Charitable Giving in L.A. County Down $1 Billion New study conducted by UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs finds decline in giving since 2006 amid urgent and rising need in Los Angeles

A study commissioned by the California Community Foundation (CCF) and conducted by the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs finds that local giving is on a decline, with Los Angeles County residents declaring $7.16 billion in 2006 charitable deductions compared to $6.03 billion in 2013.

“The Generosity Gap: Donating Less in Post-Recession Los Angeles County” shows that in many L.A. communities donations are ebbing as needs surge, particularly for families in poverty, youth, the elderly and the homeless. Released today at the Center for Nonprofit Management’s 501(c)onference, the report combines IRS data with a first-of-its-kind survey that asks Angelenos about their charitable giving to L.A. causes. It explores the current fiscal context for giving and offers a snapshot of the behaviors, patterns and motivations by Los Angeles County donors.

“Local nonprofit organizations form a powerful network dedicated to serving the county’s most vulnerable residents, but we know they are stretched for resources,” said Antonia Hernández, president & CEO of the California Community Foundation. “We as a collective region must tap into our talent and generosity of spirit to build stable organizations that can make a lasting difference in Los Angeles County.”

Some of the report’s major findings include:

  • Los Angeles County residents are donating less to charitable causes than they did in 2006. And those with greater capacity to give are giving a lower proportion of their household income overall.
  • Median nonprofit revenues continue to decline dramatically in Los Angeles County.
  • White, Latino, Asian American/Pacific Islander, African American and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender donors in Los Angeles give at similar rates across most causes. They vary, however, in the proportion of their giving that goes mostly or entirely to locally focused organizations.
  • Given the opportunity to make a large gift to Los Angeles, donors’ highest priority would be ending homelessness. But, of their contributions to basic needs causes and combined-purpose organizations in 2015, only one-third went to locally focused nonprofits.
  • Planned giving is strongly connected with support for locally focused charitable causes, through both bequests and current contributions, especially among donors under 40.

“UCLA and CCF are local institutions that seek to transform donations from a few into opportunities for many,” said Bill Parent, project director and lecturer in the Department of Public Policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. “It is our hope that a better understanding of charitable giving in the region can benefit donors and nonprofits alike, as we work together to build better futures for all Angelenos.”

Commemorating its 100th year, CCF has hosted a range of activities to inform and inspire L.A. residents to give back to their community, whether through volunteering their time, donating to their favorite causes or creating a legacy for future generations. CCF aims to draw attention to complexities, trigger dialogue and encourage solutions to Los Angeles County’s most pressing challenges with this study.

The Generosity Gap was drawn from a research project developed by Bill Parent, former director of the Center for Civil Society and lecturer in the UCLA Luskin Department of Public Policy, and Urban Planning professor Paul Ong. The primary authors of the report are Luskin Civil Society Fellow J. Shawn Landres and Shakari Byerly (MPP ’05). Luskin doctoral students Silvia Gonzales (MURP ’13) and Mindy Chen (MSW ’12), of the Luskin Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, provided research and data analysis support.

The full report is available here.

Marvin J. Southard Named 2016 Social Welfare Alumnus of the Year Joseph A. Nunn Award goes to DSW 83 grad, the former director of the L.A. County Department of Mental Health

By Adeney Zo

Marvin J. Southard DSW ’83 has received the UCLA Luskin Joseph A. Nunn Social Welfare Alumnus of the Year Award in recognition of his contributions and tireless dedication to the field of mental health. The former director of the L.A. County Department of Mental Health retired last year, leaving behind a 17-year legacy that has been recognized on the state and national level.

“I’ve been honored with quite a few awards, but this award is special because of my feelings toward Luskin and UCLA and because I actually know the person the award is named after,” Southard said. “So it’s really a triple honor for me. As a person moves through life, they never really know those parts that are going to be really influential. But, for me, my time at UCLA was one of those times. It was truly pivotal in making my life more meaningful than it otherwise would’ve been.”

After receiving his UCLA degree in 1983, Southard spent his first years working as a forensics specialist, before moving to Bakersfield to serve as director of mental services in Kern County. His focus, which continued throughout his career, was on developing community-based partnerships to address mental health and substance abuse. He also initiated children’s mental health programs, a severely underserved area in mental health services at the time.

“It was a remarkable place, and it included some programs at the time that would shadow the full service-based work that’s being done now,” Southard said.

In 1998, Southard was asked by a friend to put in his resumé for the position of director of the L.A. County Department of Mental Health.

“I was reluctant to do it because I was happy and well-established. I didn’t worry or plan for the interviews — so I guess when you’re not worried you do well in interviews,” Southard said. “Taking the job was a sacrifice because initially I would work in L.A. and go home to Bakersfield on the weekends. I would also meet with my wife in Santa Clarita on Wednesday nights for dinner. So it was a lot of being apart, especially the first few months.”

