L.A. and Long Beach Among World’s Least Affordable Cities for Homebuyers Skyrocketing prices and limited home supplies put homeownership out of reach for many.

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Los Angeles and Long Beach rank among the world’s least affordable cities for homebuyers, , according to a recent Los Angeles Times analysis, with a single buyer earning the local average salary able to afford only 28% of a typical home’s price. Limited housing construction, strong job markets, and the region’s amenities have driven prices to historic highs, surpassing cities like New York, Paris, and Singapore. California homes are roughly twice as expensive as the typical midtier U.S. home, with an average price of $755,000 as of December.

Michael Lens, professor of urban planning and public policy at UCLA, said the “writing has certainly been on the wall” for California’s housing market to be considered the most expensive in the world.

California’s draws include its “unparalleled amenities” and strong job market, Lens said. But “we make it very challenging to build enough homes to satiate the demand. That combination of low supply and relatively high affluence for some parts of our country make the baseline of an entry-level home very expensive.”

A Push to Use Federal Funds for Transit Agency Ambassadors

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Madeline Brozen, deputy director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke to Oaklandside about new legislation that would give transit agencies across the country more flexibility in how they use federal crime prevention funds.

U.S. Rep. Lateefah Simon, who represents East Bay cities in Congress, introduced a bill that would permit these funds to be used for “transit support specialists” rather than exclusively law enforcement officers. The unarmed civilian forces collaborate with sworn officers to aid riders, deter and report disruptive behavior, assist with medical emergencies, and handle minor, noncriminal conflicts. Many have a background in social services, with experience in providing referrals to the unhoused.

“Agencies need the flexibility and confidence to use federal funds to pay for this new type of role,” said Brozen, who co-authored a December 2025 study of LA Metro’s transit ambassador program.

Ong on the Current State of Immigration Enforcement

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On his way to work on January 23, Gerardo Pacheco Oliveros — a construction worker and father with no criminal record — was followed and detained by ICE agents in San Bernardino. He had been driving with his brother, who was released shortly after the traffic stop, while Pacheco Oliveros was taken into custody; his daughter, Arleth Pacheco, said the family did not learn his whereabouts until several days later.

Advocates say his case reflects broader shifts in federal immigration enforcement. Researchers report that detentions of Latino immigrants without criminal convictions have increased sharply, rising to nearly six times the monthly average compared with the final year of the Biden administration.

UCLA Research professor and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge Paul Ong shared with KVCR News that the increasing arrests, detainments, and deportations of non criminals “reflects a shift in ICE’s strategy, which is targeting a population that’s supposedly a low priority and one that polling shows most Americans believe should have a pathway to legal status.”

Turner on the L.A. County Board of Supervisors’ Heat Action Plan

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Extreme heat is the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States, and as average temperatures continue to climb across Southern California, residents increasingly report disruptions to sleep and overall health. Public health experts warn that rising nighttime temperatures, in particular, can compound the physical and mental strain of prolonged heat exposure.

To address these concerns, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors approved its first heat action plan that aims to facilitate cooler outdoor and indoor spaces while raising public awareness of heat-related risks. These plan outlines strategies such as replacing heat-absorbing blacktops, improving greening in schools, the installing shade structures in areas such as bus stops, and planting more trees in neighborhoods. 

Although challenges to funding and planning present some obstacles, associate professor of urban planning and geography V. Kelly Turner shared with LAist that the plan takes an important step forward. “One thing the L.A. County heat action plan gets fundamentally right is that it centers people and the everyday ways that heat becomes a disruptor to daily life.” She praised its unique approach in using shade data alongside temperature data, expressing optimism about its potential impact on addressing the rising temperatures.

Fugitive Sanctuaries: Ananya Roy on Migration, Solidarity, and Sanctuary Luskin professor examines how migrant movements, not states, create safety in the face of structural violence.

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Ananya Roy, professor of urban planning and social welfare, and founding director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, recently contributed a powerful essay to Jewish Currents titled “Fugitive Sanctuaries.” In this piece, Roy expands on her longstanding scholarship on inequality, displacement, and urban policy by placing recent federal immigration crackdowns in a broader historical and political context.

Drawing on the harrowing events of the 2025 “deportation summer” in Los Angeles, she shows how routine civic life was transformed into zones of terror for marginalized communities. Protesters challenged these policies, only to be met with claims of “violence, chaos, and attacks on law enforcement,” she notes, highlighting the escalation of federal force.

Roy writes that “it has only ever been migrant movements, rather than benevolent states, that have granted true safety for the endangered,” a line that encapsulates her central argument about solidarity and sanctuary. She urges readers to see sanctuary not as policy alone but as collective struggle in the face of aggressive enforcement.

Read the full article in Jewish Currents.

Building the “Anti-Amazon” in Echo Park Chris Tilly weighs in on Giftphoria and the growing demand for local, values-driven commerce.

