Lens on Desirability of California Living Amid Climate Disasters

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Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, was cited in an ABC News article weighing whether California remains a desirable place to live or visit as extreme weather takes its toll. Despite the constant risk of fire, flooding, earthquakes and drought, the state continues to attract residents and vacationers. Lens, who researches inequities in the housing market, noted that the rising cost of buying or renting a home is one indicator of California’s desirability. “That’s certainly part of why the cost of living is so high — we like living there,” he said. While some residents are relocating to more affordable states, most are choosing to stay put. The story noted that California home prices have continued their steep ascent even in the wake of devastating natural disasters.

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Lens on More Renters as Elected Officials in L.A.

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Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, was interviewed by NPR about a shifting trend in the demographics of elected officials in Los Angeles, where more are identifying as renters as opposed to homeowners. Residents of Los Angeles rank housing affordability as one of their biggest concerns, with 30% of renters spending over 50% of their income on rent. As more renters are elected to office, they may do a better job of representing the voices of fellow renters who have gone unheard for years. Lens explained that attempts to diversify politics in Los Angeles have in the past focused on race, gender and sexuality. The renter demographic has not been represented until recent elections. “It does, I think, matter to have representation along that axis,” Lens said. “It’s a pretty fundamental part of who we are and how we live in a city.”

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UCLA Luskin Day at Los Angeles City Hall Returns

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UCLA Luskin is back at Los Angeles City Hall. Following a hiatus in the annual event caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, students from the School’s three graduate programs — Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning — traveled downtown Feb. 24 to meet, interview and learn from local leaders from government, nonprofit agencies and the community. This year, Los Angeles City Council member Nithya Raman hosted the group, led by Luskin faculty advisor Michael Lens, on the topic “Homelessness Governance Reform — Service-Led Models, Building More Housing, Better County-City Collaboration.” “It’s important to see the economic constraints, the practical constraints, the political constraints that our elected officials and our policymakers operate under,” said Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA Luskin. Also important, Lens said, is that “the big ideas and plans we talked about in class — about what ‘Professor Lens’ thinks that the city should do tomorrow — just isn’t so easy to do.” He tasked students to take information from the day, co-sponsored by UCLA Government and Community Relations, and ask how to apply it to the real world. For Raman, getting people off the streets involves talking to, and building relationships of trust with, people experiencing homelessness. “You have to go out there and understand who they are, what brought them to the streets, and to ensure that they believe you when you say, ‘I have something to offer you that will help address exactly what brought you here and help bring you indoors,’ ” said Raman, who will receive a written memorandum of findings and policy recommendations from the students.

View more photos from the day on Flickr

UCLA Luskin Day at Los Angeles City Hall 2023

 

Lens on L.A.’s Urgent Need to Construct More Housing

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A Los Angeles Times op-ed written by Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, argues that stemming the flow of people into homelessness requires building more housing of all types, including market-rate. With homelessness as her top priority, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass has declared a state of emergency allowing her to expand the supply of temporary shelters and subsidized housing. Lens writes that these short-term solutions are not adequate to address the overarching problem that has driven up housing costs, and worsened homelessness, in Los Angeles: We do not build enough homes. Pointing to research showing that L.A. built fewer housing units in the 2010s than each of the two previous decades, Lens urged city officials to increase housing density in single-family and higher-income neighborhoods, among other recommendations. “If we don’t build more housing of all types, we are sustaining homelessness, not solving it,” he writes. 

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A Historic Leadership Transition in L.A.

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Media covering the swearing-in of Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass spoke to experts from UCLA Luskin about the historic leadership transition. “Los Angeles is a city at a crossroads,” Sonja Diaz, executive director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute, told the Washington Post, noting that Bass must deal with great increases in housing insecurity, food insecurity and economy inequality. Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, spoke to LAist about hurdles Bass is likely to face, including resistance to zoning changes that could ease construction of various types of housing. And Jim Newton, editor of UCLA’s Blueprint magazine, wrote a CalMatters commentary about Bass’ tenure as a test for Democrats in California and nationally. Newton also spoke to KPCC’s AirTalk about the historic arc of Los Angeles’ mayors, their scope of authority and leadership styles.