Though Southard was initially uncertain about the move, this position allowed him to restructure and improve L.A. County’s mental health services. As director, he dramatically expanded children’s services, particularly for young children and transition-age youth, and built a community partnership system out of the department’s budget crisis. After incorporating community agencies and family members into the decision-making process for budget cuts, Southard explained that it was only natural to continue when the 2004 Mental Health Services Act provided funding with the caveat that departments had to incorporate a community process.

“We used the same process to add that we had been planning to use to subtract. We developed mutual trust,” Southard said. “As a result, we had one of the first plans approved in the state. Our expenditures have been a model for the state.”

Southard worked to improve the city’s emergency response system by creating partnerships with law enforcement that allowed clinicians to ride with officers in mental health-related cases. He also expanded the city’s psychiatric urgent care facilities, allowing for those with mental health emergencies to receive the right kind of medical attention.

The Alumnus of the Year award honors Southard’s remarkable contributions to the field of mental health. However, there is more to the story behind this year’s award recipient and the award’s namesake, Joseph A. Nunn BS ’65, MSW ’70 and Ph.D. ’90. Both Nunn and Southard attended Luskin at the same time and continued to collaborate as friends and fellow social workers through the years.

“I am well aware of the good work Marvin has done,” Nunn said. “His work speaks for itself, and his contributions are well-known in the state and even nationwide.”

Nunn was the recipient of the 1990 Alumnus of the Year Award from the UCLA School of Social Welfare. He was instrumental in the formation of the Social Welfare alumni organization that would revive this award and name it in his honor.

“There hadn’t been an award in many years,” Nunn said. “I and some other alumni were instrumental in starting the alumni organization and fundraising for it. When the alumni award picked up again, it didn’t have a name. I humbly accepted for them to name the award after me following my retirement in 2006.”

Nunn is three times a Bruin, having studied at UCLA for his undergraduate and graduate  degrees before returning to serve as the director of field education in Social Welfare and as vice chair of the department. Throughout his career, Nunn has focused on encouraging students to understand the issue of juvenile justice and correction through firsthand field education.

“What was most important to me was the connection between university and community,” Nunn said. “Not only should research inform practice, but practice should also inform academic research. Field education allowed me to have one foot in the community and one foot in the university.”

Nunn also received the Award for Outstanding Service and Dedication from the Black Social Workers of Greater Los Angeles in 1995 and the NASW, Social Worker of the Year, for both Region H and the California Chapter in 2000. He received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Chapter of the National Association of Social workers and the Stovall Education Uplift Foundation Award in 2006.

Nunn currently provides training for child welfare workers on how to work effectively with gang-identified youth. He is chair of the Community Advisory Board for the CSU Fullerton MSW program and also serves on the Advisory Board for CSU Dominguez Hills. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of Aspiranet, the second largest non-profit foster family agency in California.

The Joseph A. Nunn Alumnus of the Year award was presented at the annual UCLA Luskin Social Welfare Alumni Gathering on May 14, 2016. More than 100 alumni, faculty and friends attended. Many of those who attended the event are MSWs from the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health (LACDMH).

Study Explains Link Between Heavy Alcohol Use and Suicides During Economic Downturns Social Welfare professor Mark Kaplan and colleagues found that increase in high-risk drinking during the Great Recession may explain rise in alcohol-related suicides by men — but not women — during period of overall decline in alcohol use

By Stan Paul

While economic downturns have been linked previously to increased suicide risk in the United States, new research from the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs sheds light on the role alcohol use may play in the complex relationship between economic conditions and suicide.

UCLA Social Welfare professor Mark Kaplan is lead author and principal investigator of a new study funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and released online today. The report, “Heavy Alcohol Use Among Suicide Decedents Relative to a Nonsuicide Comparison Group: Gender Specific Effects of Economic Contraction,” will be published in the July issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

In conducting the study, specifically on the contribution of alcohol to suicide during the 2008-09 recession period, Kaplan and colleagues used data from the U.S. National Violent Death Reporting System from 16 participating states and supplemented with data from the Behavior Risk Factors Surveillance System for the same states, which was used as the nonsuicide comparison group. Blood-alcohol levels in suicide decedents were compared to heavy alcohol use in the nonsuicide comparison group in the years 2005-07 (before), 2008-09 (during), and 2010-11 (after the recession).

Kaplan and colleagues noted that, in general, economic recessions have been associated with declines in overall alcohol consumption but at the same time with increases in heavy alcohol use, particularly among those directly affected by the contraction. In their current work, Kaplan and colleagues showed that the percentages of suicide decedents who were intoxicated at the time of death increased during the recent economic recession. What is unknown is whether this change in alcohol use prior to suicide mirrored patterns of heavy drinking in the general population.

