The Data Behind a Worsening Black Housing Crisis

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A study by UCLA Luskin’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge was featured in a Los Angeles Times article about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Black housing crisis. Before the pandemic, Black people faced the greatest housing insecurity across the United States, with the highest unemployment rate and lowest income of any racial group. COVID-19 has exacerbated the crisis, with Black and Latino workers facing the greatest job losses. Experts explain that systemic racism has hindered Black households from accessing higher-paying jobs and building wealth through homeownership. The article discussed the displacement of longtime Black communities in South Los Angeles and cited a study by the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, directed by research professor Paul Ong. The study showed declining Black population percentages in Leimert Park, Jefferson Park and West Adams compared to a growing white population, and also found that median income growth in those communities outpaced that of the county.

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The Next Disaster under COVID-19: Mass Evictions and Homelessness

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With the eviction moratorium set to be lifted on September 30, 2020, about 365,000 renter households in Los Angeles County are in imminent danger of eviction and homelessness according to a recent study from the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy.

Please join us for a virtual public forum with housing justice researchers and community organizers to discuss the tenants’ rights crisis and what can be done to mitigate the damage to Angelenos through enforceable rights and robust protections.

The event will feature research findings from these 3 reports:

UD Day: Impending Evictions and Homelessness in Los Angeles

This report projects a surge in evictions and homelessness that will follow the lifting of COVID-19 emergency orders.

Hotel California: Housing the Crisis

This report lays out a comprehensive framework for the conversion of hospitality properties into housing through the large-scale public acquisition of tourist hotels and motels.

Economic Impacts of the COVID-19 Crisis in Los Angeles: Identifying Renter-Vulnerable Neighborhoods

This study provides information to public agencies and community organizations to help them better identify neighborhoods with a high concentration of vulnerable renters, to understand the neighborhoods’ socioeconomic and demographic characteristics, and to design outreach programs that address the specific challenges in each place.

Speakers:

Gary Blasi, UCLA Law School

Ananya Roy, UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality & Democracy

Paul Ong, UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge

Jane Nguyen, Ktown for All

Leonardo Vilchis & Elizabeth Blaney, Union de Vecinos

Jason Li & Alejandro Cortez, Chinatown Community for Equitable Development

Moderator: Karen Umemoto, UCLA Asian American Studies Center

Sponsored by:

UCLA Asian American Studies Center

UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy

UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge

Ktown for All

Union de Vecinos

Chinatown Community for Equitable Development

UCLA Asian American Studies Department

Report Shows Major Effects of COVID-19 on Asian American Labor Force Increasing difference in unemployment, jobless rates between Asians and whites among the findings

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By Melany De La Cruz-Viesca

A UCLA report released today reveals the disparate economic impact the coronavirus pandemic has had on Asian Americans and points to a need to expand financial relief for all workers in order to stave off the worst effects of the crisis and ensure a strong recovery.

While anecdotal evidence suggests that Asian American businesses, particularly those in big-city ethnic enclaves, experienced the impact of COVID-19 earlier and more deeply than others as a result of xenophobia and racial discrimination, there has been little empirical data to show the overall effect on Asian Americans in the labor market.

The new analysis, by researchers from the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, and Ong & Associates, used employment and labor data for California and New York to better understand the nature, pattern and magnitude of the COVID-19 economic disruption to Asian Americans between March and May 2020.

The report found an increased difference in unemployment and joblessness between Asian Americans and whites during this period, compared with the period before the pandemic, when the rates were nearly identical. By May 2020, the researchers found, the unemployment rate for Asians was 15% and the jobless rate was 21%, compared with 12% and 16% for whites.

In addition, while Asian Americans made up 16% of the California labor force in February 2020, they filed 19% of initial unemployment claims over the two-and-a-half months of the shutdown. In New York state, they accounted for 9% of the labor force but filed 14% of claims by mid-April.

The pandemic has had a profound effect on disadvantaged Asian Americans, the researchers note. Among those in the labor force with a high school education or less, 83% filed unemployment claims in California, compared with 37% for the rest of the California labor force with the same level of education.

