Hope Is Hard Work: Laphonza Butler Delivered Call to Action on Building Power From the Ground Up At the annual Luskin Summit, the former U.S. senator joined 400 scholars, students, and leaders in search for lasting equity and well-being

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , , , /by

Former U.S. Sen. Laphonza Butler brought a message of resiliency and resolve to more than 400 scholars, students, community leaders, and elected officials who came together at UCLA last week to take on California’s most entrenched problems.

“Too many Californians, too many Angelenos, are not OK,” Butler told the crowd gathered for the eighth annual UCLA Luskin Summit on April 15. But she added, “The people in this room, the communities that you serve, have already proven that change is possible. …

“I keep returning to this one thing that sustains me: It’s that hope is not a joyful feeling. Hope, UCLA, is hard work.”

Butler, who served as a labor leader, political advisor and UC regent before joining the U.S. Senate in 2023 to complete the term of the late Dianne Feinstein, delivered the keynote address following a morning centered on strengthening resilience and equity at the local level.

Sharing Research and Solutions

Researchers from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs teamed up with difference-makers in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors to share the latest advances in four areas of concern:

  • California’s housing strategy, including the state’s new zoning rules aimed at making shelter more affordable
  • Environmental health and justice, including the impact of extreme heat as L.A. hosts a series of mega-events, and the toll plastic pollution takes on vulnerable communities
  • Transportation security, including new strategies for elevating security, trust, and comfort among public transit riders
  • Socioeconomic vulnerability, including strategies to bridge intergenerational inequities, and regulatory tools that can be used to promote more inclusive growth

Launched in 2019, the UCLA Luskin Summit provides a bridge between academia, policymakers, and civil society, with the goal of finding evidence-based solutions to California’s most pressing concerns. This year’s gathering highlighted recent research from the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, and departments of Public Policy, Social Welfare, and Urban Planning.

Master of Urban Planning student O’Philia Le said she chose to attend the summit to learn how UCLA Luskin research is put into practice in the world.

“A key takeaway for me was that large-scale racial justice and global environmental impacts really start with local solutions. However, those solutions don’t just happen on their own,” she said.

“They require political pressure, community engagement, and an intentional push to actually move forward. As an aspiring planner, I believe that this is key to the work that we do.”

three men in suits sitting on stage

From left, ABC7’s Josh Haskell, Miguel Santana of the California Community Foundation, and Zev Yaroslavsky of UCLA Luskin’s Los Angeles Initiative review results from the 2026 Quality of Life Index. Photo by Michael Troxell

Quality of Life Index Reveals Growing Strain

The summit also hosted the release of this year’s UCLA Quality of Life Index (QLI), a project of the Luskin School’s Los Angeles Initiative, directed by Zev Yaroslavsky. The survey found that Los Angeles County residents’ satisfaction with their lives has hit the lowest level in the QLI’s 11-year history.

“We’ve been through a lot in the last five years: COVID; punishing increases in the cost of living; last year’s catastrophic fires, the worst natural disaster in the history of this city; tariffs; and this year the destabilizing implementation of the Trump administration’s immigration sweeps, which started right here in our own back yard,” he said. “All of these have taken their toll on virtually every aspect of our lives in every part of our region.”

Cost of living continues to be the single biggest driver of residents’ quality of life, though its rating declined from 2025, according to the survey. Among the 1,400 Los Angeles County residents polled in March, housing affordability remained the dominant concern, while rising costs for utilities, groceries, and taxes were cited more frequently than in prior years.

Ratings fell across nearly every category compared with last year, with six areas reaching their lowest levels since the survey began in 2016: education, transportation and traffic, jobs and the economy, public safety, neighborhood conditions, and relations among different races, ethnicities, and religions.

A Call to Action for the Next Generation

In her remarks, Butler also addressed the sobering results of the QLI.

“Every year the Quality of Life Index holds up a mirror to Los Angeles County,” she said. “And every year, it asks us to be brave enough to look in that mirror.”

She stressed, however, that “alongside every data point of strain, there’s a counter story, one that doesn’t get enough attention — the story that happens when people organize, when coalitions hold, when accountability is real.”

