School Travels to State Capital for Research Briefing and Alumni Gathering Back-to-back events in Sacramento provide networking opportunities and showcase scholarly works

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In mid-February, a contingent of more than 30 people from UCLA Luskin made the trip to northern California in an effort to connect with alumni, government officials and policy experts involved in state government.

The two-day gathering in Sacramento was envisioned as the first of what will become an annual feature of the Luskin’s School’s outreach efforts, pairing an alumni get-together in the state capital with a research-focused briefing for elected officials and their staffs.

The UCLA Luskin Briefing at UC Center Sacramento took place during the time when new bills were being finalized for the next legislative session, and the hope is that the research of UCLA Luskin and its various research centers can put current and future legislative leaders in a better position to make data-informed decisions.

“It was very well attended by elected and appointed officials,” noted Interim Dean Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris, who made the effort a priority for this academic year and actively participated in the planning process. “The elected officials I talked to afterward were very appreciative for the event and told me that they hope to see more such events from our School.”

Two briefing sessions were held. A session on water management highlighted research by Adjunct Associate Professor Gregory Pierce MURP ’11 PhD UP ’15, co-executive director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. A session on affordable housing was led by Associate Professor Michael Lens, associate faculty director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies.

The briefing and the Alumni Regional Reception, which took place the evening before, brought together faculty, staff or alumni from all four departments — Public Policy, Social Welfare, Urban Planning and the Undergraduate Program — as well as members of the Luskin School’s Board of Advisors.

A group of about 20 current Master of Public Policy students also made the trip, getting an opportunity to connect directly with alumni whose footsteps they may hope to follow, including Assemblyman Isaac Bryan MPP ’18, a member of the affordable housing panel.

Find out more about the briefing and view the bios of the 12 people who participated as speakers or panelists.

View photos from the alumni reception

Sacramento Alumni Regional Reception 2024

View photos from the research briefing

Sacramento Briefing 2024

 

Prospects for Progress on Affordable Housing Solutions

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UCLA Luskin’s Michael Lens spoke to the podcast Health Affairs This Week about the roots of zoning policies that have kept neighborhoods segregated by race and income, and the prospects for progress in addressing the nation’s affordable housing crisis. Efforts to change zoning laws to accommodate more housing units have historically been met with strong resistance, but Lens said the conversation has shifted just in the last decade. Now, there is widespread acknowledgment that “we need to do something somewhere” to provide residents with safe and affordable shelter. “The problem is that we have let this go on for so long, this lack of housing production and increased housing costs for people from the poor to middle class,” he said. But Lens pointed to states and cities that are upending zoning restrictions that have long kept a lid on housing development, and concluded, “This is a really good time for hope.”

Listen to the podcast

 

Public Affairs Chat with the Chair

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REGISTER HERE!

Join us at the Winter 2024 Public Affairs Chat with the Chair for an opportunity to speak with the Public Affairs Department Chair, Dr. Michael Lens, Luskin faculty, Luskin counselors, and your peers! Faculty will hold roundtable discussions on a range of topics including your interest in the Public Affairs major, research, involvement, and career readiness.

Students interested in the Public Affairs Major are encouraged to attend.

  • Date: February 8, 2024
  • Time: 2:30pm – 4:00pm
  • Location: 6360 Public Affairs Building

Registration

Register here to attend. Walk-ins are welcome.

Learn More About the Major

Learn more about the Public Affairs major at www.luskin.ucla.edu/undergrad or schedule an appointment with a Luskin undergraduate counselor.

Questions?

For questions about the Public Affairs Major, contact the Public Affairs Undergraduate Program via MyUCLA Message Center.

Modernizing Zoning Laws as Population Expands

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Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, spoke to the Post and Courier about land use and zoning ordinances at the center of a dispute over a South Carolina turkey-shoot business. A neighbor’s complaint about the business — which invites customers to shoot at targets, with a turkey awarded to the best marksman —prompted a review of zoning decisions made decades ago. The turkey shoot was found in compliance with the law, which did not require a buffer between the gunfire and other properties and did not regulate hours of operation. But officials were left to ponder how to preserve the county’s character amid a rapidly growing population. The episode casts light on recurring frictions over land use ever since the U.S. began to rapidly suburbanize in the 1940s and 1950s. Governments have grappled with how to modernize zoning regulations to accommodate more development, Lens said. “It just involves a lot of trade-offs.”

