Roy on Cold Exposure Deaths of Unhoused People in L.A.

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Professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare Ananya Roy spoke to The Guardian for a story about 14 unhoused individuals who reportedly froze to death in 2021 in Los Angeles. Despite L.A.’s reputation of year-round sunshine and warm weather, the story cites data showing that hypothermia fatalities have been on the rise in recent years, exceeding the rate in San Francisco and New York City combined. The story also references a report by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, which tracked deaths of people who were unhoused during the COVID-19 pandemic, and which found that Los Angeles County shelters — while open during cold periods — are not always accessible. “Each time people go through this cycle and are sent back to the streets, they’ve lost social networks and personal belongings, they’ve often had to give up pets or been separated from loved ones, and so they return more vulnerable,” said Roy, director of the Institute.

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Pierce Provides Cost-Effective Options to Ocean Desalination

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Gregory Pierce, co-director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, wrote an article for The Conversation to discuss how desalination may not be the most viable option for creating a more sustainable water supply. In an effort to combat California’s record-setting drought, Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced an $8 billion plan to increase the state’s water supply. The plan includes methods like water conservation, storage, recycling and ocean desalination. Pierce explains how desalination creates more consequences than solutions as it kills aquatic life, pollutes ecosystems with brine and wastewater that can end up in the ocean, and poses a very high cost. He instead suggests conserving water, reusing treated wastewater which is cheaper than desalination, and increasing storage capacity even in places with infrequent rain to capture stormwater. “Even cleaning up polluted local groundwater supplies and purchasing water from nearby agricultural users, although these are costly and politically difficult strategies, may be prudent to consider before ocean desalination,” said Pierce.

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Yaroslavsky on Concern Over Angelenos’ Mental Health

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A Los Angeles Times article on rising concern about Angelenos’ mental health cited the work of Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin. In the last few years, residents have endured skyrocketing inflation, extreme heat and drought, an alarming rise in hate crimes and the lingering effects of a devastating global pandemic. This year’s UCLA Quality of Life Index, which measures Los Angeles County residents’ satisfaction with their lives, found the lowest score since the survey was launched in 2016. “What it said to us is that county residents aren’t happy. There is an anxiety level here that is unprecedented in my lifetime,” said Yaroslavsky, director of the survey and a longtime public servant in Los Angeles. He noted that one-quarter of respondents said they go to bed each night worrying they will end up living on the street — all part of a “perfect storm” of mental health stressors afflicting Angelenos today.

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Yin on Risks of ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Plans

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Wesley Yin, associate professor of public policy and economics, spoke to USA Today about the rapid growth in “buy now, pay later” credit, which has come under the scrutiny of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The loans are especially appealing to young shoppers and people with low income or poor credit, and the federal agency found that borrowers may be unaware of late fees and other consumer risks. Yin drew a parallel to the easy credit of the pre-2008 mortgage industry, which helped trigger the Great Recession, but said the macroeconomic implications of the “buy now, pay later” programs are less worrisome. He noted that the growing popularity of this form of credit may be a symptom of a deeper problem in the economy. “Is it a luxury to want an iPhone, or is it a luxury to want a new sofa?” he said. “The fact that people can’t pay for it, I think, is the issue.”

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Monkeypox Outreach Based on Science and Messaging

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A story by The 19th about strategies used on college campuses to reduce the spread of monkeypox cited the work of Social Welfare Professor Ian Holloway. In addition to leading UCLA’s Hub for Health Intervention, Policy and Practice and Gay Sexuality and Social Policy Initiative, Holloway serves on the scientific advisory committee to the California Department of Public Health. As monkeypox cases began to rise over the spring and summer, Holloway’s team quickly launched a multipronged campaign focused on science and messaging. This outreach provided accurate information about monkeypox to gay and bisexual men while noting that anyone can contract the virus, to avoid the stigmatizing language used to discuss HIV in past decades. In partnership with the Los Angeles LGBT Center, the team created an infographic explaining monkeypox transmission, symptoms and interventions. Holloway has emphasized that monkeypox outreach to men who have sex with men should be equitable, with a focus on queer men of color. 

