only 26 affordable housing units out of every 100 extremely low-income (ELI) renter households, compared to a still-abysmal national average of 35.

Median list prices per square foot since 2011 in five U.S. cities that have experienced an unaffordability crisis (Zillow)

What’s causing the crisis in these cities? First, rising mortgage rates have made buyers wait to purchase homes, leading to less on the market and thus an increase in prices. Plus, residential investment has been falling steadily for three consecutive quarters across the country, meaning construction and brokers fees are continually shrinking.

In Los Angeles specifically, Greenlee says the housing affordability crisis can be traced back to “a pretty simple economic issue. Supply under-paces demand, and as a result, prices go up.”

Rising mortgage rates across the United States (LA Times)

One way to curb the higher costs that come with less supply may be through higher wages. Higher wages translate to more money in people’s pockets to spend on housing, and L.A. has set a progressive schedule for raising the minimum wage until 2020. However, Los Angeles Times writer Kerry Cavanaugh concludes that, “even $15 an hour won’t help much in Los Angeles as long as the cost of housing remains so high.” In the most recent quarter of 2018, annual home price appreciation was higher than weekly wage growth in Los Angeles, as it has often been recently. Thus, although wages are rising, prices are rising faster.

Another policy option to curb the crisis would be to increase rent control across the city. Recent research indicates that moderate rent control would stabilize rents, and thus overall help quell the crisis. Although rent control could help, even proponents acknowledge its only one of many necessary steps that should be taken. Plus, like raising minimum wage, it’s another strategy that merely puts a Band-Aid on the larger problem.

According to Greenlee and other experts, the ultimate answer to the crisis—and the only one that addresses the root problem—is to build more. Doing so would not only help to decrease housing unaffordability, but it would also address a connected epidemic in Los Angeles: homelessness.

Although homelessness is a result of many contributing factors, on the most basic level, “homelessness is primarily a housing issue,” says Dr. Benjamin Henwood, a professor at the University of Southern California and an expert on homelessness and affordable housing.

In Los Angeles today, homelessness is unavoidably obvious. Between 2012 and 2018, experts believe that homelessness in L.A. increased 75% from 32,000 to around 55,000 individuals. However, recent data by the Economic Roundtable tells a different story, with analysts finding that 102,278 people in Los Angeles became homeless at some point last year. Either way, the rise in homelessness is one of the clearest signs of a broken housing system.

Source: LA Times

Henwood argues that as a whole, “housing shortages will continue to undermine best efforts to address homelessness.” Although not all affordable housing addresses the needs of homeless individuals who are out of the housing market entirely, building more affordable housing in general would still help to curb both homelessness and housing unaffordability.

Research backs up this argument. In 2017, Zillow researchers found that the “relationship between rising rents and increasing homelessness is particularly strong in four metro areas currently experiencing a crisis in homelessness,” one of which was Los Angeles.

Source: Zillow

Therefore, greater supply and lower prices for Angelenos would help not just those currently searching for a home, but would also have the trickle-down effect of reducing the number of homeless. While a combination of tactics is needed to address homelessness, to address the larger housing crisis, building more homes is a good place to start for everyone.

Through the visibility of rising homelessness, Los Angeles has already taken some first steps to improve the greater housing crisis. After voters had to live and breathe in direct contact with the sprawling homeless population for a number of years due to changed regulations, they took action, and in November 2016 passed measure JJJ, which ensured that “if developers are going to make something, it had to include housing that was available for low-income people” says Greenlee. That same year, voters also passed Proposition HHH, which funded affordable housing through a bond program. And before that, the county in 2015 decided to dedicate $100 million a year to support affordable housing development.

According to Greenlee, those policy changes were driven by the fact that “people decided our current situation related to homelessness was intolerable.” While the programs in place have admittedly run into roadblocks, they are certainly steps in the right direction by Greenlee’s standards.

Looking ahead, the next steps are for policymakers to continue to promote and propose programs to fund affordable housing, and also to ensure they are properly executed. But beyond building rapidly and intentionally, Angelenos also need to get out of the way for real change to occur. Greenlee notes that one of the biggest impediments has not been to convince people to support propositions that would build affordable housing, but rather to coax people to accept greater density in their areas.

As an example, Greenlee noted a recent housing development program put forward by the mayor of Los Angeles, in which council districts would be required to create temporary housing. In some areas – like Koreatown, Venice, and Sherman Oaks – local residents met that proposal with furry, enraged that they would have to live in close contact with the homeless. Instead of standing in opposition, Angelenos should vocalize their support for greater density in their areas rather than—as Greenlee described— “going bananas” when they hear affordable housing is coming.

