it, jack's spice squad. who's in the squad? [whispering] it's me. my new spicy cluck sandwich combo. it's my best chicken ever. soledad: right now on "matter of fact" -- shares his survival story. >> all of a sudden, guard opens the door. a recording of the super bowl? i mean, get the heck out of here. soledad: how the big game threw a lifeline patients with gunshot wounds. now she' dr. south: and what we found was pretty astounding. soledad: meet the physician working to make cities safer, one park at a time.

and the 5g rollout was grounded over airline safety concerns. should anyone who's flying have any concern about this issue ? a leading expert with answers to your biggest questions. but first, a 40% increase in rent? it's happening in some american cities. what's driving the market and what's next for families looking to settle down. ♪ soledad: i'm soledad o'brien. welcome to "matter of fact." there's a new source of anxiety for american families -- inflation! prices are up on everything from fruit to furniture. it's the result of an inflation rate that hit 7% in december. another sector where inflation is making an impact is housing. the mortgage banker's association says rates for a 30-year loan will likely hit 4% by the end of this year. renters are facing an equally tough market. the real estate firm redfin estimates average rents rose 14% last year.

some cities like miami and austin are up nearly 40%. the increased costs are making housing unaffordable for millions of americans. frank nothaft is the chief economist at corelogic, a financial services company that analyzes the housing market. so nice to talk to you, thank you for your time. so, last year, we know that rents rose 14% on average. but some cities, as i mentioned, like new york and miami, 40%, that's an insane increase. what's actually driving this rise? frank: it's the shortage of housing. we're having a shortage of rental housing and we're having a shortage of homes available for sale on the marketplace. soledad: is there an impact of inflation on housing? frank: what we've seen is that the inflation that we've seen in home prices and rents have made it more challenging for prospective first time homebuyers in particular. because if you're a first time

home buyer and home prices are up double digits, they are up 18%, 20% in some markets, and that means the nest egg, the savings that you need to accumulate in order to afford to buy your first home, that's also up 20%. because that nest egg goes to a have some cash in reserve after. so that nest egg has to grow 20% in one year. luck?ad: if you're a first time because, you know, with those increased prices and sort of the increased cost of doing everything, it just seems like -- i don't know what the fix for that could be. is there one? frank: think about the real critical elements that you need to have in your home. how many bedrooms? how many bathrooms, do you need to have the office for the home? what do you need? and then maybe look at that smaller set of homes that have

the critical attributes that you need to have in your home. soledad: just the other day, we did a story on the hgtv network show that they have called "bargain block" and it's about a couple. they go to detroit and they fix up abandoned and rundown houses and put them back on the market. and one of the things that they saw was the real racial disparity in who's able to get loans, right? who gets access to mortgages, if you're talking about people who are already financially disadvantaged and also people of color, where getting the mortgage in the first place might be a bigger challenge. frank: some of this is a legacy, sadly, of the discrimination and redlining that occurred in the united states over many, many years. for families with lower and moderate income, homeownership has been a critical element in generating wealth over time and but for minority families, the homeownership rate historically has been much lower than for

in building that wealth, building those assets that parents can share then with their kids. soledad: so what's your prediction as you look through 2022? frank: i think with mortgage rates rising and home prices being so elevated, that's going to really put a squeeze on the pocketbooks, especially for some of the marginal prospective home buyers in the marketplace. so i do expect to see that home buying demand will be tempered quite a bit over the course of the next several months. that'll reduce some of that pressure we're seeing on home prices and the buying market in so many markets around the country. soledad: frank notehaft is the chief economist at corelogic, i appreciate you walking us through. coming up, superbowl sunday 1980 -- and 52 americans are hostages in iran. >> and you're thinking that, who really cares about us? because the world's going on without us. soledad: how a cub reporter handed off a recording of the

super bowl and changed history. and later, a 5g expert weighs in on safety concerns. maggie: i feel confident i would get on a plane tomorrow, but i don't have anywhere to go right now. soledad: what airlines are doing to make sure cell phones don't keep us grounded. to stay up-to-date with "matter of fact," sign up for our newsletter at matteroffact.tv. ♪

soledad: superbowl 56 is next sunday. the cincinnati bengals and the los angeles rams will battle it out for the top title. the bengals haven't played in a super bowl since 1989. the l.a. rams made their last appearance in 2019. their very first appearance in the super bowl was on january 20, 1980. that year, they faced off against the pittsburgh steelers. and the game played out against the backdrop of the iranian hostage crisis.

