Diaz on Urgency of Vaccinating Essential Workers Regardless of Age

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Sonja Diaz, executive director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (LPPI) at UCLA Luskin, spoke to ABC7 News about the importance of quickly vaccinating California’s essential workers regardless of age. Diaz pointed to the success of Riverside County’s program to bring COVID-19 vaccines directly to farmworkers. “What’s really important is you don’t need technology to get your appointment, you just need to show up,” she said. “When we think about who our workers are right now and the fact that they’re on the front line, saving American lives, we know that they’re not over the age of 65, and they deserve access to a vaccine.” In California, Latinos make up 39% of the population and 55% of the state’s essential workforce, but just 16% of those who have received at least one dose of the vaccine. Immediately expanding access to the vaccine is one of several strategies that LPPI and other advocates are urging Gov. Gavin Newsom to implement.

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Reber, Akee on COVID-19’s Devastation of Native Populations

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Associate Professors of Public Policy Randall Akee and Sarah Reber co-authored a Brookings article about the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on American Indian and Alaska Native (AIAN) populations. Research has found that AIAN people are dying of COVID-19 at much higher rates and at younger ages than other groups, with a death rate comparable to white people 20 to 30 years older. Akee and Reber noted that accurate data on this population is lacking because of difficulty estimating the size of small communities and miscategorization of AIAN people as other races and ethnicities. Nevertheless, available data shows that the age-adjusted mortality rate is higher for AIAN people than for any other group, and it is more than double the death rate for whites and Asians. Reber and Akee argued that the history of racism against Native populations underscores the importance of prioritizing the vaccination of American Indians and Alaska Natives of all ages as soon as possible.

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Upzoning Alone Won’t Solve Housing Crisis, Manville Says

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville was featured in a Marin Independent Journal article about new design standards for housing in Marin, California. County planning officials will soon unveil the standards, which are intended to preserve the look of the area while complying with state laws mandating denser housing. While changing zoning requirements to allow more units per acre would increase the number of housing units in the county, newly built units would not necessarily be affordable for people with low incomes. “It’s never been the case that you would expect new construction to be affordable to very low income people,” Manville said. The two ways to create affordable housing are through subsidies or by “building housing and letting it get very old,” he explained. While any increase in housing supply in high-demand areas should lower prices across the board, upzoning alone won’t solve the housing crisis, he said. “But you can’t not do it.”

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Parking Access Encourages Driving, Millard-Ball Finds

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Recent articles in Medium and Sightline highlighted the findings of Associate Professor of Urban Planning Adam Millard-Ball’s new research on the relationship between parking and driving in cities. While many cities have been designed under the assumption that the urban environment should accommodate people’s desire to drive, researchers led by Millard-Ball found that that assumption is backward. “Increased parking causes more car ownership and more driving while reducing transit use,” the team concluded, noting that “buildings with at least one parking space per unit have more than twice the car ownership rate of buildings that have no parking.” The Sightline piece cited Urban Planning Professor Donald Shoup’s observation that parking spaces are a “fertility drug for cars.” Furthermore, the research team found no correlation between parking supply and employment status, indicating that buildings with less parking do not limit the job prospects of their occupants.

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Reber Points to Racial Inequity in Vaccine Distribution

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Associate Professor of Public Policy Sarah Reber was featured in a ProPublica article about how to make the COVID-19 vaccine rollout more racially equitable. In some locations, people 75 and older have been prioritized in the vaccine distribution, a strategy that ignores the fact that Black Americans have a shorter life expectancy than their white counterparts and are therefore less likely to receive the vaccine. Research has also shown that Black people who die from COVID-19 are, on average, about 10 years younger than white victims. “If you [allocate the vaccine] strictly by age, you’re going to vaccinate white people who have lower risks before you vaccinate Black people with higher risks,” Reber explained. “If you’re trying to avert deaths, you would want to vaccinate Blacks who are about 10 years younger than whites.” The disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Black Americans is expected to further exacerbate the life expectancy gap between Black and white Americans.

