UCLA Grants Deepen Ties to the L.A. Community Projects by Luskin faculty will build collaboration among scholars, students and local partners

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The first goal of UCLA’s Strategic Plan is deepening collaborations and connections with Los Angeles. This academic year, several UCLA Luskin faculty are helping the university meet that mark.

As recipients of grants from the UCLA Center for Community Engagement, these faculty will explore ways to strengthen ties between community partners and UCLA students and scholars, with the goal of finding solutions to L.A.’s most pressing issues.

This year, the UCLA Community-Engaged Research Grants will fund exploratory projects including:

Achieving and Implementing Abolition in Los Angeles

Co-Principal Investigators: David C. Turner III, assistant professor of social welfare, and Kelly Lytle Hernandez, professor of history, African American studies and urban planning

Community Partners: Justice LA; Check the Sheriff’s Coalition; Police-Free LAUSD Coalition; People’s Budget LA Coalition; PUSH LA Coalition; LA Youth Uprising Coalition

Million Dollar Hoods is a UCLA research project that advances the labors of activists and advocates working to change how public dollars are spent in Los Angeles. In particular, it advances the work of those seeking to reduce criminal justice budgets while expanding health services, housing options, welfare benefits and employment opportunities. This grant will fund a deep strategic planning and research process focused on implementing community-led policy initiatives that reallocate public resources to supporting human-centered services.

Aligning Housing Policy With Popular Demand for More Housing

Co-Principal Investigators: Zachary Steinert-Threlkeld, associate professor of public policy, and Paavo Monkkonen, professor of urban planning and public policy

Community Partner: Abundant Housing Los Angeles

Angelenos understand the scarcity of housing and want to see more constructed. According to a November 2020 survey by the Los Angeles Department of City Planning, 64% of Angelenos call increasing housing supply a top or high priority. Support for more housing is one of the few bipartisan policy issues in the country, yet new housing construction in Los Angeles remains at multi-decade lows and rents and housing prices continue to rise. Untangling this puzzle is the focus of this community research.

Building Urban Soil Networks in Los Angeles for Research and Action

Co-Principal Investigators: Kirsten Schwarz, associate professor of urban planning and environmental health sciences, and Jennifer Jay, professor of civil and environmental engineering

Community Partners: TreePeople; Physicians for Social Responsibility – LA; Communities for a Better Environment; Watts Labor Community Action Committee – Better Watts Initiative

Urban soils are an important regional and national equity concern that shape the health and well-being of urban dwellers. They also represent a paradox of sorts, as contaminated soils are a hazard and clean soils are beneficial to the ecosystem. This project brings together community groups active in urban soils work in the L.A. region to build relationships, identify potential collaborations, and begin the process of coalescing around a common set of research priorities and actions.

Building Worker Power: Support for Low-Wage Worker Leadership With the Los Angeles Worker Center Network

Co-Principal Investigators: Chris Zepeda-Millan, associate professor of public policy, Chicano/a and Central American studies and political science, and chair of UCLA’s Labor Studies program; and Tobias Higbie, professor of history and director of the UCLA Institute for Research on Labor and Employment

Community Partners: Los Angeles Worker Center Network, including: CLEAN CarWash Worker Center; Garment Worker Center; Koreatown Immigrant Workers Alliance; Los Angeles Black Worker Center; Pilipino Workers Center; Restaurant Opportunities Center Los Angeles; Warehouse Workers Resource Center

The UCLA Labor Center, a founding member of the Los Angeles Worker Center Network, seeks to document best practices around multi-racial, multi-industry, multi-language organizing in support of labor standards, immigrant rights and anti-discrimination enforcement. In this project, researchers and worker centers will determine the best methods — such as popular education, storytelling, academic journals and social media — to document successful and replicable L.A. worker campaigns since 2009. They will also implement legal clinics and provide technical assistance to local agencies enforcing fair labor laws.