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The latest KCRW Reports episode explores Giftphoria, a new Echo Park–based service positioning itself as an “anti-Amazon” by offering two-hour delivery of gifts sourced from local small businesses across Los Angeles. The report highlights how the platform aims to support neighborhood retailers by providing a community-focused alternative to national e-commerce giants—helping local stores compete in the era of same-day delivery.

“We’re building the anti-Amazon,” said Anthony Abaci, a co-founder of Giftphoria. “We feel like we’re pirates coming to take the king’s treasure. By working with local stores, we’re building a local army.”

Businesses like Giftphoria reflect a growing consumer desire for authenticity. “This is particularly strong among younger people—millennials and Gen Z—who feel that impersonal, big corporations don’t speak to them,” said Chris Tilly, professor at UCLA Luskin. “They’d rather connect with businesses that have meaning for them.”

UCLA Study Finds LA’s CARE+ Program Displaces Homeless Residents

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A UCLA study from the Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy found that Los Angeles’ CARE+ program, the city’s flagship homeless services initiative, primarily displaces unhoused residents rather than connecting them with meaningful support. Researchers observed that for every one person CARE+ connected with services, five were forced to move, with most interactions involving police and sanitation workers rather than outreach staff.

Th=he study drew on 16 field observations and 51 interviews with people impacted by the program, concluding that CARE+ “mainly [serves] to displace those people rather than to offer them services.” Survey responses revealed that more than a third of respondents were forced to move five or more times in a month, and nearly all had experienced a forced move within the past week. Invisible People reports, many lost essential belongings, including bedding, identity documents, and personal items, exacerbating trauma and health risks.

UCLA researchers emphasized that CARE+ “does not live up to its name. Rather than caring for unhoused persons, the program is being used to punish them…while rarely providing useful services.” The report raises concerns about the program’s cost—$36 million in direct spending next year—while noting that encampment removal models like CARE+ are spreading nationwide, often prioritizing enforcement over supportive services.

Read the full report.

PBS SoCal’s Won’t You Be My Gamer? Explores LA’s “Best” and “Worst” Cities With José Loya

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Assistant Professor in Urban Planning José Loya recently appeared in two episodes on the Won’t You Be My Gamer? channel to take on the challenge of building both the “best” and “worst” cities and investigate how these characteristics are expressed in Los Angeles. 

Throughout the episodes, Loya and the co-hosts Elyse Willems and Nikole Zivalich, identified several key factors that influence whether a city thrives or struggles, including housing affordability and availability, unemployment rates, socioeconomic mobility, and access to quality education. Loya focused in particular on housing costs, connecting the game’s challenges to the ongoing housing crisis in Los Angeles. He discussed how disparities in homeownership eligibility contribute to social stratification, which he defined as “how society organizes socioeconomic classes.”

Loya emphasized that addressing these disparities requires expanding access to opportunities that support upward mobility, including high-quality education and affordable childcare. While acknowledging the difficulty of building a truly equitable city, Loya underscored the importance of maintaining hope and investing in systems that promote mobility.

Watch the full episodes here and here.

Inequality, Not Regulation, Is Stoking America’s Housing Crisis

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A Washington Post article on the forces that drive housing prices higher cited new research by UCLA Luskin Urban Planning Professor Michael Storper.

Some housing activists fall in the “Yes in My Back Yard” camp, arguing that building more housing — especially in dense, transit-accessible neighborhoods — will lower prices for everyone, thanks to the laws of supply and demand.

In a newly published paper, “Inequality, not regulation, drives America’s housing affordability crisis,” Storper and his co-authors directly challenge the foundational assumptions of the YIMBY point of view. They call for “bold, comprehensive thinking about housing systems rather than relying on trickle-down affordability.”

The scholars recommend direct approaches such as publicly funded vouchers to help pay for housing; market protections for low-income households, including rent control and tenant protections; and housing decommodification, including cooperatives, community land trusts, and public housing.

“To put it bluntly, in America we haven’t actually been underbuilding,” Storper says. “The problem is demand is now split in a very unequal society. The supply you get is the wrong kind of supply.”

Why California’s Retired State Worker Population is Migrating Out

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While most remain in-state, an increasing number of California’s retired state worker population receiving CalPERS pension benefits are migrating out of California to nearby states such as Arizona or Nevada. The number of out-of-state pension benefit recipients increased by 29% from 2019 to 2025 and experts in the field of public policy mainly attribute these trends to high housing costs. They also noted that in the last fiscal year, these individuals received less benefits on average compared to those that remain in-state, supporting their claim that those with lower incomes tend to be the ones moving away. 

Professor of Public Policy and Urban Planning Michael Stoll shared in an article by The Sacramento Bee that these migration trends also saw an increase at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but due to its impact on housing prices and availability, the migration rate soon fell. “It’s not clear if we’ll get back to the steady state of migration before COVID,” he said.