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Celebrating an End to a ‘Slow-Moving Disaster’

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville spoke to the Los Angeles Times about California’s new law barring local governments from mandating parking spaces as part of most development near transit stops. “This is one of the biggest land-use reforms in the country,” Manville said after Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2097 into law. “Parking requirements have been an absolutely slow-moving disaster,” Manville said. “We are turning the ship around.” News outlets including StreetsBlog, Bloomberg CityLab and Mother Jones credited research by Donald Shoup, distinguished research professor of urban planning, with laying the groundwork for AB 2097. Shoup’s decades of scholarship pointed out the faulty and arbitrary reasoning behind parking requirements, whose unintended consequences have included raising the cost of of housing and commercial development, creating incentives to drive instead of using transit, and increasing emissions.

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Missed Opportunity to Deepen Connection With Latino Voters

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A Los Angeles Times op-ed about the Rick Caruso mayoral campaign’s outreach to Latino communities cited Sonja Diaz, executive director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Institute. Running as an outsider, Caruso is courting segments of the Latino vote that include moderate Democrats, independents, Catholics and others, raising the question of whether L.A.’s established political class understands that Latinos have a variety of political viewpoints. “We know Latinos are not a monolith,” Diaz said, “but does the California Democratic Party know the difference between Latinos in Sun Valley, Pacoima, Van Nuys, west of the 110 or east of the 110, Northeast and East L.A.?” Around the country, Republicans have made inroads with Latino voters while Democrats have missed opportunities to build the national profile of top elected leaders, Diaz noted in an Elle profile of Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, the only Latina in the U.S. Senate.

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A Rise in Alcohol-Involved Suicides Among Women

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An article in Spectrum, the online magazine of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, showcased research co-authored by Social Welfare Professor Mark Kaplan showing that suicide deaths involving heavy alcohol use have increased significantly among women in the United States in recent years. The study included data from the National Violent Death Reporting System, in which 115,202 suicides of adults 18 and older were reported between 2003 and 2018. Suicides among people who had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.08% or greater were considered alcohol-involved. During the study period, the proportion of alcohol-involved suicides significantly increased each year for women of all age groups, with the greatest increase among women over age 65. In contrast, only middle-aged men had a significant yearly increase in alcohol-involved suicides. The findings point to a need for more education and awareness of the relationship between heavy alcohol use and suicide, as well as improved screening and intervention strategies.

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Electric Cars Only Part of the Solution, Millard-Ball Says

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LAist spoke with Urban Planning Professor Adam Millard-Ball for a report on the history and future of the electric car. California’s plan to end the sale of new gas-powered cars by 2035 is expected to spur electric vehicle sales across the nation. “We’re not going to be able to resolve the climate crisis without electric vehicles,” Millard-Ball said. “And that’s mainly because transportation is such a big part of the climate problem.” The move toward emission-free cars is part of progression of automotive technology dating to the Clean Air Act of 1970, but it’s only part of the solution, Millard-Ball said. In addition to making individual vehicles more climate friendly, he called for “getting more people walking and biking and better buses, … a transit system that is a real competitor to the private car.”

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Shoup, Manville on Prospects of Statewide Parking Reform

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A Slate article on California legislation to prohibit minimum parking requirements in areas near public transit called on two land use experts on UCLA Luskin’s Urban Planning faculty: Donald Shoup and Michael Manville. The bill, AB 2097, which awaits the signature of Gov. Gavin Newsom, would preempt local parking rules statewide and promises to bring down the cost of new construction. “The way you really get affordable housing is to get rid of parking requirements,” Shoup said. “That reduces the price of housing for everybody, not just low-income residents.” Experts cautioned against overnight changes if the bill becomes law. “There’s very particular circumstances in California that allow you to pull the trigger on a building with no parking, and some of those places are already free from parking rules, like San Francisco,” Manville said. Manville also co-authored a San Francisco Chronicle commentary about lessons Los Angeles can learn from San Francisco’s parking reforms.

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