Taylor on Newsom’s Proposed Transit Funding Cuts

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Brian Taylor, professor of urban planning and public policy, was cited in a Sacramento Bee article about how the state’s funding cuts on transportation will negatively impact Californians. As ridership has decreased on public transit, Gov. Gavin Newsom is looking to make cuts to the current budget, but transit advocates argue that these cuts will only push more residents to become reliant on cars. With a large population of Californians commuting to work alone in their vehicles daily, the state’s plan to reduce car dependence may falter if transit budgets are cut. Taylor said that the state has a responsibility to continue providing funding for public transportation and suggested that a resolution to the funding issue could be to reform the current law that determines how much and where state funding is allocated, which is “structured in a way that limits the flexibility and the movement.”

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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.

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Segura on Approaches for Reforming City Government

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UCLA Luskin Professor Gary Segura spoke to LAist’s “AirTalk” about the L.A. Governance Reform Project, an effort by Southern California scholars to develop proposals to reform Los Angeles’ scandal-scarred city government. While the project will initially focus on establishing a fair redistricting process, it will also consider the merits of increasing the number of City Council members, which currently stands at 15. “The idea is that there should be a representation system in which all of the city’s various ethnic, racial, sectarian and linguistic groups have an opportunity to see their views represented,” said Segura, the team’s co-chair. “The truth is that’s just easier when there are more seats.” The scholars will invite civil society and social justice organizations to weigh in on this approach. Past efforts to expand the council have met with public opposition, and Segura acknowledged that recent controversies exposing corruption and racist conversations may make electing more City Council members seem unpalatable.

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Yaroslavsky on L.A.’s Neighborhood Councils

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to LAist’s AirTalk about how Los Angeles’ neighborhood councils work and whether they make a difference within their communities. Los Angeles has almost 100 neighborhood councils, which function in an advisory capacity to provide a direct mode of communication between residents and the City Council members who represent them. The system “has brought communities closer to municipal government,” Yaroslavsky said. “How much impact it’s had is not clear.” He said a big strength of the councils is that they bring together a cross-section of community members who are actively involved in local issues. But there is also a risk that the councils be asked to endorse projects from special interests without complete and transparent information, leading to unintended consequences. “That, to me, is a weakness,” he said.

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Pierce on Climate Change, Drought and L.A.’s Epic Storm

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London’s Guardian newspaper carried news of blizzard conditions that sparked wonder and delight among Southern Californians unaccustomed to winter weather — along with vast power outages, closed highways and other hazards. Greg Pierce, co-director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, put the extreme weather event in context, noting that more research is required to determine the role of the climate crisis in setting the stage for the storm. California’s wet winter has created a robust snowpack and higher reservoir levels that will relieve some drought pressures, but “we can’t let up,” Pierce said. “This storm is helping us stay ahead of pace — way ahead of pace than in recent years — but I still think we really need to see more,” he said. “We were in a really extreme place and this [storm] just gets us back to buying a little more time as we make other major investments and continue to harden conservation.”

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Lens on the Importance of More Renter Politicians in L.A.

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Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, was cited in an LAist article about the growing percentage of renters winning local elections. As it stands, a majority of Los Angeles residents are tenants and the candidate pool has begun to reflect this change. Now that college graduates and wealthier residents are unable to find affordable housing, more renters will demand representation. However, Lens pointed out that not all renter politicians have the same goals in mind and might be at odds about what policies to support — for example, constructing more housing or establishing more renter protections. “As long as those two camps aren’t talking so nicely to each other — and that’s generally how things are right now — it’s going to be hard for a renter politician to be fluidly in support of both of those sets of interventions,” Lens said.

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Torres-Gil on Protections for In-Home Caregivers

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Fernando Torres-Gil, professor of social welfare and public policy, spoke to the Sacramento Bee about the In-Home Support Services Employee-Employer Relations Act. This bill would allow in-home caregivers in California to unite under one statewide bargaining unit, negotiating with the Department of Health Care Services for better wages and conditions rather than with their individual counties. Currently, in-home caregivers make only within a dollar or two of the state minimum wage — meaning that they are struggling to make ends meet. “We have a crisis. We have a huge and growing unmet need. We have a workforce that has been disrespected, and there are fewer people willing to do this kind of work,” Torres-Gil said. The need for in-home care for low-income, disabled and aging Californians is expected to surge in the coming years.

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Newton Reflects on Feinstein’s Political Career

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Jim Newton, editor of UCLA’s Blueprint magazine, was interviewed by KCRW about Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s political career in the wake of recent news that she will not run for reelection. “There were a lot of cross-cutting loyalties there, but she was steadfast, tough, tenacious, all of which are hallmarks of her career. It certainly put her at odds, as I say, with some allies and friends. But she dug in and when she digs in, she’s tough,” Newton said. Feinstein’s long political career has had many groundbreaking moments, such as her federal legislation to ban assault weapons and her unwavering stance against CIA torture before and after 9/11. “She is a thinker of her own and that has allowed her to make alliances and build friendships and connections across the aisle and across society,” Newton said. “[Her career has] been such an impressive, such a groundbreaking and such an important part of California history.”

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Ong on the Exodus Out of California

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Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Times and NBC4’s NewsConference about California’s steep population decline. Between April 2020 and July 2022, the population dropped by more than 500,000 people. The number of residents leaving surpassed those moving in by nearly 700,000. Ong pointed to several economic, health and sociopolitical factors driving the exodus, with housing affordability at the top of the list. “California now has the highest housing burden — that is, the proportion of income that is going to pay for housing. Roughly between a fifth to a quarter of those who are financing a home or paying rent are spending more than half of their income on housing,” Ong told NewsConference. Los Angeles in particular saw a “fast, clear and sharp spike during the pandemic,” as remote work allowed people to move away from dense urban cores, he told the L.A. Times.

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Kaplan Calls for More Resources for Survivors of School Shootings

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Mark Kaplan, professor of social welfare, co-wrote an opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times about the effects of repeat exposure to school shootings on youth and ways to help them. In K-12 schools alone, 338,000 children have been exposed to gun violence since 1999, the authors write. These adverse childhood experiences can increase the likelihood of mental health issues, chronic diseases, addiction and suicidal thoughts. The authors stressed the importance of providing support to communities, noting that implementing gun reform is a very slow process. They suggested providing schoolwide services for post-traumatic stress disorder after shootings; access to primary care, family therapy and grief support; and more trauma-informed practices. Writing days after a deadly shooting at Michigan State University, the authors concluded that students “deserve a comprehensive, science-informed, thoughtful gun violence prevention plan that puts them first and works to change the structures that can lead to shootings like the one at MSU.”

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