To the service-minded students in the room, she issued a call to action, echoing the summit’s theme of empowering local communities. Some of them would go to Washington and some to Sacramento, where they are desperately needed, she said.

“But some of you — hear me — need to go to places that don’t make headlines. To neighborhoods where the data actually lives, to communities where the stakes are immediate, not to study them but to be accountable to them. …

“The communities most impacted by vulnerability are also most engaged in building solutions. … Survival demands participation.”

UCLA Luskin professor Veronica Herrera introduces a session on plastic pollution before a standing-room-only audience. Photo by Mary Braswell
Men and women listening to speaker
Men and women listening to speaker
Three people in conversation
Three people in conversation

View more photos from the 2026 UCLA Luskin Summit on Flickr.

Volatility Ahead in LA Mayor’s Race; UCLA Luskin Poll Finds 40% of Voters Undecided ‘It’s a wide-open race’ ahead of the June 2 primary election

/9 Comments/in , , /by

With just two months to go before a primary election for Los Angeles’ next mayor, 40% of the electorate remains undecided, signaling volatile weeks of campaigning ahead, according to a new poll by the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

Incumbent Mayor Karen Bass led the field with 25% support, followed by conservative television personality Spencer Pratt at 11% and Los Angeles City Councilmember Nithya Raman at 9%, according to the poll of likely LA primary voters.

Also on the ballot are tech entrepreneur Adam Miller and housing activist Rae Huang, who each received 3%. Nine percent of respondents indicated they would support “a different candidate.” A total of 14 candidates are vying for the city’s top office.

If no candidate wins a majority in the June 2 primary, the top two vote-getters will face off in November to determine who will lead the nation’s second-most populous city.

“It is unusual for 40% of likely voters to be unsure of their choice just two months before an LA mayoralty election,” said Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, who served for decades as an elected leader in Los Angeles city and county.

“Although Mayor Bass faces the most challenging reelection of an incumbent mayor in decades, it is highly likely that this election will be decided in a November runoff. A lot can change between now and then, so it’s a wide-open race.”

The poll, which surveyed 813 likely primary voters between March 15 and March 29, is part of UCLA Luskin’s annual Quality of Life Index measuring Angelenos’ perception of their well-being across issues like safety, cost of living, health care and the environment. This year’s survey was conducted in partnership with the California Community Foundation, and complete results will be released on April 15 at the UCLA Luskin Summit.

The large bloc of undecided voters indicates that many are still assessing Bass’ record against her opponents’ qualifications. The 2025 Quality of Life Index, released weeks after the catastrophic Los Angeles wildfires, found that the mayor was viewed unfavorably by 49% of respondents, a significant increase from 32% a year earlier.

Undecided voters may be unfamiliar with many of the names on this year’s ballot. Among the more prominent are Pratt, best known for his appearances on reality television shows, and Raman, elected in 2020 to represent Los Angeles’ 4th District, which stretches from Reseda to Los Feliz. Raman entered the mayor’s race just hours before the filing deadline closed on Feb. 7.

This year’s UCLA Luskin poll also measured support for candidates across different demographic groups.

  • Bass, the first Black woman to lead Los Angeles, drew the support of 53% of African American respondents, with 29% undecided.
  • Among white, Latino, and Asian and Pacific Islander respondents, the undecided category outpaced support for Bass.
  • Among voters age 65 or older, Bass received support from 31%, with 36% undecided.
  • Among voters aged 40 to 64, 23% supported Bass. Collectively, her top four opponents drew 30% support. A similar pattern emerged among voters aged 18 to 39, with 21% supporting Bass and 29% supporting one of her four closest contenders.
  • Undecided voters were the largest segment in each of the age categories.

The poll, conducted by public opinion research firm FM3 Research by phone and online in English and Spanish, has a margin of error of 4%. Funding for the Quality of Life Index is provided by Meyer and Renee Luskin through the Los Angeles Initiative, as well as the California Community Foundation.

 

Reexamining the “Nation of Immigrants”: The Politics of ICE Enforcement Keynote and Panel Discussion State leaders and advocates confront rising federal immigration enforcement and outline strategies for accountability and community protection.