In this new study, Kaplan’s findings show that, for men, alcohol involvement increased among decedents beyond what was observed in the general population, emphasizing the “heightened importance” of acute alcohol use as a risk factor for suicide among men during times of severe economic hardship. “Surprisingly, there is evidence that individuals intoxicated at the time of death did not necessarily have a history of alcohol abuse prior to suicide,” said Kaplan.

But similar results were not found for women who died by suicide. Kaplan suggests women may show resilience to the interaction of alcohol and financial crises, reporting that heavy alcohol use by women mirrored consumption in the general population.

He further explains how creative control policies have been shown to reduce the risk. Among those policies, Kaplan cites research on pricing strategies, including raising taxes and pricing beverages according to alcohol content. Also, easy access to alcohol — longer hours for alcohol sale or high density of alcohol outlets — may create more opportunity for impulse buying and thus contribute to suicide during economic downturns, Kaplan concluded.

And, citing recent research, Kaplan explains, “Not only are alcohol control policies important, but equally so is investing in the public health and social welfare infrastructure to minimize the adverse effects of future economic downturns, such as high unemployment and associated material deprivation.”

The full study may be found online at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/acer.13100/abstract

The findings are part of a three-year study funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism at the National Institutes of Health. Kaplan is the principal investigator of the project, which is a collaboration between UCLA, Oregon Health and Science University, Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (Oakland, CA), Centre for Addiction and Mental Health  (Toronto, ON), and the Pacific Health Institute (Emeryville, CA).

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Mark S. Kaplan, Dr.P.H., is professor of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He holds an adjunct appointment in psychiatry at the Oregon Health & Science University. His research focuses on using population-wide data to understand suicide risk factors among veterans, seniors and other vulnerable populations. He is the recipient of a Distinguished Investigator Award from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and has contributed to state and federal suicide prevention initiatives.

‘A Lot of Opportunity’ for Luskin Students More than 50 companies and organizations woo students at the UCLA Luskin Career Fair

By Adrian Bijan White

While UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs students represent a wide variety of educational backgrounds and experiences, they share a reputation for motivation and passion for their chosen fields. Recognizing this, more than 50 companies and organizations participated in the school’s 5th annual Career Fair held recently at UCLA’s Ackerman Grand Ballroom.

VC Powe, director of Career Services and Leadership Development at Luskin, spoke highly of the diverse expertise of the students from the Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning programs offered at Luskin.

“They understand the individual through social work,” Powe said. “They understand how they are impacted through their community with planning. And, with policy, they understand what the economy is like, how it impacts our students, and what  we need to resolve to have healthy communities.”

The Luskin Career Fair, which has grown significantly over the years, partnered with the UCLA Career Center and the School of Public Health to attract a larger crowd from a broader range of disciplines. Both the public and private sectors were represented, with each company seeking students with specific skill sets from the school’s three departments.

With the economy still recovering from the Great Recession, the job market remains competitive for recent graduates. Representatives from local organizations such as Heal the Bay and Tree People attracted students with backgrounds in environmental science and policy. Major U.S. organizations, such as AECOM, that serve clients and countries around the world provided opportunities in urban planning and transportation.

“Urban planning is becoming more and more popular because we start to further urbanize as cities and people are becoming very interested in growth,” explained Rachel Lindt, representing AECOM. “I am optimistic not just because I know we are interested in potentially bringing on some people today, but because just for L.A. in itself, there is a lot of optimism for what the city can be. Locally, there is a lot of opportunity.”

Opportunities and information in the financial sector — from private firms to government agencies — also were available to Luskin students.

Audrey Bazos from the California Department of Finance said it can be challenging to explain exactly what her agency does, “but students are receptive and I can see eyes widen when they realize that it isn’t all about number crunching. That’s exciting and what I’m hoping for when I talk to the students.”

Jimmy Tran, who is pursuing both Master of Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) and Master of Public Health (MPH) degrees at UCLA, said he hoped to find a niche for his studies.

“What I’m hoping to gain from this experience is more about getting information,” Tran said. “One of the things I’m keeping in mind is whether there is an opportunity to apply the skills I’ve learned in public health and urban planning. I’m open to any experience — anything is helpful — but as a person studying two diverse fields, it is good for me to apply what I learn.”

Many Luskin students gain valuable experience in a variety of careers before embarking on their graduate studies. Tae Kang, a second-year Master of Public Policy (MPP) student, began working as a teacher before starting his studies in public policy.