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Housing Shortage Persists Despite Population Decline

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UCLA Luskin’s Michael Lens spoke to the Los Angeles Times for an article explaining why California housing prices have defied the laws of supply and demand, with mortgages and rents remaining stubbornly high even though the state’s population has declined in recent years. One reason is that, for decades, the pace of housing production did not keep up with demand, creating a backlog made even more enormous by the surge of Millennials now seeking to enter the housing market. “The cost of living in California and Los Angeles is so high … that we know a lot of people can’t move here and we know a lot of people can’t remain here, because they are priced out,” said Lens, a professor of urban planning and public policy.

Read the article

 

Lens on Housing Density Reforms in Los Angeles

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Associate Professor Michael Lens wrote an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times on housing and land use reform in Los Angeles. Lens argues that L.A.’s geographic sprawl can be beneficial in terms of balancing housing density “that works for Californians.” Land use laws that discourage building for density can be reformed to provide alternatives to single-family neighborhoods by re-framing planning for housing around job-rich, medium-density urban hubs. “This does not necessarily mean obliterating the urban forms and communities that have been built in the past century. But without some densification, we’ll keep pushing people and development into the Inland Empire and other outlying areas (which is already happening),” he wrote. The result is “more punishing commutes and, in all likelihood, still expensive housing.” Lens also was quoted in an L.A. Times article about landlords’ objections to a continuing rent freeze, saying the pandemic sent policymakers “reaching for the emergency button,” but now the city should look at policies like expanding housing subsidies rather than extending the freeze.

Read the opinion article
Read the rent freeze story

 

Lens on L.A.’s Skyrocketing Home Prices

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A Los Angeles Times article and KNX News report on L.A.’s soaring housing prices turned to UCLA Luskin’s Michael Lens for context. The newspaper reported that the median home price in Los Angeles had risen to just under $1 million, a 30% increase over the past five years. “Even if it is an arbitrary number, it’s an astounding one,” said Lens, chair of the Luskin School’s undergraduate program and a scholar of urban planning and public policy. Driven by scarcity and demand, the rising prices also impact the rental market, Lens said – but he added that state programs to increase the overall housing stock are falling short. His proposed solutions included “getting rid of single-family zoning and upzoning those neighborhoods,” removing “onerous parking requirements,” and scrapping rules on minimum setbacks and other burdensome mandates. Altogether, the state should fix “a lot of boring zoning things that together make the cost of building more housing more expensive,” Lens said.

Read the L.A. Times article
Listen to the KNX report

 

What Does Subsidized Housing in L.A. Need? ‘More of Everything,’ Lens Says

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An investigation by ABC7 in Los Angeles regarding long waitlists for government-subsidized housing in the form of Section 8 vouchers reported an average wait of five and a half years. And two of the largest housing agencies recently closed their Section 8 lists due to high demand. “The fact that we have to open the waiting list is an indicator that it’s really crazy, right?” Michael Lens, an associate professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA Luskin, said in an on-camera interview. “We just don’t have the public housing stock, the voucher availability and other forms of HUD-subsidized housing to meet that need, or anything close to it.” Housing affordability data show local rents up 30% in five years. The solution? “More of everything,” Lens said. “We need more vouchers, we need more public-private partnerships to provide … housing choices.”

Read more and watch the story

 

Lens on the Population Exodus in Northern California

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Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about a stark population decline in California, specifically in cities in Northern California. Factors such as the Bay Area’s tech-rich economy have led to an increase in remote work, resulting in an exodus of employees to less expensive locales. “Hundreds of thousands more people would desire to live in the Bay Area — if not millions — and Southern California if we made it easier to accommodate those people through more housing units and presumably more affordable housing,” Lens said. Many remote areas saw an influx of people, but Lens noted that an increase in housing is mostly needed in major cities. Urban centers can grow more efficiently, he said, adding that moving to places with lower population densities could also lead to longer commutes.

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Lens on California’s Housing Boom, Population Decline

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Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about an increase in housing construction during the pandemic along with a decline in population in California. “When it takes a decade of really massive economic growth in this state for housing production to catch up to the pre-recession levels, that says as much about the depths of our production crisis as it does about some kind of recent victory,” Lens said. He went on to explain that housing unaffordability and the pandemic played significant roles in reducing population growth in recent years, but the state has a long way to go to meet its housing needs. “We expect more equitable and more productive housing construction over the next decade,” he said, “but it’s going to take some time and take some diligence on the part of the state.”

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