there were big plays on and off the field. here's our special correspondent joie chen. joie: by any measure, los angeles was the underdog that supeday. and another history-making handoff, although it took place 7500 miles and a world away. rocky sickmann: i will never forget that morning, november 4, when i'm seeing them come over the wall and the gate, there was no security whatsoever. joie: only 29 days earlier, rocky sickmann arrived at the u.s. embassy in tehran as a marine guard. he became one of 52 americans held hostage for 444 days -- interrogated. threatened. and very often, left completely alone. rocky sickmann: and you're thinking that who really cares about us? because the world's going on without us. you had to go back to a good

place and a good place was growing up in a town of washington, missouri, playing football. joie: the former captain of the missouri state champion washington blue jays says three things saved him in those dark days -- faith, family and football. rocky sickmann: every football i caught, every pass i dropped, every block, everything that i reminisced, and i dreamt back to those days and those were, they were happy days, they were great days that really helped keep me alive. joie: meanwhile, an unlikely lifeline appeared outside the compound. then a cub reporter for an l.a. radio station, alex paen grabbed his chance at the world's biggest story. alex paen: of all the hostages, he was the only private citizen. and so that localizes the story for me. and so i ran into the news director and said, hey, i'd like to go and cover the story. we got a local hostage. joie: and he said what? alex paen: and he said, what, are you crazy?

joie: but less than a month later, paen was in tehran. do you even know what you're getting yourself into? alex paen: not really, because i was 26, you know? you don't feel like you're going to get in any trouble. the next day i went to the embassy and it was a huge crowd. it was very scary, because i had my tape recorder, you know, slung over my shoulder and i had my microphone and i'd wade through the crowd, but they're pushing and shoving, and they're yelling "death to america." joie: slowly, paen won over the guards and became the conduit for millions of letters from home. rocky sickmann: this is me holding up one of the cards, one of the envelopes the cards came in -- joie: yes, america, they made a difference. rocky sickmann: they open the door, and they bring in this pile of cards, and we look at each other like, what the heck is this? and we start picking up these cards and start reading, like, "we're praying for you." joie: the hostages didn't even know about the yellow ribbons of

hope that americans had tied everywhere. rocky sickmann: we had no idea the world was united to try to bring the hostages home. joie: then paen made another special delivery -- the super bowl. the kickoff came around 3 a.m. tehran time. jimmying a link to a tape recorder, paen recorded the whole game and then -- alex paen: at 6:00 in the morning, i bundled up and went to the embassy and gave the cassettes to the militants. but as i was handing them the cassettes, i was holding on to them and i said to them, you promised you would allow the hostages to hear this they said, yes, yes. and some of them, there was several of them that said, we want to hear it too. rocky sickmann: all of a sudden, the guard opens the door, again we jump, and he brings in a tape recorder. and he says, this is a recording of the super bowl. and again we all look at each other like, recording of the

super bowl? i mean, get the heck out of here. joie: in that un-real moment, alex paen scored a victory for the ages. rocky sickmann: he had a mission, and he succeeded in that mission, god love him. joie: today, the st. louis soldier's museum features sickmann's story. but he thinks of other heroes -- including those who died trying to rescue the hostages -- and americans still imprisoned around the world. for him, the super bowl will never again be "just a game" -- but a moment when america came together to embrace other americans. for "matter of fact," i'm joie chen. soledad: when we come back, a prescription for vacant city lots filled with trash. dr. south: so we took these spaces and turned them into clean and green spaces. soeldad: an e.r. doc on the healing power of green spaces. and later, we visit the land of towering giants, finally and later, we visit the land of towering giants, finally returned to a group of tribal

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♪ soledad: where we live has a lot to do with how healthy we are. researchers say something as simple as the lack of green space or parks hurts people with chronic conditions like asthma, can negatively impact mental health, it can even be linked to increased violence. but a physician/scientist in philadelphia has a vision to change that. her name is dr. eugenia south, and she is an assistant professor of emergency medicine at the university of pennsylvania's perelman school of medicine. she's also the director of the school's urban health lab. in our latest "matter of fact" listening tour: promises of

change, i talked with dr. south about her innovative approach to improving community health outcomes. soledad o'brien: dr. gina south, thank you for talking with me, really appreciate it. you've spent a lot of your career looking at public health from a holistic approach. so, one, explain how social determinants affect public health. dr. south: when people think of health, they often think of the most downstream things that impact health, whether you exercise, what you eat, if you smoke. but the choices that we all have that go into those decisions are shaped by many forces that are determined by policies and laws and the structure. soledad: give me an example. dr. south: so, for example, how much money someone makes, where someone lives. where we choose to send our kids