“What I realized by serving as a teacher at the high school and middle school levels, especially in Inglewood, was how much improving our schools on a practical, ground-floor level is necessary for the improvement of our society,” Kang said.

For students in the Master of Social Welfare (MSW) program, gaining information about organizations and companies linked to social work is particularly important as they learn about agencies that work both at the individual level with small companies and on macro-level policy issues with cities.

“When you bring in someone who has that knowledge, ability and the passion to make a change, it impacts the entire organization,” Powe said. “That’s what we bring to the table.”

Helping America’s Domestic Workers: ‘We Must Do Better’ In Regents Lecture, Ai-Jen Poo talks about compassion, care and rights for those who take care of others’ families

By George Foulsham

Ai-Jen Poo’s voice fills with joy when she talks about her immigrant family, especially her 90-year-old grandmother, who lives in the same San Gabriel Valley apartment she shared with her now-deceased husband for many years. Her grandmother, Poo says, taught her how to appreciate and cultivate laughter.

“My grandmother is living life on her terms,” Poo said. “She is the author of her own story.” That’s not the case for millions of other immigrants, however, and that’s where Poo’s career path begins.

Poo is director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance and co-director of the Caring Across Generations campaign. The 2014 MacArthur Fellow has devoted much of her life to rights for domestic workers, especially those who take care of our aging population.

In a Regents Lecture sponsored by the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs’ departments of Social Welfare and Urban Planning, Poo spoke about women, the future of work and race. “The heart of it,” she said, “is the question of care: How do we take care of each other, our families and one another in this economy?”

In his introduction of Poo, Urban Planning professor Chris Tilly described her as “one of the nation’s foremost thinkers and doers on worker rights, the care crisis and how to build a society that cares for its elders, its children, its disabled, but also cares for those doing the caring.”

Poo told the story of Ms. Sun, a home care worker who tends to Poo’s grandmother’s needs — lifting, cleaning, shopping and even cooking when needed. “We truly count on Ms. Sun to be there for us,” Poo said. “It’s the work that makes all other work possible. In our family, it makes everything possible. What could be more important than caring for the people we love? Yet, it’s among some of the most undervalued and vulnerable work in our economy today.”

She also told the audience about Mirla Alvagado, a Filipina caregiver in Chicago who helps elders in the community to live independently. “She’s had over 20 clients, working 24 hour shifts, four days a week, lifting her clients in and out of bed, bathing, administrating medicine, helping do physical therapy, cooking and cleaning,” Poo said. “For this work, Mirla takes home between $7 and $9 per hour. With these wages, she supports five children in the Philippines. With that plus the cost of rent for the room she lives in, some weeks Mirla barely has any money to pay for food.”

A recent study by the Public Health Institute revealed that the median wage for home care workers is $15,000 per year. “I don’t know a single town in this country where you can survive, yet alone raise a family, on $15,000 a year,” Poo said. “We can do better than this in America and, as the country changes, we must do better.”

Poo spoke proudly of the progress being made by the National Domestic Worker’s Alliance.

“In 2010, we had our first big policy breakthrough when domestic workers, after a seven-year campaign, were successful in winning the very first domestic worker bill of rights in the nation,” she said. “Since then, five additional states have passed laws to protect the rights of domestic workers — including the state of California where we are working really hard in Sacramento to make our domestic worker bill of rights a permanent law.”

In 2015, after many years of advocacy by Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez, the Department of Labor changed a rule that brought 1.8 million home care workers under minimum wage and overtime protections after being excluded for eight years.

“We’re making progress, but it is not enough,” Poo said. “The future of work is at stake.”

People are living longer than ever before, she pointed out, because of advances in health care and technology, and Baby Boomers are starting to reach retirement age at a rate of one person every eight seconds — 10,000 people per day, 4 million people per year turning 65. The challenges will be daunting.

“We are going to need so much more care and support in the home that we’re going to need a very strong caregiving workforce to support all 21st century working families,” Poo said.

Home care workers are the fastest-growing occupation in the U.S. workforce, she added. By 2030, caregiving, child care and elder care combined will represent the largest occupation in the workforce.

“Perhaps the most important lessons we can learn from domestic workers is about care itself,” Poo said. “Care connects us to our most basic and universal needs as humanity. Coming together to bring value, dignity and worth to caregiving work and our caregiving relationships to help bring out the best in us as a nation.”

Examining the Link Between Gun Laws and Suicides Luskin professor and his student find that states with most-restrictive gun laws have a reduced rate of firearm suicides among older males

By Adeney Zo and Stan Paul

In April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a study showing that, from 1999 to 2014, the rate of suicides in America rose nearly 25 percent, with a marked increase after 2006. And, in this election year, gun control remains one of the most heated topics in the nation.