Healing Within While Incarcerated: The Role of Credible Messengers in Transformative Justice in L.A. County

Co-Principal Investigators: Lauren Ng, assistant professor of psychology, and Laura Abrams, professor of social welfare

Community Partner: Healing Dialogue and Action

Incarcerated youth experience a multitude of poor social, emotional and physical health outcomes after detention. To address these concerns, Los Angeles County has adopted a “rehabilitative, care-first model” of juvenile justice that is being implemented by Credible Messengers — leaders with the lived experience of incarceration. There has been limited academic collaboration investigating Credible Messenger programs. This partnership with an organization working in county juvenile justice facilities will advance the science behind the Credible Messenger approach with the aim of promoting healing of justice-involved youth.

Housing and Homelessness Justice Research Collaborative

Co-Principal Investigators: Chris Herring, assistant professor of sociology, and Ananya Roy, professor of urban planning, social welfare and geography

Community Partners: LA Tenants Union; Union de Vecinos

This grant supports a recently established collaborative partnership between UCLA faculty and the Downtown local of the LA Tenants Union. The funds will allow the partners to broaden a study of Los Angeles’ Permanent Supportive Housing initiative to address homelessness. Despite billions of dollars recently committed to this initiative, no research to date has examined its success or weaknesses. The UCLA grant will allow additional community partners to participate and aid the collaborative in envisioning a multi-year tenant justice research agenda.

Interdisciplinary Center on Housing and Homelessness

Co-Principal Investigators: Till von Wachter, professor of economics; Michael Lens, professor of urban planning and public policy; and Elizabeth Bromley, professor in residence of psychiatry and anthropology

Community Partners: Individual community members; Los Angeles Homelessness Services Authority; L.A. County Department of Health Services; L.A. County Department of Mental Health; L.A. County Department of Social Services

L.A.’s housing and homelessness crises are caused by a complex web of factors ranging from lack of housing production and zoning policies to structural racism in labor markets and justice systems. This project focuses on developing an interdisciplinary center that brings research communities together with people with lived experience of homelessness and policymakers from Los Angeles government and nonprofit agencies. The project emphasizes structural reforms needed to reduce homelessness and aims to inform the public debate by replacing misconceptions with data and research.

Previous awards from the UCLA Center for Community Engagement supported the development of two courses designed to immerse undergraduates in community-engaged research. The grants went to Associate Professor of Public Policy Meredith Phillips, who developed a course on data analysis for educational research, and Associate Professor of Social Welfare Lené Levy-Storms, who developed a course on human aging through an interdisciplinary lens.

Read about all of the 2024-25 Community-Engaged Research Exploratory Grants.

Luskin Experts Join UC Consortium Aimed at Meeting Californians’ Basic Needs

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UCLA Luskin’s Paavo Monkkonen and Juan Matute have joined the Abundance Policy Research Consortium at the University of California’s Possibility Lab.

They will join a team of experts from across the state who will spend the next year developing an evidence-based policy agenda focused on expanding Californians’ access to essential resources, goods and services.

While the state is home to great economic abundance, far too many struggle with economic insecurity and a lack of access to basic goods and services. The new consortium is part of the Possibility Lab’s Abundance Accelerator, launched in April to leverage research, innovation and collaboration to work toward a “fundamentals-first” policy agenda.

Monkkonen, a professor of urban planning and public policy, will focus on housing.

“This is an exciting opportunity to work with a diverse and knowledgeable group dedicated to improving Californians’ lives,” Monkkonen said. “The state of California has taken a number of important steps on housing, but a lot of work lies ahead.”

Matute, deputy director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, will focus on transportation. The consortium’s other areas of focus are food, water, energy, health care, safety, employment, education, child care, elder care and digital connectivity.

The research developed by Monkkonen, Matute and other consortium members will be used for strategic planning by high-level California state government partners.