to school, the resources we have and all of those things play an impact and have an impact on health. soledad: connect the dots for me with public health and whether or not you have a park down the block from you. dr. south: so, back in the 1930's, when the federal housing administration changed the landscape of homeownership in this country. one of the things that happened that you've covered in prior shows was redlining, and so neighborhoods that had a lot of black people where the families in those neighborhoods were unable to get mortgages to buy homes, and they were unable to invest in their communities. and over time, with a lack of investment or intentional disinvestment, you get a deterioration of the physical landscape of the neighborhood, and that includes parks. so oftentimes today, even if you have parks in predominantly black neighborhoods, they're not well-kept. you have vacant lots, abandoned buildings which are often filled with trash. and if you live in a place that has a deteriorating and dilapidated environment with trash and no trees, that has a negative impact on the community

as a whole, including being related to gun violence. soledad: so what is an upstream solution to gun violence? dr. south: we've done a series of experiments to see what happens when we actually change the environment. the first large-scale, randomized controlled trial of places that we did took vacant lots, which are rampant in cities like philadelphia, baltimore, cleveland, a lot of post-industrial cities. these spaces are filled with trash. so we took these spaces and turned them into clean and green spaces. so very simple and low-cost intervention. soledad: what did you find? dr. south: and what we found was pretty astounding. so gun violence went down, up to 29%, around lots that got any intervention compared to a loss that didn't get intervention. we saw the biggest impact in neighborhoods below the poverty line, indicating that our hardest hit neighborhoods, those are the places that need investment the most. soledad: dr. gina south, nice to have you. thank you so much. dr. south: thanks for having me. soledad: you bet.

you can watch this entire interview in our latest listening tour: promises of change, on matteroffact.tv. up next -- i was around for 3g and then 4g, and now we're at 5g. what exactly is 5g? an expert explains how the technology works. how powerful is an invisalign smile? so powerful you can face anything... ...even these faces. invis is a powerful thing. invis is the clear aligner brand most trusted by doctors and more predictable.

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soledad: welcome back to "matter of fact." faster data speeds, larger network capacity. 5g mobile technology is touted as the key to bringing you faster internet. china, south korea and the u.k. are already using the technology.s play, we reached out to maggie reardon. she's a senior reporter at cnet, who has spent years covering anything and everything related to cell phone issues. what exactly is 5g?

greek you maggie reardon: so 5g is the next generation in wireless service, so it's going to allow people to do things like have self-driving cars and virtual reality. but it uses all these technologies that use radio frequency to be able to deliver the signal. and the real issue that people have right now is not so much with 5g and the technology that's used, but really the new radio frequency that it's going to use. soledad: explain to me how it seems to be impacting air traffic? how is the spectrum causing interference? maggie reardon: everyone gets slivers of spectrum they can use, so the airline industry for many, many years have been using a sliver of spectrum for the altimeters. and those are basically technologyga tsee it's used for landing inound. situations where they can't see very well and that spectrum sits near a sliver of spectrum that

so the issue is that there will be some possible interference between these altimeters that are in airplanes and the 5g signals that are transmitting from big radio towers. the faa has said that they've cleared 90% of the u.s. fleet, which means that they've looked at the altimeters in those planes and they think that they're fine, that there's not going to be any significant interference that's going to cause the planes to crash upon landing. s, i think the flying public should feel very confident about that. soledad: when we come back, the effort to protect some of the tallest trees on earth. soledad: finally, some of the tallest trees on earth have been officially returned to a group hello, how can i? sore throat pain? ♪honey lemon♪ try vicks vapocool drops in honey lemon chill

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soledad: finally, some of the tallest trees on earth have been

officially returned to a group of tribal nations. the redwood grove is the gift of a conservation group called save the redwood league. in 2020, the league bought 523 acres of forest land near mendicino, california from a logging company. their goal, to protect these magnificent trees by transferring the land to 10 of the original tribes of the redwood forest region. the sequoia semperviren, or coastal redwood, used to cover more than 3000 square miles of the california coast. now, less than 5% of old-growth redwoods remain. the consortium of tribes have renamed the forest tc'ih-léh-dûñ, which means fish run place. the name is intended to honor the indigenous culture and ecology. i'm soledad o'brien. you're watching "matter of fact." whwe'll see you next week.

if you missed our top stories about how inflation is impacting housing, the superbowl that was played against the backdrop of an international crisis, how a physician is improving the quality of life for her community and some answers to common questions about 5g, just go to matteroffact.tv. and listen to "matter of fact" with soledad o'brien on your favorite podcast provider. watch us during the week on fyi, pluto, and youtube. ♪ [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. visit ncicap.org]

america," say hello to the fabulous filipino brothers, a new film from bosco and his family who have made their mark from pittsburg, we will talk about his roles and directorial debut. then an important agency doing good for the people is united way bay area. they are looking for people, maybe like you, to help them decide how to help the community. we'll wrap up with our artistic cultural segment on japanese music. hello. happy lunar new year.