Researchers at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs have been taking a close look at the role firearms play in suicides — specifically among older adults — and the effect that gun law environment and gun control policies can have on reducing firearm suicides among this age group.

UCLA Social Welfare professor Mark Kaplan and Social Welfare doctoral student Carol Leung’s work on this issue has been presented at conferences across the U.S.  Results from their research and presentations were recently published in the study “Deploying an Ecological Model to Stem the Rising Tide of Suicide in Older Age” in the Journal of Aging & Social Policy.

While gun control laws generally can reduce the risk of suicide, few studies exist showing what laws are the most effective in curbing firearm suicides in older males.

“Suicide research is a small niche, but it’s such an important topic,” Leung said. “Two-thirds of all gun deaths are suicides, and 80 percent of older males who complete suicide will use a firearm.”

Among the key results of their study on older men and suicide, Kaplan and Leung found:

  • Older men have a higher suicide rate and a higher proportion of suicides involving firearms compared to their younger counterparts.
  • States with the most restrictive gun laws (California) have proportionately fewer suicides involving the use of firearms.
  • Two out of the six gun policies (“gun owner accountability” and “regulation of sales and transfers”) explained more than half (53 percent) of the variation in the fraction of suicides involving firearms among older men.
  • “Gun owner accountability” (i.e., licensing of gun owners and purchases, registration of firearms, and reporting of stolen firearms) accounted for the largest share of the explained variance (50 percent).

“I found a very linear relationship,” said Leung. “States without these policies have the highest rate of firearm-related suicide. The states with the lowest rate of firearm-related suicide have the strictest gun laws.”

As an example, California received an A- on “The 2013 State Scorecard: Why Gun Laws Matter,” produced by the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, whereas nearly two-thirds of the states received a D or F on the scale.

In addition, Kaplan explained that, in the context of health and older adult suicides, 70 percent of older adults will visit their primary care physician prior to completing suicide.

“We hope to influence health-care providers to be more attentive to anything that seems to be associated with pending suicide attempts,” said Kaplan. “This includes probing for gun availability. The mere presence of a gun matters; their chances of dying by firearm-related accident or suicide increase.”

The researchers know that change doesn’t happen overnight. “Suicide prevention starts with advocacy work that involves collaboration between policy makers, professors and clinicians,” said Leung.

Kaplan and Leung, who also presented at the 49th annual American Association of Suicidology Conference, strongly urge that clinicians and policy makers need to become stronger advocates for a more restrictive gun law environment. Overall, their research demonstrates the important role a “gun law environment” and specific gun control policies can play in reducing firearm suicides among older adults. Their most recent work will contribute to a study to be conducted this summer.

“We strive to harmonize policies and clinical practice with preventing firearm suicides among older adults, particularly older men,” said Leung.

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Mark S. Kaplan, Dr. P.H., is professor of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. He holds an adjunct appointment in psychiatry at the Oregon Health & Science University. His research focuses on using population-wide data to understand suicide risk factors among veterans, seniors and other vulnerable populations. He is the recipient of a Distinguished Investigator Award from the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention and has contributed to state and federal suicide prevention initiatives.

Carol Leung, LMSW, is a doctoral student in the Department of Social Welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

UCLA Luskin Adds Six New ‘Outstanding’ Faculty Public Policy, Social Welfare and Urban Planning announce the appointment of two new scholars in each department

By George Foulsham

In the biggest expansion since its inception, the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs has announced the addition of six new faculty for the 2016-17 academic year. The new hires bring to 100 the number of professors, assistant professors, lecturers and instructors at the Luskin School.

“We are thrilled to welcome six new faculty to the UCLA Luskin family,” Interim Dean Lois M. Takahashi said. “These six outstanding scholars will bring to Luskin a wealth of expertise and knowledge that will be shared with our current — and future — students for years to come. This is a very exciting time to be a part of one of the best public affairs schools in the country. These new faculty members will help us continue the pursuit of our mission at Luskin: advancing solutions to society’s most pressing problems.”

The six new faculty members, by department:

Public Policy

Darin Christensen, a new assistant professor of Public Policy, will receive his Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University this year. His research interests, with support from the World Bank and other funders, span comparative politics, the political economy of conflict and development, foreign investment, and political accountability, with regional interest in sub-Saharan Africa, including Ghana, Kenya, and Sierra Leone. He received his bachelor’s degree in political science and German from Duke University, and his master’s degree in economics from Stanford. Christensen’s teaching focus at Luskin is expected to be comparative political institutions, the political economy of development and advanced data analysis.