Read the full story

 

Monkkonen Named Fellow at Paris Institute of Advanced Studies

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UCLA Luskin’s Paavo Monkkonen has been named a fellow at the Paris Institute of Advanced Studies, where he will conduct research focused on overcoming political challenges to the urban environmental transition, including interventions in housing, mobility and access to opportunity. During the 10-month fellowship that begins in September, Monkkonen will compare decision-making processes, particularly the role of public input, in Paris and Los Angeles. “The case studies represent places with very different relationships between the residents and the state, and places with wide variation in local climate action,” said Monkkonen, who will hold the title of Chaire Ville de Paris during the appointment. “Paris, especially, has recently transformed many of its streets by replacing car lanes with bike lanes and parking with trees, whereas progress in these areas in Los Angeles is stalled by local opposition.” The project will include interviews with elected officials as well as surveys that reveal people’s attitudes toward projects that make their cities more sustainable. The goal, he said, is to assess the alignment of political action and residents’ preferences in the two metropolises. Monkkonen, a professor of urban planning and public policy, studies how policies shape urban development and social segregation in cities around the world. His recent research has focused largely on the housing crisis in California and the implementation of the state’s fair housing planning process. The Paris Institute of Advanced Studies is a research center that each year welcomes globally recognized visiting scholars with innovative projects in the fields of the humanities, social sciences and related disciplines.

 

Jumpstarting California’s Plan to Build Affordable Housing

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UCLA Luskin’s Paavo Monkkonen and Aaron Barrall co-authored an op-ed in the Los Angeles Times about what California can do to make real progress on its ambitious goal to increase the supply of affordable housing. Despite a raft of well-intentioned laws, executive actions and lawsuits, progress thus far has proved more symbolic than substantial, and certainly “insufficient to improve affordability and stem population losses driven by the high cost of living,” wrote Monkkonen, a professor of urban planning and public policy, and Barrall, a housing data analyst at the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies. The authors list specific land-use regulations and policies that must be toughened if the state is to meet its goals — including a crackdown on wealthy or recalcitrant enclaves that have stalled affordable housing developments. “While these cities dawdle, the region’s residents suffer the effects of the housing shortage: high rents, overcrowding, eviction and homelessness.”

Read the op-ed

 

What If NIMBYs Got Paid to Become YIMBYs?

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Paavo Monkkonen, professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA Luskin, weighed in on the notion of paying people to accept the expansion of affordable housing in their neighborhoods, an idea laid out in a Boston Globe commentary. Offering financial incentives to community members could turn NIMBYs into YIMBYs and increase the housing stock, which is in desperately short supply in many parts of the country, the author argued. Public support for more construction could also lead to new zoning laws permitting denser housing in some neighborhoods. The proposal, cast as creative brainstorming for a solution to the affordable housing crisis, raises questions about the logistics of making payments as well as issues of fairness and equity. “We should continue to think about ways to more evenly and equitably distribute the benefits of urban development,” Monkonnen said.

Read the commentary

 

Monkkonen on L.A.’s Challenge to Meet Affordable Housing Goals

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Paavo Monkkonen, professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA Luskin, spoke to LAist about the status of Mayor Karen Bass’ pledge to fast-track affordable housing construction in Los Angeles. Development projects in single-family neighborhoods are now ineligible for the accelerated permitting due to a rules change in June. About three-quarters of L.A.’s residential land is zoned for single-family homes, and proposing large apartment developments in those areas can lead to outcries from homeowners opposed to neighborhood change. Monkkonen said leaving suburban areas untouched brings its own risks. Under state law, the city of Los Angeles must plan for 185,000 new low-income homes by 2029 and reverse long-standing patterns of segregation by putting many new affordable homes in wealthier areas. “Once you take them off the table, it’s really hard to live up to the fair housing mandate,” Monkkonen said.

Read the article

 

Sharing the American Dream Through Granny Flats and Garage Units

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Urban Planning Professor Vinit Mukhija joined the podcast UCLA Housing Voice in a two-episode appearance focused on how American neighborhoods are being reshaped by the addition of living spaces to existing lots. Often unpermitted, these spaces run the gamut from a fully appointed backyard unit to a storage shed used for shelter. Mukhija’s new book, “Remaking the American Dream,” shows how single-family living has been transformed to meet the growing demand for adequate housing. He delves into the issue with podcast hosts Shane Phillips of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and Paavo Monkkonen, UCLA Luskin professor of urban planning and public policy. Their expansive conversation includes an assessment of state and local government efforts to bring unregulated housing out of the shadows and encourage the construction of permitted accessory dwelling units. Policies that increase housing density, Mukhija says, allow more people to share the American Dream by “sharing single family lots, … sharing neighborhoods, sharing cities, sharing suburbs.”