According to the report, many of these economic effects of COVID-19 are due to the fact that Asian Americans are heavily concentrated in a small number of states and frequently work in industries that have been particularly hard hit by the pandemic and shelter-in-place mandates.

Nearly 1 in 4 employed Asian Americans work in the categories of hospitality and leisure, retail, and other services, the last of which includes businesses like repair shops and personal services such as hair-cutting and laundries. The unemployment rate for Asian Americans in the hospitality and leisure sector in April was 39%, compared with 36% for non-Hispanic whites. In the other services sector, the rate was 40% for Asians and 19% for whites, according to the report.

In terms of business closures during the pandemic, the authors estimate that 233,000 Asian American small businesses closed from February to April, representing a decline of 28% over the two-month period. The 1.79 million non-Hispanic white small businesses that closed over the same period represented a decline of 17%.

“An important question to consider for the future is whether these disparities will continue as the economy reopens and be exacerbated by the apparent increase in anti-Asian sentiment in the U.S.,” said Paul Ong, co-author of the report and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

A number of policy recommendations outlined in the report would provide much-needed economic relief to marginalized and low-income Asian Americans, in particular those in the service sector. They include:

  • Enact federal policy to extend unemployment benefits and small business assistance, such as the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan assistance program from the U.S. Small Business Administration.
  • Enact additional state policies that provide benefits to marginalized populations least likely to receive unemployment benefits through the CARES Act.
  • Enact additional policies to assist small businesses, including the so-called resiliency funds established by some local governments.
  • Increase efforts to ensure marginalized populations take advantage of governmental, private and philanthropic resources to help people weather the financial hardships of COVID-19.
  • Enact federal and state polices and fund programs to equip economically displaced people with job skills that are marketable during and after the COVID-19 crisis.

“We need to invest in all workers to ensure a robust recovery,” the researchers write.

The Center for Neighborhood Knowledge (CNK) conducts basic and applied research on the socioeconomic formation and internal dynamics of neighborhoods, and how these collective spatial units are positioned and embedded within regions. The center is housed in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Established in 1969, the UCLA Asian American Studies Center has been at the forefront of producing and disseminating knowledge of the lives of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders through research, archival and film documentation, publications and civic engagement.

Ong & Associates is an economic and policy analysis consulting firm founded by Paul Ong that specializes in public interest issues; the firm provided services pro bono for the study.

Ong Recommends Expanding CARES Act

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Paul Ong, research professor and director of UCLA Luskin’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, was featured in an IE Business Daily article discussing government relief efforts to support residents and businesses during the pandemic. Created in March, the CARES Act has directed billions of dollars in relief aid to U.S. citizens, major industries and small businesses. However, a recent study co-authored by Ong found that the CARES Act has favored some regions and groups more than others. With the CARES Act set to expire at the end of the month, the Trump Administration must expand the program or risk serious consequences, Ong said. He added that state and local relief policies should be adopted to fill in the gaps not covered by the federal government. “A lot of people are going to need help with their rent and their mortgage payments,” Ong said. “What we need is a major policy discussion.”

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Ong Comments on Shifting Perceptions of Race Relations

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Paul Ong, research professor and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about Californians’ increasing acknowledgement of racial discrimination, as highlighted by the results of a statewide survey. Compared to the results of a similar survey done in February, white Californians are now much more likely than they were earlier this year to say that Black people, Latinos and Asians are “frequently” discriminated against. The uptick comes as data have shown that the coronavirus disproportionately affects Black and Latino communities, and has led to an explosion in anti-Asian hate incidents, Ong said. “The impacts are unevenly distributed — whether we’re talking about health, whether we’re talking employment or stability or negative racial encounters.” There is a “continuing hierarchy” in which respondents perceive Black Americans to be the most affected by discrimination, followed by Latinos and Asian Americans, he added.