Read the Washington Post article
Read the LAist article
Read the CalMatters commentary
Listen to the AirTalk interview

 

Monkkonen, Lens on Flawed Approach to Fair Housing Compliance

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A Policies for Action article co-authored by UCLA Luskin faculty members Paavo Monkkonen and Michael Lens assessed California’s bumpy implementation of the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, part of the U.S. Fair Housing Act. The rule, which sets out a framework for local governments and agencies to take decisive steps to promote fair housing, was codified into California law in 2018. Research by Lens and Monkkonen, along with co-author Moira O’Neill of UC Berkeley, found a lack of political will to comply with the law in some jurisdictions and a lack of clarity on the state’s expectations. The authors write, “Is it enough to do ‘better’? Given the deeply entrenched segregation in U.S. land-use plans, the reforms we’ve observed are not sufficient to achieve the ‘integrated and balanced living patterns’ envisioned by the Fair Housing Act.” They called on the state to create binding minimum expectations, including the use of metrics to track progress toward the goal of desegregated cities.

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Luskin Housing Scholars Weigh In on California’s Crisis

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A UCLA Newsroom article on how to tackle California’s affordable housing crisis cited several scholars from UCLA Luskin. Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Paavo Monkkonen sees the housing crisis as a combination of “unaffordability, instability and inability to house” and has urged the state to “use many levers to push cities to allow more new housing.” Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavsky has cautioned against changes that fundamentally undermine the character of neighborhoods. He suggested increasing zoning capacity but allowing the city to decide where it should take place. “You don’t need to destroy communities,” Yaroslavsky said. Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Michael Lens highlighted the urgent need for more money for permanent supportive housing. The article was written by Jim Newton, editor of UCLA’s Blueprint magazine, who concluded that the competing arguments “reflect and shape California’s ongoing and urgent search for ways to adequately house every resident of the state.” 

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Lens Explores Low-Density Zoning Impact on Health

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Michael Lens published a policy brief in Health Affairs on the downstream effects of low-density residential zoning on health and health equity. Previous research on the relationship between housing and health has identified four important pathways for health equity: housing stability, housing quality and safety, neighborhood characteristics and affordability. While residential zoning ordinances are designed to address density-related concerns such as traffic and environmental harms, Lens explained that “the effect is often to artificially raise the cost of housing for everyone by limiting housing supply, as well as to exclude people who cannot afford to buy single-family homes on large lots.” As a result, low-density zoning practices have exacerbated segregation by income and race. “Safer and healthier neighborhoods tend to have the most restrictive zoning, pricing people out of those areas and increasing segregation and affordability problems,” Lens said. He acknowledged that zoning reform alone cannot fix disparities in housing or health; sufficient housing subsidy programs are crucial, as well as an increase in new housing developments that are required to set aside some units for lower-income households. “The downstream effects of exclusionary land use regulations on health should make scholars and policymakers pay more attention to reforming zoning and expanding housing subsidy programs to make housing more plentiful and affordable,” Lens wrote. Even if increasing density in more neighborhoods does not have an immediate effect on housing affordability, segregation or health, Lens argued that it is a necessary step toward a healthy and sustainable future.

Lens on Redefining ‘Home’ Amid Pandemic

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Michael Lens shared his insights into housing policies and priorities on “Home Rediscovered” on the National Geographic Channel. “We have for decades not produced enough housing to keep up with population growth, and we’re at a point in which the bill is really becoming due,” Lens said on the program, which focused on several individuals and families who have rethought where and how they want to live, now and in the future. “COVID is really present in the minds of all of us, of course. It’s driving 36% of recent home purchases,” Lens said, adding that the ability to work remotely has transformed the housing market. “If you don’t have to commute, then that changes not only the structures that people will demand, but it also changes the locations that they’re likely to inhabit,” he said.

 

Manville on Heavy Burden of Rent Debt as Pandemic Drags On

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An Orange County Register story on frustrations surrounding California’s rental assistance program, which made $5.2 billion available to help low-income tenants and their landlords during the COVID-19 pandemic, cited research led by the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA Luskin. Surveys conducted in July 2020 and March 2021 found that, in Los Angeles County, renters’ debt rose sharply as the pandemic dragged on. Almost half of those surveyed in March turned to friends and family to help them pay rent, 58% dipped into their savings and 37% took out an emergency or payday loan, the study found. “That’s a lot of debt that people have accumulated, and they will be left out in the cold if we end up moving forward with a program that just pays your rent,” said Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville, co-author of the study. The research was also highlighted by Commercial Observer and Multi-Housing News.

Read the OC Register story