Listen to episode 1
Listen to episode 2

 

Monkkonen on Coronado’s Lack of Affordable Housing

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Paavo Monkkonen, professor of urban planning and public policy, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the affordable housing crisis in Coronado, the exclusive island town known for its white sand beaches and luxury resort. To keep Hotel del Coronado running, nearly 200 housekeepers who cannot afford to live in Coronado must commute up to five hours to get to work. State law requires that the city zone for affordable housing, but NIMBYs, a lack of land and local officials’ delaying tactics have stalled progress for years. “Housing delayed is housing denied,” Monkkonen said. “With the urgency of this housing scarcity situation, inaction just makes it worse.” 

Read the article

 

Monkkonen on How Tech Companies May Cause Gentrification in Culver City

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Paavo Monkkonen, professor of urban planning and public policy, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about Culver City residents who are fighting back against gentrification. As tech giants and streaming studios including Apple, Amazon, HBO and TikTok enter the city, neighborhood tensions flare as locals worry that they may be pushed out. “You have this kind of collective action problem where every small neighborhood or every municipality wants the jobs but not the new housing,” Monkkonen said. “So that pushes people out [with] farther commutes or gentrifying formerly lower-income neighborhoods nearby.” Culver City officials said they are attempting to address the housing issue by zoning for over 3,000 additional housing units by 2029 and enacting rent control ordinances like one from 2020 that caps annual rent increases to 5% for certain residential buildings.

Read the article

 

A Worldly Perspective

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Thinking beyond borders is an integral part of a UCLA education.

The commitment to international scholarship is even spelled out in the Luskin School’s strategic plan. It recognizes UCLA’s unique position as a public university situated “in the ‘world city’ of Los Angeles, a living laboratory for the far-reaching issues facing communities across the United States and around the world.”

Roughly one in five current faculty members at UCLA Luskin conduct research primarily with an international focus. Their scholarly contributions frequently appear in journals with a global orientation or get recognized in other ways.

Two men in academic robes present a canister containing a document to a woman in the middle

Professor Ananya Roy receives the Doctorat Honoris Causa (honorary doctorate) at the University of Geneva from Rector Yves Flückiger and Social Sciences Dean Pascal Sciarni.

For example, Ananya Roy, professor of urban planning and social welfare, traveled to Switzerland in October to receive a Doctorat Honoris Causa at the University of Geneva. An honorary doctorate is one of the highest academic honors one can receive.

“I didn’t have any ties to the University of Geneva,” Roy said after the ceremony, which was televised. “But as the faculty there reminded me, it will now always be my university.”

Some faculty efforts involve a pooling of resources. The Latin American Cities Initiative draws on Los Angeles’ ties to countries across the Americas to share knowledge about managing urban spaces. Directed by Paavo Monkkonen, professor of urban planning and public policy, the initiative known as Ciudades hosts seminars and conferences and conducts an international planning studio in Latin America that immerses students in real-world case studies.

And the Global Lab for Research in Action focuses on hard-to-reach populations around the world through a social justice lens. Manisha Shah of public policy leads the research, which seeks remedies for the health, education and economic needs of women and children.

A global focus is also found in many L.A.-based efforts, both new and ongoing.

In summer 2022, social welfare students and scholars hosted the International Summer University in Social Work, during which colleagues from around the world explored theories and practices that promote justice. More than 20 participants from four continents came to campus for a two-week exploration of topics such as racism, the wealth gap, gender bias and homelessness.

Last spring, the Luskin School hosted a virtual Global Mini-Summit as part of its signature Luskin Summit policy dialogue series. Discussions are underway to expand this concept into an ongoing series focused on international concerns.

Plus, numerous alumni now hold positions in foreign governments or work in agencies or businesses with an international mindset.

Several stories in this edition of Luskin Forum take a closer look at the ways UCLA Luskin is bringing a global perspective to issues of public concern.