Akee on Reaching Hard-to-Count Populations in Census

/0 Comments/in /by

Randall Akee, associate professor of public policy, was featured in the Journal discussing the issue of undercounting Native American people in the U.S. census. Native Americans living on reservations made up the biggest undercount of any ethnic group in the 2010 census. “Before the pandemic, it seemed the census was taking the issue of reaching out to underrepresented communities seriously,” said Akee, who served on the National Advisory Council on Race, Ethnic and Other Populations at the U.S. Census Bureau from 2013 to 2019. “One of the big things we were always focused on was how to reach the hard-to-count populations.” However, decreases in funding and the coronavirus pandemic have created new challenges. “There are high costs of getting to places and getting to people in these particular communities, which is the reason why undercounts are prevalent,” Akee said. “Remote communities simply need more time and resources for an accurate count.”

Read the article

Gilens on Shifting Views About the Social Safety Net

/0 Comments/in /by

Public Policy Chair Martin Gilens spoke to the Los Angeles Times about Americans’ shifting opinions about government-funded social safety nets. During the health and economic crisis spurred by COVID-19, a wide range of individuals and businesses have benefited from U.S. stimulus spending, and this could shift the national discourse about the role Americans want government to play in their lives. “COVID is such a potentially transformational experience,” Gilens said. While he cautioned that views may change once the economy improves, he noted, “If there is a broader reckoning with the failures of our government, then maybe that will extend to how we deal with inequality and poverty, and we’ll be entertaining something that looks a little more like a European welfare state.”

Read the article

 

Ong on Census Challenges in Latino Communities

/0 Comments/in /by

A New York Times story on the challenges of getting an accurate 2020 census count, particularly among Latino communities, cited Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin. In California, governments and nonprofits have spent $187 million on outreach efforts, but comments from President Trump have made many Latinos wary of the census, the article noted. In addition, the Census Bureau has shortened the window for participating, and COVID-19 has curtailed the activities of census takers. Ong’s research team has found that Latinos nationwide are responding to the census at lower rates than in 2010. By August, the estimated median response rate was 50%, down by nearly 13 percentage points from a decade ago. Among non-Hispanic whites, the estimated response rate was 69%, compared with 71% a decade ago. “We will have a flawed census that will be fatal to certain groups,” Ong said.

Read the article

 

Loukaitou-Sideris on Creating Equitable Public Spaces

/0 Comments/in /by

Urban Planning Professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris spoke with Dr. Wendy Slusser of the Semel Healthy Campus Initiative Center for a LiveWell podcast episode about the cultural determinants of design. “Professionals plan and design with the average user in mind, assuming that we all have the same desires and needs,” Loukaitou-Sideris explained. However, her research on parks and public transportation has shown that people want different things based on age, gender, cultural ethnicity and more. Many public spaces are underused because they do not meet the needs of the community. “It is much easier to use template plans than it is to identify the needs of the community and design something completely new,” she said. Loukaitou-Sideris has worked to create a senior-friendly park in Los Angeles as well as other public spaces that meet diverse cultural needs. She recommends “thinking of the city as a collection of different groups that have different needs and aspirations.”

Listen to the podcast

Manville on San Diego Transit Expansion Plans

/0 Comments/in /by

Michael Manville, associate professor of urban planning, spoke to the San Diego Union-Tribune about the city’s transit plans. San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) Executive Director Hasan Ikhrata, who spent two years working on a transit expansion plan when the pandemic started, said he is determined to push forward with the $177 billion proposal. Ikhrata will present the plan, which includes 350 miles of new rail track, to the SANDAG board of directors. The plan has faced pushback from some who have said that the pandemic will radically change commuter patterns, threatening to render the plan obsolete by the time it’s under way. However, Manville argued that much of the pandemic’s impact will be temporary. “Right now, most of the economy’s still closed and you’ve got jammed roads,” he explained. “It seems hard to believe that in 20 years there will be no point to having mass transit to San Diego’s job centers.”