Zachary C. Steinert-Threlkeld, a new assistant professor of Public Policy, will receive his Ph.D. in political science from UC San Diego this year. He also has a master’s degree in political science from UC San Diego and a bachelor’s degree in anthropology and economics from Washington University in St. Louis. His research interests are in international politics; exploiting in particular vast social media data to study subnational conflict; the mobilization of mass protest such as the Arab Spring and Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests, as well as elite behavior and state repression in authoritarian regimes. At Luskin, his teaching focus will be on subnational conflict, statistics and advanced data analysis of various kinds, including the analysis of “big data.”

Social Welfare

Leyla Karimli, a new assistant professor of social welfare, received her Ph.D. in social welfare from Columbia University’s School of Social Work in 2013 and is completing postdoctoral training at New York University School of Social Work’s Institute for Poverty, Policy and Research. Dr. Karimli has 13 years of international research and practice experience focusing on poverty and social exclusion including post-masters practice experience with international development agencies in the former Soviet Union and Sub-Saharan Africa. Her research interests include a multidimensional and systems-oriented analysis of poverty and social exclusion that complements the Department of Social Welfare and Luskin School’s commitment to understanding the complex nature of social and economic inequalities and addressing the needs of vulnerable and diverse populations.

Laura Wray-Lake, a new assistant professor in social welfare, received her Ph.D. from Penn State University’s highly regarded Human Development and Family Studies program. Dr. Wray-Lake is a lifespan developmental scientist from the University of Rochester where she has been an assistant professor in the Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology. Dr. Wray-Lake utilizes a “civic engagement” framework to examine the social and income inequalities facing vulnerable children and families and how and why individuals can become re-engaged in society. Dr. Wray-Lake has a strong commitment to teaching and mentoring. Her courses on community engagement incorporate her social justice approach to teaching and as such, will support our commitment to diversity and social justice.

Urban Planning

Kian Goh, a new assistant professor of urban planning, received her Master of Architecture from Yale University and her Ph.D. in Urban and Environmental Planning from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT. She is currently an assistant professor of Urban Landscape at Northeastern University. Dr. Goh’s research investigates the relationships between urban ecological design, spatial politics, and social mobilization in the context of climate change and global urbanization. Her work has centered on sites in New York, Jakarta and Rotterdam.  She also has ongoing projects on queer space and the sociopolitics of smart cities. In addition to her scholarly work, Goh is a licensed architect and co-founder of SUPER-INTERESTING!, a multidisciplinary architecture and strategic consulting practice located in Brooklyn.

Michael Manville, a new assistant professor of urban planning, is returning to UCLA Luskin after receiving his MA and Ph.D. in urban planning from UCLA Luskin.  Dr. Manville is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at Cornell University. His research examines the willingness of people and communities to finance different government services, and the tendency of local governments to hide the costs of transportation in the property market. Dr. Manville is particularly interested in how land use restrictions intended to fight traffic congestion can influence the supply and price of housing.

The Color of Wealth in Los Angeles Luskin researchers among co-authors in new study revealing nuanced story of race and wealth in L.A.

By Melany De La Cruz-Viesca and Erin Fogg

A new report examining wealth inequality across racial and ethnic groups in Los Angeles shows substantial disparity with Japanese, Asian Indians, Chinese and whites ranking among the top, while blacks, Mexicans, other Latinos, Koreans and Vietnamese rank far behind.

The Color of Wealth in Los Angeles” is the first report to compile detailed data on assets and debts among people of different races, ethnicities and countries of origin residing in the Los Angeles area. Researchers from UCLA, Duke University and The New School, with support from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, analyzed data on assets and debts. Assets included savings and checking accounts, stocks, retirement accounts, houses and vehicles, while debts, included credit card debt, student loans, medical debt, mortgages and vehicle debt.

Three of the co-authors of the report have ties to the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Melany De La Cruz-Viesca, the lead author of the report, is a 2002 graduate of the Luskin School’s Department of Urban Planning, and is assistant director of the Asian American Studies Center at UCLA. Other co-authors include Paul Ong, professor of Urban Planning, Social Welfare and Asian American studies; and Zhenxiang Chen, a Public Policy graduate student. Also contributing were C. Aujean Lee, a doctoral student in Urban Planning, and Chhandara Pech, a MURP alum and currently a staff member at UCLA’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge.

“Data that truly reflect the diverse and emerging patterns of wealth inequality across specific ethnic and racial groups has been hard to come by,” said William “Sandy” Darity, co-author and director of the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity at Duke. “The patterns we were able to document may well be the first in-depth study of wealth, ethnicity and race in Los Angeles, especially for Mexicans and particular Asian national origin groups.”

Although much of the inequality discourse has focused on income, wealth is a better indicator of economic well-being and metric for understanding economic inequality. The accumulation of wealth is more likely to ensure financial security and opportunity for American families in the future, the authors said.