Protestors in Koreatown, Los Angeles reacting to plans for homeless housing in their area (LA Weekly)

While on the one hand, people want to be as far away as possible from the poor, many Angelenos are also worried about seeing a decline in the value of their properties if low-income housing is nearby. However, if the city is serious about solving the crisis, Angelenos need to acknowledge that the homeless likely already live in their neighborhoods—just on the street rather than inside—and that building more affordable housing helps not just those without homes, but everyone who is seeing skyrocketing prices due to extreme demand.

Citizens also need to educate themselves about the issue. Experts are generally in agreement that the most comprehensive solution to the crisis is to build more homes. But, a recent USC Dornsife/ LA Times poll indicates that many constituents believe the housing unaffordability crisis is a result of a lack of rent control. While rent control is an issue, this data indicates that people still don’t actually understand the crisis. If instead, Angelenos better understood the issue, they would perhaps be more likely to support additional legislation, and to accept shifts in the make-up of their neighborhoods as necessary.

As a whole, this is not the type of crisis that is impossible to solve. Rather, the solution is relatively clear, but the largest obstacle blocking the way forward is Angelenos themselves.

A place to live is one of the most basic human necessities on earth. Yet for many across the country, recent economic trends have made finding an affordable place to live increasingly difficult.

Today, more than half of America’s homes are at higher prices than they were before the Great Recession. And the issue doesn’t just impact buyers – according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, no state in America has enough affordable rental housing for the lowest income renters. In California specifically, the state faces a shortage of over 1.1 million available rental homes for extremely low income (ELI) individuals.

Source: National Low Income Housing Coalition

In somewhat rare form, this issue hurts not just those at the bottom, or ELI and homeless individuals, but also those at the top, who also have to cough up more dough in order to afford a home or luxury apartment. Alan Greenlee, Executive Director of the Southern California Association of Nonprofit Housing, says he’s sure “Dr. Dre is pissed off that he had to pay 15 million dollars for Gisele Bundchen and Tom Brady’s house in Malibu,” just like regular Americans across the country are growing progressively disheartened by and frustrated with the trend.

Luckily, a multitude of creative and ambitious tactics are already underway across the country. Some Americans are choosing to participate in the ever-growing “Yes in My Backyard” or YIMBY campaign, which seeks to convert extra living spaces in backyards into licensed and habitable areas for low-income or homeless individuals. The movement has local chapters across the United States, and just held its annual YIMBYtown conference in Boston in late September. In particular, YIMBY has aggressive goals in California, where it sets out what it calls an “Inclusionary Policy Design” to compressively address the housing crisis in the state.

Local legislators are also stepping in. In Denver, the city is subsiding luxury apartments, allowing individuals who make between 40-80% of average area incomes to pay only up to 35% of their salaries to live in expensive apartments that would otherwise sit empty. In Austin, nonprofits and grassroots organizers pushed in June for the City Council to approve a bond initiative that would dedicate $300 million to build new permanently affordable housing units. And in Los Angeles, a variety of propositions and measures have been paying special attention to affordable housing since 2016.

Although these tactics and transformations are bold and well-intentioned, are they doing enough?

At the end of the day, the housing crisis sweeping across the nation is “a pretty simple economic issue. Supply under-paces demand, and as a result, prices go up,” says Greenlee.

While the relationship between supply and demand relationship is the root cause, in Denver, which was pegged to be one of the nation’s “hottest” housing markets in 2018, “sales and construction activity have slowed,” according to Ben Cassleman at the New York Times, meaning less homes are on the market. In fact, across the US, residential investment has been falling steadily for three consecutive quarters, meaning construction and brokers fees are continually shrinking. From there, add in rising mortgage rates. Mix together all of those forces and there you have it – a deadly combination that created a slowdown in the housing economy, leaving Americans to feel the burn all across the country.

Citizens have chosen to adapt in different ways. From Greenlee’s perspective, it comes down to two options: either live in a “catastrophically overcrowded situation” in order to afford high rent in a desirable or at least tolerable place, or move further away from where you work, which in Los Angeles means that you usually subject yourself to a horrific morning commute.

In California specifically, Greenlee argues that the state is a victim of how good it was at building housing after the second World War. At that time, everyone believed that living in the coastal state meant you could get a house, a yard, and a nice green lawn. Today, that is nowhere near the case. Compound the trend of not building enough homes over the course of an entire generation, and Greenlee says you have the very simple explanation for how we arrived at where we are today.

One way to curb the higher costs that come with less supply may be through higher wages. From 2007 to 2015 in the United States, the median price of rent rose 6 percentage points, whereas the median income for renter households rose only 1%. In California in 2017, a worker would have needed to earn around $31 an hour or work 118 hours a week at minimum wage just to afford a two-bedroom apartment. Perhaps even more startling is the fact that rents over the last 10 years in California have gone up 13%, but incomes have actually gone down 6%, says Greenlee.