Read the article

Coordinated National Plan for Resuming Classes Urged

/0 Comments/in /by

A research brief calling for a coordinated national plan to guide schools as they reopen amid the COVID-19 pandemic, co-authored by Social Welfare Professor Ron Avi Astor, was highlighted on the blog of the Congressional Research Institute for Social Work and Policy. “There is absolute consensus that children need to be in school,” the blog’s author noted. “Tragically, this year countless families and children will experience unimaginable trauma because of all the uncertainty that accompanies a relentless pandemic.” The research brief from social welfare scholars at UCLA, Loyola University Chicago, Cal State Fullerton and Hebrew University identified concerns held by 1,275 school social workers from across the country. “We need a Manhattan Project-style initiative that pulls together all relevant professions — educators, administrators, school psychologists, counselors, social workers, nurses and other health professionals — to create strategic plans for the upcoming school year,” the scholars concluded.

Lens on Increasing Demand for Rent Control Measures

/0 Comments/in /by

Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, was featured in an LAist article discussing a Burbank rent control measure headed for the ballot in November. Supporters collected 7,749 signatures to put the measure on the ballot, but it has been met with resistance by Burbank’s elected officials. “Calls for rent control in more places have probably gotten louder and more consistent,” Lens said. “Policymakers are paying more serious attention to [rent control] as kind of an emergency response to these various rental affordability crises.” He explained that politicians often look less favorably on rent control measures than their constituents because landlords have more political power than their tenants. According to Lens, rent control is considered a break-glass-in-case-of-emergency type of solution.

Read the article

Gilens Pushes for Democratization of Senate

/0 Comments/in /by

Public Policy Professor Martin Gilens co-authored a Medium article on the importance of electing a Democratic majority in the Senate in November and the value of “small-d democratizing” the legislative body. If Joe Biden is elected president, a Democratic majority would be necessary for quick passage of coronavirus relief legislation. However, “majority-party ‘control’ of the Senate is not enough to get things done,” argued Gilens and co-author Benjamin I. Page. Misuse of the filibuster and a bias toward small, rural states make the Senate “profoundly undemocratic” and “unresponsive to the American citizenry as a whole,” they wrote. The authors proposed eventually amending the Constitution to allocate more senators or more votes per senator to the more populous states. “Today’s social movement for justice and democracy may be precisely the sort of force that can, over time, lead to major institutional changes, including moving toward a more democratic Senate,” they concluded.

Read the article

Lens Weighs In on Suit Against L.A. Development

/0 Comments/in /by

Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s decision to sue the city of Los Angeles over real estate developments related to Councilman Jose Huizar, who has been charged with bribery, money laundering and racketeering. The lawsuit aims to block at least four city projects tied to Huizar and former Councilman Mitchell Englander that have allegedly violated California’s Political Reform Act. The AIDS nonprofit has been vocal on housing and development issues in the state. Some critics questioned whether the new lawsuit was an attempt by the foundation to slow or stop local development, regardless of its merits. Lens, who opposed a 2017 ballot measure championed by the foundation to crack down on “mega projects,” told the Los Angeles Times that “this seems to be a convenient excuse for them to say, once again, ‘We need to stop development.’”

Read the article

Diaz on Re-Envisioning a Post-Coronavirus America

/0 Comments/in /by

In a Q&A with Governing, Latino Policy and Politics Initiative Executive Director Sonja Diaz weighed in on the links between systemic racism and immigration policy and set out a vision for a more equitable post-pandemic society. COVID-19, police violence against people of color and persistent economic inequality have created an existential crisis in the United States, and “incremental change is not going to solve anything,” Diaz said. “We cannot go back to a ‘normal’ with so many Americans living on the streets, so many Americans without health insurance, so many Americans being targeted or racially profiled by our police. We have to re-envision what a post-coronavirus America looks like,” she said. Diaz also co-authored an opinion piece for Morning Consult that decried efforts to disenfranchise voters of color and called on Congress to act decisively to protect the integrity of the 2020 Census.

Read the Governing Q&A
Read the Morning Consult op-ed