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Prolific Research Output by Ong Garners Media Coverage

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Research Professor Paul Ong has shepherded myriad research studies amid COVID-19 on topics that relate to his role as director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, often in partnership with other UCLA research entities. A wide variety of media outlets have provided coverage:

  • Ong told laist.com that many immigrants and workers of color are not receiving unemployment benefits and will soon start to run out of money.
  • In a story about food insecurity by ABC News Radio, Ong said that Black and Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles have more barriers to sheltering in place, including lack of access to food and “huge disparities in terms of trying to manage or survive under COVID-19.”
  • Ong spoke about community investment in Echo Park with Curbed Los Angeles, drawing on his urban planning expertise to discuss community land trusts, which don’t exist to make a profit.
  • A Los Angeles Daily News story cited a study by Ong about the response rate to the 2020 U.S. Census. “We are critically behind,” he said. “Some groups such as low-income people, communities of color, renters and young children are at risk of being missed.

UCLA Research Guides Debate on Evictions and Homelessness

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UCLA research on the looming threat of eviction and homelessness in Los Angeles County is guiding debate about how to safeguard residents as the region attempts to emerge from the COVID-19 lockdown. Recent studies from the Institute on Inequality and Democracy (II&D) and the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge (CNK), both housed at UCLA Luskin, have been cited by policymakers, civic leaders and advocacy groups. An II&D report authored by Gary Blasi, UCLA professor emeritus of law, estimated that tens of thousands of households in the county could fall into homelessness due to the pandemic. Blasi called for robust tenant protections, as well as urgent planning for temporary housing for those who lose their homes. His findings have been cited on the news and editorial pages of the Los Angeles Times, as well as on NPR, CalMatters, Streetsblog and Capital & Main. In response to the pandemic, the California court system in April put a hold on eviction proceedings statewide. Despite these protections, some Los Angeles landlords have sought to remove tenants by force or coercion, creating a “web of urban inequality,” according to Paul Ong, CNK director and author of a study on rent burdens that was cited by the Los Angeles Times. As the court considered lifting California’s eviction moratorium, advocacy groups such as Disability Rights California and the pro bono law firm Public Counsel lobbied against the move by presenting research from II&D and CNK, among other sources. The court subsequently delayed its review of the moratorium.

Racial, Class Disparities Found Amid Persistent Shortfall in 2020 Census Response A looming undercount puts the prospect of a complete and unbiased enumeration in doubt, according to a new report

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By Les Dunseith

The national response rate to the U.S. Census continues to be well behind where it was at a similar point a decade ago, and the gap in self-responses is most evident in poor and minority communities, according to a new UCLA analysis of census data.

As of June 1, the nation’s 2020 census was approximately 6 percentage points behind the rate of response in 2010, according to co-author Paul Ong, a UCLA Luskin research professor and director of the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge. Although this rate is better than the shortfall of over 12 percentage points found in an earlier study, Ong said it is unlikely that the overall gap can be closed completely.

“More troubling is that poor and minority communities are systematically and disproportionately affected by the problems with the self-response rates,” Ong wrote in the new report. “These neighborhoods experienced lower response rates in 2010 than more advantaged neighborhoods, and the gap widened in 2020.”

The difference is most apparent in Black and Latino neighborhoods, which have historically had lower rates of response than white neighborhoods. The 2020 response in Latino neighborhoods is down 15.2% points, according to the report.

The findings also show that the poorer the community, the lower the census response rate, and that divide has widened over the past decade. For the poorest neighborhoods, the self-response rates dropped from 56.3% in 2010 to 45.3% by 2020. Other adversely affected groups include families with young children, limited English speakers and non-citizens.

The researchers project that the undercount they see in the 2020 Census has put the prospect of a complete and unbiased enumeration in doubt. In turn, this threatens and undermines the goal of having fair political representation and just resource allocation.

The fact that reporting gaps coincide with neighborhoods most impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic further complicates the situation, especially during the phase of the census that involves in-person counts by census takers.

“This association makes in-person interactions and follow-up interviews riskier and more costly than originally planned,” the report notes.

Rather than addressing the overall shortfall in the most cost-effective manner by targeting neighborhoods that are easiest to count, the authors advocate devoting the bureau’s limited resources instead to neighborhoods that are harder to reach.