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Ong on Pandemic’s Threat to Chinatown’s Survival

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Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, spoke to Reuters about the dramatic drop in businesses suffered by Chinatowns worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. As they mark the Lunar New Year, many Chinatown businesses are struggling to stay open, partly due to xenophobia, Ong said. His research studied smartphone data to determine that Los Angeles’ Chinatown experienced an earlier and sharper drop in foot traffic than other areas even prior to the lockdown. Language and cultural barriers, limited digital literacy and socioeconomic disadvantages have prevented many Chinatown business owners from obtaining financial aid, he added. “It’s part of a systemic inequality that we’re seeing. We need to pay attention to helping these neighborhoods survive,” Ong said. “One of the most vibrant aspects of cities is diversity — diversity of culture and diversity of lifestyles. And if we lose that, it just makes the city as a whole a poorer place.”

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COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout Reflects Disparities, Diaz Says

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Sonja Diaz, executive director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, spoke to NBC News about her personal experiences with the confusing rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in California. Initially, the rollout relied on county and city health departments to distribute the vaccines to eligible populations, a strategy that exacerbated disparities between wealthy areas and vulnerable communities. Affluent regions like San Francisco and Long Beach were able to efficiently vaccinate their first batch of eligible residents, while overburdened communities in Los Angeles struggled due to dwindling supplies. Residents with limited access to technology and the internet have had trouble signing up for appointments, even if they are eligible. Diaz spent hours navigating the Los Angeles County online portal to book appointments for several older relatives who were having trouble with QR code attachments and text codes. “It’s like winning the Lotto or getting the Golden Ticket at Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Diaz said.

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Tensions Rising During Pandemic, Leap Says

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Adjunct Professor of Social Welfare Jorja Leap was featured in an NBC News report about the rise in violent crime during the COVID-19 pandemic. After years of remaining steady, gun violence and homicide rates skyrocketed in 2020. Many experts point to tensions associated with the pandemic as the source of increased violence, including unemployment, health concerns and racial tension. People following stay-at-home orders have more idle time, and conflicts are more likely to escalate. “We’ve got people that are under tremendous strain, and quite honestly, sometimes people just snap,” Leap said. Many people are facing joblessness and economic insecurity, and these issues have been exacerbated by conflicts between police and communities of color. “People feel unsafe … because of the mixed picture we are getting of law enforcement that is based in fact, not fiction,” Leap explained. “All of these things contribute to heightened emotions and heightened violence.”

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Transit Funding as a Racial Equity Issue

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A Washington Post article arguing that federal transportation policies have fostered racial inequity for generations cited research by Brian Taylor, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin. The article said that newly confirmed Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg may not be fully aware of the complexities of allocating federal transit funding that historically have cemented existing inequities, especially in majority-Black communities. State and local transit agencies rarely make it a priority to help low-income or minority riders, the article noted, pointing to research by Taylor, a professor of urban planning. Transit spending has focused on commuter-oriented rail lines rather than bus service in deference to “the wealthier general voting public, although most members of this group rarely if ever ride transit,” Taylor’s study found. In many cases, it concluded, transit policy had failed to focus on the needs of transit riders themselves, particularly the poor and transit-dependent.

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DeShazo on Future of Clean Vehicles in the U.S.

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JR DeShazo, director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, was featured in a Popular Science article about General Motors’ announcement that it plans to eliminate emissions from passenger vehicles by 2035. “This is a seismic event that is hard to overstate in its importance to America’s transition to zero-emission vehicles,” DeShazo said. The company hopes to expand its electric vehicle fleet to 30 all-electric models and have 40% of the entire fleet composed of battery-electric cars by 2025. According to DeShazo, these plans are the strongest thus far to come from a traditional American automaker. While international companies like Volvo and BMW have announced similar goals, the U.S. industry has lagged behind. GM’s statement is going to force other automakers to respond, which will stimulate competition in the industry, DeShazo explained.  However, he added, the adoption of zero-emission vehicles must go hand in hand with investment in renewable energy sources in order to effectively combat climate change.

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