The report provides estimates for U.S.-born blacks, blacks who are recent immigrants from Africa, Mexicans, other Latinos, Asian Indians, Chinese, Filipino, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and non-Hispanic whites in the Los Angeles Metropolitan Statistical Area (Los Angeles and Orange counties) using new data from the National Asset Scorecard and Communities of Color survey.

Racial and ethnic differences in wealth show the extreme vulnerability of some nonwhite households in Los Angeles. The authors estimate that the typical U.S.-born black or Mexican family, for example, has just 1 percent of the wealth of a typical white family in Los Angeles — or one cent for every dollar of wealth held by the average white family in the metro area. Koreans hold 7 cents and Vietnamese possess 17 cents for every dollar of wealth owned by comparable white families.

The median value of liquid assets — those assets that quickly can be converted to cash — for Mexicans and other Latinos is striking, zero dollars and only $7, respectively, while the median value of liquid assets for white households is $110,000. This not only implies financial hardship in the long term, but it also makes families particularly vulnerable to short-term financial disruption, the report states.

White households in Los Angeles have an estimated median net worth of $355,000. By comparison, Mexicans and U.S.-born blacks are estimated to have a median net worth of $3,500 and $4,000, respectively.

Additionally, among nonwhite groups, Japanese ($592,000), Asian Indian ($460,000), Chinese ($408,200) and Filipino ($243,000) households had estimated median wealth values far in excess of blacks who recently emigrated from Africa ($72,000), other Latinos ($42,500), Koreans ($23,400) and Vietnamese ($61,500).

“The socioeconomic status of immigrants prior to entering the U.S. plays an important role in influencing the wealth position of particular groups,” said De La Cruz-Viesca. “This report not only reveals a nuanced story of racial wealth differences in L.A., perhaps more importantly, it also explores the local nature of asset markets and what factors influence the wealth status of communities of color.”

The majority of immigrants who came to the United States after the passage of the 1965 Immigration Act are highly educated, possess higher levels of wealth than the average American, and are highly skilled professionals who are more likely to hold jobs that pay more. One exception is Vietnamese immigrants, many of whom came to the United States as refugees generally with limited financial resources. The National Asset Scorecard and Communities of Color survey findings are consistent with this general pattern.

The NASCC survey findings reveal staggering disparities that should serve to urge lawmakers to identify and pursue policies that can help narrow racial wealth differences, the authors said. In particular, there’s a need to develop policies that address structural discrimination in asset and credit markets and the inherited inequalities associated with vast differences in parental wealth.

“The wealth disparities uncovered in this report are enormous, likewise it will take bold initiatives to address them,” said co-author Darrick Hamilton, associate professor of economics and urban policy and director of the Ph.D. program in policy at The New School. “‘Baby Bonds’ provide an example of a bold policy proposal that addresses the racial wealth gap, which locks in inequality at birth.”

Hamilton said that these government-provided trusts would take into account a person’s family wealth at birth. “The accounts would be used to seed a down payment on an asset like a home or a new business, so that everyone would have an opportunity to attain the economic security and wealth building mechanism of an asset that will appreciate over their lifetime.”

IPP Bridges Studies to Global Career International Practice Pathways (IPP) offers internships to students across the globe.

By Adeney Zo

Since 2011, the International Practice Pathways (IPP) program has offered a global component to Luskin students’ education prior to the inception of Global Public Affairs. This summer, IPP once again sent a group of students to internship placements around the world, offering them the unique opportunity to see their education come to life on the international scale.

The global journey begins with Shafaq Choudry MURP ’16, who interned in the mayor’s office in Panama City, Panama. Having grown up in Venezuela and worked extensively with Latino communities as a planner, Choudry was immediately drawn to a placement opportunity in Latin America. “The IPP summer program in Panama presented a tremendous opportunity to work at a recently established Department of Urban Planning under the mayor’s office on transportation and land use projects,” she explained.

Her areas of academic interest include sustainable transportation and equitable development, so the opportunity to work in a rapidly developing city was invaluable.

“Panama City has undergone rapid growth and development over the years, and with new leadership in place, the Department of Planning is investing in strategies and tools for inclusive and equitable growth,” said Choudry.

Despite the practical experience she gained, Choudry was most inspired by the people she encountered during her time abroad.

“I met extraordinary, young and talented individuals that are passionate about transforming their city for the better,” said Choudry. “Their open and eager-for-change attitude allowed me to integrate with the team and generate ideas for the future together.”

Choudry will continue her travels this year with a comprehensive thesis project in Mexico City, an endeavor she hopes will lead to a career in Latin America. “Toward the end of my 10-week fellowship in Panama, I received the affirmation I needed in order to pursue international planning work in Latin America as a consultant,” she said.

