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.”

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Germany’s New National Security Plan Lacks Specifics, Anheier Writes

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An analysis by UCLA Luskin’s Helmut K. Anheier of Germany’s new national-security plan applauds the strategy but finds it too vague to be effective. Anheier’s article, distributed through Project Syndicate, notes that in modern times Germany has historically relied on the United States and NATO for protection, projecting itself as a champion of military restraint. “This illusion was shattered after Russia attacked Ukraine, and China, eager to exploit any perceived Western vulnerability, adopted a more assertive foreign policy,” writes Anheier, an adjunct professor of social welfare and public policy who oversees the Berggruen Governance Index. The plan recently issued by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz does not sufficiently address the institutional mechanisms — nor budgetary resources — needed to implement it. “The strategy will most likely remain on the shelf — a well-written account of what could have been,” concludes Anheier, who is also a professor of sociology at the Hertie School in Berlin.

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Kaplan on Men’s Mental Health and Suicide

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Mark Kaplan, professor of social welfare, spoke on WJCT News’ podcast “What’s Health Got to Do With It” in an episode dedicated to mental health care for men. The podcast focused specifically on suicide rates for men in the United States, a health care story that has been an “unspoken subject,” according to the show’s host. Suicide for men in the U.S. is an “underappreciated major public health crisis,” said Kaplan, whose work has focused on using population-wide data to understand suicide risk factors among veterans, seniors and other vulnerable populations. Kaplan noted that men die of suicide at a rate four times higher than women, but, he said, “When you look at age specific groups — once you get into older adulthood — the ratio is up, 12 to one.” Citing Centers for Disease Control data, Kaplan said that death by suicide is “strikingly a male phenomena” and that a distinguishing factor is their use of firearms around the world.

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Rowe Says S.F. Moratorium on New Pot Shops Could Hurt Customers

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UCLA Luskin lecturer Brad Rowe recently commented on a decision by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors to create a moratorium through 2028 on new applications for retail cannabis licenses in the city, describing it as “old-school protectionism” of retail license holders. California’s entire cannabis industry is struggling to stay profitable and this action could help retailers, but Rowe told SF Gate it is likely to increase prices. “There is a way to build value by restricting access,” Rowe said. “The problem is who is going to pay for it? Consumers are the ones who are going to pay with higher prices.”

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Tilly on the Struggle to Fill Jobs in the U.S.

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Chris Tilly, professor and chair of Urban Planning, commented in a WalletHub article about U.S. states where employers are struggling most to hire workers in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. In general, Tilly said, employers are having difficulty hiring and keeping workers because the unemployment rate has been so low in recent months — about 3.5% — that workers can be choosy and can demand higher wages. Employers “have been raising wages in response to their difficulty hiring, but they still have not come to terms with how much they will have to raise pay to fill open jobs,” Tilly said. He also noted that when unemployment levels were higher, employers could be more selective in the skills they wanted and could be pickier. “The reality is that workers are capable of learning, and businesses are going to have to do more training than they are accustomed to,” he said.

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A Look at the Behind-the Scenes Battles That Helped Shape Los Angeles

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A new political memoir by Zev Yaroslavsky, who helped shape Los Angeles as a member of the City Council and County Board of Supervisors for four decades, has drawn widespread attention from news outlets around the country. The New York Times called “Zev’s Los Angeles: From Boyle Heights to the Halls of Power” a “history of the people and policies that have shaped the city,” delving into tax revolts, police culture, immigration, the arts, the environment and more. A review in the Jewish Journal said the book’s glimpses of behind-the-scenes deal-making “may even give the reader a new appreciation for the work of a politician.” Yaroslavsky, now director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, has appeared on “L.A. Times Today” on Spectrum News 1 and “Air Talk” on LAist, and he discussed the book at length in a two-part interview on “Then & Now,” the podcast of the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy.

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Crenshaw High Athlete’s Death Is Another Trauma for Black Youths in L.A., Leap Says

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The killing of Quincy Reese Jr., 16, illustrates the trauma too often left in the wake of bloodshed, UCLA Luskin Social Welfare’s Jorja Leap told the Los Angeles Times. “Black children are exposed to an epidemic of violence,” she said. Death by firearms occurs among Black children and adolescents in L.A. County at a rate that is three times higher than their proportion of the population, according to the Department of Public Health’s Office of Violence Prevention. Such violence is also devastating for survivors such as those who attended the party where the Crenshaw High athlete was killed, Leap said, and mourning the loss of a friend or loved one stays with children for the rest of their lives.

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Millard-Ball on Who Deserves Carbon Credits

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UCLA Luskin’s Adam Millard-Ball, professor of urban planning and acting director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, commented in an MIT Technology Review article about a California-based car manufacturer seeking to earn carbon credits for its electric vehicle chargers. Rivian, producer of high-end trucks and SUVs, has applied to one of the world’s largest certifiers of carbon credits to retain “all environmental attributes” from the use of its chargers, the article revealed. Residential chargers are included along with the company’s own charging stations and third-party site hosts under the company’s plan, which Millard-Ball doubts would be noticed by purchasers or likely pointed out by sellers. “If someone is buying a charger and the company is selling away the good so someone else can pollute more, I don’t think that’s in the spirit of the marketing or the branding or the motivations of many people who buy electric vehicles,” he said.

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A Call for Heat Preparedness at California Schools

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A California Healthline article on how to help schools become more heat-resilient in the face of global warming cited recommendations laid out in a policy brief from the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, including setting an indoor temperature limit and investing in shade and greenery for play areas. Two of the policy brief’s co-authors, Associate Professor of Urban Planning V. Kelly Turner and graduate student Lauren Dunlap, are currently modeling how increasing the tree canopy to 30% can affect heat stress and researching the different benefits of dispersed or clustered tree configurations. “Obviously, the California Education Board wasn’t set up to think about climate change. But now that climate change is a reality, virtually every sector is going to have to think about it,” Turner said. The article, which appeared in the Sacramento Bee, LAist and other outlets, noted that legislative action includes a bill by State Sen. Caroline Menjivar MSW ’18 that would require schools to have heat plans by 2027.

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Study Finds Marginalization of Black and Latino Youth by Gun Violence Prevention Groups

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An article in The Guardian cited research led by UCLA scholars exploring the marginalization of Black and Latino organizers by national gun violence prevention groups. Co-principal investigators Sara Wilf and Taylor Reed, both UCLA Luskin Social Welfare Ph.D. students, worked with a UCLA Luskin-based team, including Professor of Social Welfare Laura Wray-Lake, the faculty advisor on the project. The researchers interviewed young Black and Latino violence prevention advocates who have had experience with gun violence prevention organizations. Findings from the study, representing the last four years, include reports by interviewees of “being tokenized, silencing of racially conscious organizing and expectation to educate white person racism,” according to team members who presented their work at the annual Society for Social Work and Research conference held in Phoenix in January. The study, which is now being peer reviewed, is supported by a grant from the UCLA Initiative to Study Hate and the Franklin D. Gilliam, Jr. Social Justice Award.

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