“If we believe in a fair count, it is more important to address racial and class disparities,” the authors write. “Under these circumstances, priorities must be realigned so that scarce resources are laser-focused on safe, and proven, evidence-based actions with hard-to-count populations.”

One approach would involve partnering with community and faith-based organizations that could help persuade more of the “hard to count” to participate, the report says.

The analysis is based primarily on examining the 2010 and 2020 response rates for census tracts, which is a proxy for neighborhoods. Paul Ong also is a founder of Ong & Associates, an economic and policy analysis consulting firm specializing in public interest issues, which provided services pro bono for the study. It was co-authored by Jonathan Ong.

State’s Black, Latino Workers Less Likely to Be Covered by Unemployment Insurance UCLA report recommends that California extend COVID-19 economic recovery funding to all workers

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By Eliza Moreno

An analysis of unemployment in California at the height of the COVID-19 crisis shows that as many as 22% of Blacks and 26% of Latinos were jobless, compared to 17% of both white and Asian workers.

The new report, by the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative and the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, is based not only on data from the filing of unemployment insurance claims, but also on labor statistics and U.S. Census data.

The paper examines the totality of the pandemic’s effect through mid-April on the California labor market by including estimates of the numbers of undocumented workers and so-called discouraged workers — people who want to be employed but are not actively engaged due to factors like job shortages, discrimination or a lack of requisite skills.

With state officials discussing a recovery package that will include adjustments to unemployment support, the UCLA report highlights the importance of including assistance for all types of workers, not just those who have filed unemployment claims. According to the study, roughly 1 million additional workers need assistance, and between 350,000 to 500,000 of them are undocumented.

“Many of the people facing devastating economic losses are in the shadows, and this report puts a figure to that loss so that policymakers understand where to focus their support as we move toward recovery,” said Sonja Diaz, founding director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative.

The report’s other key findings include:

  • More than 3 million workers in California have lost their jobs as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, more than any other state.
  • More than 900,000 Californians have lost their jobs due to layoffs and have stopped looking for work as a result of the pandemic.
  • Over a quarter of Californians experiencing job loss were ineligible for unemployment insurance.
  • One-third of Californians who are receiving unemployment insurance are Latino.
  • Latinos are 59% of Californians who are ineligible for unemployment insurance.

“Economic recovery can only be achieved by understanding who is hurting the most from the pandemic-induced recession,” said Chhandara Pech, a researcher at the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge and co-author of the paper. “Our report underscores that in the nation’s richest state, those at the bottom of the economic ladder need help the most.”

The report recommends that state policymakers expand the eligibility requirements for unemployment insurance, including for workers who may need to take time off to care for sick relatives. It also urges expansion of support to include health care and rental assistance, including for undocumented Californians.

The research brief is the fourth in a series of research papers examining the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on neighborhoods in Los Angeles County. Previous papers in the series found that Asian-American and Latino neighborhoods in Los Angeles County were most vulnerable due to the pandemic’s impact on the retail and service sectors, Latino neighborhoods were less likely to receive the individual rebate under the CARES Act, and many Blacks and Latinos live in neighborhoods that lack basic necessities during the county’s safer-at-home order.

The research is being conducted with assistance from Ong & Associates, an economic and policy analysis consulting firm specializing in public interest issues. Ong & Associates provided services pro bono for the study. Its founder is Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, which is housed in the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Ong on Evictions and the Worsening Housing Crisis

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Paul Ong, research professor and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, spoke to Fox 11 News about the impact of impending evictions on the housing crisis. A moratorium in Los Angeles prohibited landlords from evicting renters during the coronavirus pandemic, but many families fear they will lose their homes when the moratorium is lifted. The threat of eviction comes as widespread unemployment has pushed many households further into debt. After studying how the coronavirus crisis has affected different communities, Ong said that African American and Latino households in Los Angeles County are at high risk. “These are the same workers that … are on the financial edge,” he said. “By the end of the crisis, [they] will be deeply in debt.” 

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