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

The keynote and panel discussion “Reexamining the “Nation of Immigrants”: The Politics of ICE Enforcement” was held on Thursday, February 5, as part of the Luskin Lecture Series, bringing together leading voices in law, research and immigration rights advocacy to assess the changing landscape of immigration enforcement in California. Featured speakers included Attorney General of California Rob Bonta; Ahilan Arulanantham, professor from practice and faculty co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy, Paul Ong, research professor and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, and Angelica Salas, executive director of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights.

In his keynote address, Bonta characterized the current moment as a critical juncture for immigrant communities in the state. He pointed to mounting reports of increased militarization on the streets and described a climate of fear taking hold in neighborhoods. Framing the issue as both a legal and moral imperative, Bonta underscored the importance of protecting the rights of all residents in California, regardless of immigration status, stating that “nobody should be living in fear.” 

With President and CEO of California Community Foundation Miguel A. Santana serving as moderator, the panel discussion shifted to strategy, structural accountability and the broader implications of federal enforcement practices. 

Salas highlighted California’s ongoing legal challenges to federal immigration actions and called for sustained oversight of detention facilities, urging state leaders to “double down on accountability.”

Ong widened the lens, situating California’s response within national trends, he argued that rigorous data collection and impact analysis are essential to demonstrating how state-level protections can mitigate harm to immigrant communities. By quantifying outcomes, he suggested, California could offer an evidence-based model for other states grappling with similar tensions.

Emphasizing allegations of misconduct by federal immigration officers in Southern California, Arulanantham called on state officials to consider criminal accountability where appropriate. 

Following the panel discussion, the forum opened to audience questions that reflected the heightened anxieties around federal immigration enforcement in California. Many questions centered around how the state of California would protect its residents from the threat of ICE, especially on school campuses and in the anticipation of the upcoming Olympics.

The panelists responded by framing community preparedness as a critical line of defense, stressing the importance of people knowing their rights. Attorney General Bonta closed on a note that “we shouldn’t feel hopeless, because we’re not helpless.”

IMG_8401

Keeping California Children Cool: Strategies for Safe Schools and Homes

/0 Comments/in , , , /by

By Mara Elana Burstein

As heat waves become more frequent and intense, many California children face unsafe indoor temperatures where they spend most of their time — at home and at school. Access to cooling in homes and schools is now a public health necessity, not a luxury.

Building on years of research on heat resilience and school safety, the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation has released a report offering policymakers a menu of strategies to expand access to cooling in homes and schools. The recommendations focus on the installation and maintenance of air conditioning and other mechanical cooling systems, offering practical, evidence-based options for state leaders seeking to protect children where they live and learn.

Children shouldn’t have to choose between their health and their education. Our research shows that California can take immediate, concrete steps to make schools and homes safer from heat. — Lana Zimmerman, project manager and lead author of the report

The report outlines a set of policy and regulatory actions California leaders can adopt:

  • Set indoor temperature standards for schools and plan similar action during the 2031 Building Standards Code update, or sooner as an emergency health and safety measure.
  • Track cooling access in schools, as the state already does for homes.
  • Coordinate agencies through a state-level advisory committee.
  • Fund existing programs that support equitable access to indoor cooling by serving high-need schools, homes, and regions.
  • Centralize public information and simplify funding processes for local governments and communities.
  • Prioritize equity by investing in high-need regions and supporting workforce training for cooling system installation.

These strategies are informed by new data from the 2025 Luskin California Poll that reveal gaps in access to indoor cooling and public opinion on state action. In the survey, nearly half of parents said they’ve kept their kids home because of heat, and yet one in ten households with children lack working air conditioning (AC). Many more Californians avoid using their AC because of high energy bills.

“Expanding access to cooling is about more than comfort. It’s about health and equity,” said V. Kelly Turner, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. “The solutions outlined in our report recognize that children in low-income households and communities of color are often the most exposed to heat and have the least resources to respond,” added Turner, who is also an associate professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin.

As California implements new investments in school modernization, clean energy, and community resilience, this research offers a timely guide for aligning those efforts. The report, “Keeping Californians Safe with Cooling Systems in Homes and Schools,” underscores that keeping classrooms cool and homes safe is essential to a healthy, equitable future for the state’s children.

UCLA Housing Voice Podcast Celebrates 100 Episodes Hosted by Shane Phillips, the podcast continues to bridge the gap between academic research and real-world housing solutions.