Source: National Low Income Housing Coalition

But of course, California just raised the minimum wage to $13.25 an hour, with a progressive system set up to continue increases for the next few years. While higher wages translate to more money in people’s pockets to spend on housing, that policy change—although certainly not intended solely to fix the housing crisis—addresses the symptom, which is expensive houses, not the cause, which is not enough homes on the market.

There’s also a notion in California that trends such as our growing technology sector—when combined with the state’s historic dominance in the entertainment industry plus boundless sunshine and lanky palm trees—have caused an influx of migration, just making the issue worse. On this topic, Dr. Benjamin Henwood, a professor at the University of Southern California and an expert on homelessness and affordable housing, notes that while creating jobs and attracting Americans towards our coast is great, “people who fill these jobs need a place to live.”

However, Greenlee says not so fast – if no one else moved to California, just by birth and death rates alone over the next 10 years we still would not have enough housing to meet demand. Thus, while our robust economy certainly draws people in, the core issue comes back to basic economics.

Given what we know about the need for more housing in Los Angeles to meet demand, how can we get people to want to do something about it? Perhaps the answer lies in a deeply correlated issue that we see firsthand in Los Angeles every day.

No matter whether you live Downtown or in West Hollywood, you’ve likely seen homeless people living on the street in your area. Even if you live in a suburb where the homeless are nowhere to be seen, you probably take the freeway to work, where you get to see first-hand the tents and makeshift shelters that our city’s massive homeless population is forced to live in. The issue is unavoidably and unquestionably visible.

Although homelessness is a function of many contributing factors, on the most basic level, “homelessness is primarily a housing issue,” says Henwood. Although not all affordable housing addresses the needs of homeless people who are out of the housing market entirely, Henwood also argues that “housing shortages will continue to undermine best efforts to address homelessness.”

A plethora of research backs up his argument. One 2017 study by a data agency based out of San Francisco found that eight of the 10 states with the largest number of homeless individuals also have the country’s highest average home prices.

In 2017, California was one of 10 states with both high homelessness and the most expensive housing (Inman)

Furthermore, Zillow researchers in 2017 found that the “relationship between rising rents and increased homelessness is particularly strong in four metro areas currently experiencing a crisis in homelessness,” one of which was—unsurprisingly—Los Angeles.

Source: Zillow

Thus, although getting the prices down for apartments for low-to-middle income Americans by building more places to live for them may seem unrelated to homelessness, in general, less expensive rent and more options for Americans will help not just those currently on the search for a home, but could potentially also have the trickle-down effect of reducing the number of homeless as well.

After voters in Los Angeles had to live and breathe in direct contact with the sprawling homeless population for a number of years due to changed regulations, they took action, and in November 2016 passed measure JJJ, which “changed fundamental land use rules around how you build in order to make sure that if developers are going to make something, it had to include housing that was available for low-income people” says Greenlee. That same year, voters also passed Proposition HHH, which funded affordable housing through a bonding program. And before that, the County in 2015 dedicated $100 million a year to support affordable housing development. Why the sudden change? According to Greenlee, “because people decided our current situation related to homelessness was intolerable.”

Thus, although housing affordability may be deeply rooted in failed city planning and put tremendous financial strain on a plethora of individuals, true visibility of the issue through the homeless is what caused Angelinos to act. And by Greenlee’s standards, while the programs in place are not an end-all solution, they are certainly steps in the right direction.

Given that a variety of measures and propositions are already in place, what more can people in Los Angeles do? First, support similar initiatives as they show up on the ballot. And second, Greenlee says that financially secure Americans can be vocal in their support for greater density and affordable housing in their areas rather than “going bananas” when they hear affordable housing is coming in. In particular, Greenlee cited a recent housing development program put forward by the Mayor of LA, in which council districts would be required to create temporary housing. In some areas – like Koreatown, Venice, and Sherman Oaks – local residents met that proposal with furry, enraged that they would have to live in close contact with the homeless. While it’s human nature for people to want to be separate from the poor, that argument ignores the fact that homeless Californians are already residents of our neighborhoods—they are just forced to sleep on the street rather than in apartments or homes.

Protestors in Koreatown, Los Angeles reacting to plans for homeless housing in their area (LA Weekly)

To more comprehensively address the issue, Angelinos—and for that matter, Americans across the country living in areas where housing prices have spiked—may need to get more comfortable with homeless and extremely low income individuals moving into their neighborhoods. Although that is sure to be an uncomfortable transition, it’s a necessary one if we are serious about addressing the crisis. In long-run, everyone from Dr. Dre to the homeless living in tents under the freeway stands to benefit.