/0 Comments/in , , , , /by

The UCLA Housing Voice Podcast, produced by the Randall Lewis Housing Initiative at the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, will release its 100th episode on October 22. The podcast, a biweekly program managed by Shane Phillips and joined by UCLA Luskin professors Michael Lens, Paavo Monkkonen, and Mike Manville as occasional co-hosts, aims to translate emerging housing research into practical insights for practitioners, policymakers, and the broader public.

Each episode features conversations with housing researchers on topics such as affordability, displacement, land-use policy, and tenant protections. The Randall Lewis Housing Initiative supports this work by producing research and public programming to shape public discourse. 

As a recent review from HousingForward Virginia put it, “What makes this podcast particularly valuable is how Phillips and his co-hosts translate academic jargon into practical insights. They don’t just present findings—they dig into what the research means for practitioners, policymakers, and communities.” 

Since its debut, the podcast has explored a wide range of topics, from California’s Senate Bill 9 duplex law and inclusionary zoning policies to comparative housing laws in countries such as Japan and New Zealand. Across its first 99 episodes, the series has traced the evolving global conversation on housing equity and policy innovation. 

The 100th episode will be available October 22 on all major podcast platforms. 

New Mexico to Become First State Offering Free Universal Child Care

/0 Comments/in , , /by

NBC reports that New Mexico will become the first state in the U.S. to provide free universal child care, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced. The program, expanding an existing initiative, will cover all families starting in November, regardless of income, saving households an average of $12,000 per child per year. The expansion also includes a $13-million fund to build, expand, and renovate child care facilities.

The initiative reflects New Mexico’s ongoing commitment to early childhood education, following the 2019 creation of the Early Childhood Education and Care Departmen.

“New Mexico is creating the conditions for better outcomes in health, learning, and well-being,” said Neal Halfon, UCLA Luskin professor of public policy, calling the program “a model for the nation.”

Rising Temperatures Cause Students to Underperform Across the World UCLA’s Edith de Guzman highlights how overheated classrooms are widening educational inequities.

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , , /by

An article published in the Los Angeles Times quotes Edith de Guzman, a climate researcher at UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation, highlighting how rising temperatures are undermining students’ ability to learn—particularly in underserved communities. A comprehensive review, analyzing data from 14.5 million students across 61 countries, found that heat exposure reduces cognitive performance, especially in complex subjects like math. Even moderately warm days, between 80 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit, impair students’ attention, memory, and focus.

Heat doesn’t affect all students equally. Black, Latino, and low-income students experience up to three to four times more learning loss from heat exposure compared to white and affluent peers. This disparity is largely due to inequalities in infrastructure—many under-resourced schools lack adequate air conditioning, shade, or green space, making classrooms unbearably hot during warmer months.

“As classroom temperatures rise over time — especially during extended heat waves or in schools with less shade, poorer insulation and lacking access to air conditioning — students tend to show declines in attention, memory and test performance,” said Edith de Guzman, a climate researcher at UCLA’s Luskin Center for Innovation. Heat can also affect students’ abilities to enjoy outdoor recreational activities, having serious effects on their physical, mental and social well-being, she said.

The study also found that these effects are cumulative, with heat exposure throughout the school year having a greater impact on learning than just exam-day temperatures. Simple solutions—such as air conditioning, improved ventilation, and increasing tree canopy around schools—can dramatically reduce heat-related learning loss. However, many schools lack the funding to implement these upgrades.

Indonesia’s Democratization at a Crossroads: BGI Report Highlights Rising Challenges Despite robust economic gains and improved public goods provision, Indonesia faces mounting hurdles in governance.

/0 Comments/in , , , , , /by

The newest BGI report reveals striking insights for Indonesia, which faces complex governance dynamics as an archipelagic state and the country with the largest global Muslim population. Achieving full democratization proves a challenge for Indonesia, with the BGI report revealing a decline in democratic accountability. State capacity measures appear to remain stagnant, despite the country experiencing significant economic growth. However, this trend is not uncommon to its Southeast Asian neighbors- illustrating that Indonesia must continue to invest its economic gains in state capacity. Public goods provision has significantly increased, but the country’s complex regional governance system may prove a challenge to maintaining these gains. As Indonesia accelerates its development, it must face these challenges head-on– struggles which have been amplified due to authoritarian tendencies, crippling regional inequality, geopolitical challenges, and struggles with trade diversification as it emerges as a leader on the global stage.

Read the full report here.

Underpaying and Overusing Our Roads: The True Cost of Driving UCLA Luskin’s Mike Manville is challenging how we think about traffic, housing, and fairness.

/0 Comments/in , , , , , , , , , , , /by

by Peaches Chung

If you’ve ever been stuck in gridlock traffic on the 405 or circled the block looking for parking in L.A., you’ve experienced the kinds of problems Michael Manville has spent years researching and trying to solve. As professor and chair of urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, Manville is reshaping how we think about transportation and housing in a sprawling city like Los Angeles and turning his research into real-world impact.

At the center of Manville’s transportation research is a deceptively simple idea: the way we price things matters and how we price things shapes how we use them.

” Driving costs less than it should, because the full social costs of driving, like congestion, pollution, infrastructure wear, aren’t reflected in what we pay to use our roads.”

“Driving is too cheap, and housing is too expensive,” he says. “Driving isn’t cheap in the absolute sense of the word ‘cheap’ because cars aren’t cheap and gas isn’t free, but in the sense that it costs less than it should, because the full social costs of driving, like congestion, pollution, infrastructure wear, aren’t reflected in what we pay to use our roads.” The price of housing, meanwhile, is driven up by restrictive land-use policies that limit supply.

Manville’s first introduction into urban planning began in a newsroom while covering transportation and housing topics as a local reporter. When the newspaper he worked for went bankrupt, he joined the local planning commission. Eager to turn his newfound passion into a career, he enrolled in the urban planning master’s degree program at UCLA and after a summer as a research assistant, decided to pursue a Ph.D. Today, he leads the department that jumpstarted his second career.

Building on the groundbreaking work of his mentor Donald Shoup, former UCLA urban planning professor and pioneer in parking reform who famously argued that free or underpriced parking distorts urban development, Manville and many other experts in the field have expanded this logic more broadly, emphasizing that it’s not just parking that’s mispriced, it’s also the roads themselves.

One proven strategy to address this is congestion pricing, a transportation policy that charges drivers a fee to use certain roads during peak traffic times. A controversial idea that has gained some traction in recent years, the goal primarily is to improve traffic flow and lower pollution, although it can also generate revenue for public transit and infrastructure.

It’s the idea that using roads during peak times should come with a price, just like electricity or water. “We meter every other government-owned utility,” Manville explains, “but not roads.” “It’s the only system that we don’t charge prices for, and it’s not a coincidence that it’s the only system that colossally breaks down about two times a day.” Manville argues that the same basic principle we apply to everything else in our economy, pricing goods and services based on demand, should also apply to road usage.

“We meter every other government-owned utility, but not our roads. It’s the only system that we don’t charge prices for, and it’s not a coincidence that it’s the only system that colossally breaks down about two times a day.”

Cities like Singapore prove it can work. In Singapore, dynamic tolling keeps traffic flowing at 45–55 mph even in a city as densely populated as San Francisco. Manville argues that Los Angeles could reap similar benefits if it embraced the idea. “We’ve normalized the dysfunction of our transportation system,” he says. “But there’s nothing inherently fair about free roads, or unfair about charging for their use.”

For Manville, reimagining cities isn’t just about policy; it’s about turning research into practical, real-world implementation. At UCLA Luskin, he says, that happens through teaching the next generation of planners, working directly with policymakers, and ensuring research is more accessible to community members. “The biggest impact we can have,” he explains, “is making sure our students leave with the ability to weigh tradeoffs—not chase perfect solutions.”

When asked what he hopes for the next generation of urban planners who will be tasked to solve some of the most complicated issues our cities face today, Manville had some wisdom from his own experience as a young planner.

“I came to UCLA convinced there were a bunch of right answers,” he reflects. “But the biggest lesson I’ve learned, and hope to pass on, is that progress comes from understanding the nuance and complexity of the issues we hope to solve. In a city as vast and diverse as L.A., differing perspectives are inevitable and real change begins with listening, especially to those you may not agree with.”