Like Choudry, Katie Merrill MSW ’16 had deep personal ties to her placement — Europe — having lived and worked in Germany before coming to Luskin. Motivated by this combination of personal and academic interest, Merrill chose to intern at the UN Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland.

“I have always been interested in the UN and the grand scale of global humanitarian work,” said Merrill. “I was particularly attracted to the idea of working at UNHCR in the wake of the Syrian refugee crisis.”

Merrill was given the freedom to design and run a study on staff alcohol abuse across the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Many UNHCR staff members work in dangerous areas under highly stressful conditions, leading to a widespread alcohol abuse problem, Merrill explained. “I was shocked and fascinated by what I heard on a daily basis, and I felt a profound responsibility to do them justice,” she said.

“This experience showed me just how intimate research can, in fact, be,” she continued. “I spent hours on the phone with staff members speaking about very jarring personal experiences. It was so powerful to feel that my synthesis and communication of their messages may very well lead to real and important policy changes in the organization, and it was an honor to be at the heart of something so big.”

Merrill and her coworkers interviewed more than 100 staff members over the course of her study, and her findings will be incorporated into a final report to UNHCR.

Away from city life, Jason Karpman MURP ’16 applied his studies in urbanization and environmental impact to the rainforests of Chiang Mai, Thailand. When considering where to apply for his IPP placement, Karpman had his sights set on the research organization World Agroforestry Centre. Between their global office locations, Thailand had the most abundant forest area, covering approximately 37% of the country. “I was drawn to the ecology of the place,” explained Karpman.

IPP offers students the chance to engage in real-life applications of their studies, and this aspect of the program resonated deeply with Karpman. While the majority of his time was spent conducting literature review and research at Chiang Mai University, Karpman was most inspired by field visits to the rainforest itself. He recalled the breathtaking moment when he entered a tropical rainforest for the first time:

“It’s one of those awe-inspiring experiences, and I was humbled by how spectacular [the rainforest] is, how productive it is,” said Karpman. “There was green as far as the eye can see. It solidified that these places provide important environmental services for our planet.”

To future students considering IPP, Karpman recommends the program as the ideal window between the first and second year to reassess the direction of one’s studies.

“[I realized] how to maximize my last year in this program to get the skills and content education I need,” he said. “I can’t overemphasize how important the value of the program is — it’s a moment to pause in your education, reassess things and then get back in the program.”

 

 

Shining a Powerful Light on Social Injustice Urban Color-Lines and the Dispossessions of Our Times: New UCLA Luskin Institute Launched to Focus on Global Inequality and Democracy

By Stan Paul and George Foulsham

In one of the poorest neighborhoods of Chicago, an African-American mother and her children face eviction amid a patchwork landscape of foreclosed and empty dwellings.

Across the globe and in another hemisphere, South African shack dwellers face the constant fear of eviction, violence and police brutality in the post-Apartheid era.

In Delhi, India, where more than 75 percent of inhabitants reside in “unplanned” and, therefore, “spatially illegal” dwellings, basic necessities such as water are denied.

And, south of the United States, the poor in countries such as Brazil experience a familiar scenario: eviction and being pushed out to the favelas, at the periphery of the urban center.

These are the “dispossessions of our times,” and the “enduring color-lines” of the 21st century, say founders and collaborators of the new Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin. The launch of the new center at UCLA brought together scholars from various disciplines as well as those on the front lines of grassroots efforts fighting eviction and social injustice worldwide.

“The theme of Urban Color-Lines is especially important for us today in Los Angeles, a city and region marked by its own historic struggles for equality and justice,” Lois Takahashi, Interim Dean of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs and professor of Urban Planning, said in her opening remarks.

The two-day event, held at UCLA and Los Angeles venues, included not only scholars and activists but artists, performers and a movie screening to give expression to these global and ongoing problems, to highlight these issues and to bring to the fore emerging efforts to fight eviction, displacement and discrimination.

“The scope and purpose of the Institute have been shaped in conversation with movements such as the L.A. Community Action Network and the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign,” said Ananya Roy, founding director of the new center. “You will see how we strive to learn from these movements, their ideas and practices,” which create openings for social change, added Roy, who is also a professor of Social Welfare and Urban Planning at Luskin.

“We are launching the Institute on Inequality and Democracy this week with an ambitious mandate: to advance radical democracy in the world through research, critical thought and alliances with social movements and racial justice activism,” Roy said. “In doing so, we recognize that democracy is not an antidote to inequality; that, in fact, democracy is constituted through inequality.”

Day 1

Markets, Race, and the Aftermath of Slavery

Urban Color-Lines: Inaugurating the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin

SLIDE SHOW: 131 Photos, Urban Color-Lines: Inaugurating the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin

Providing context for day one was UCLA law professor Cheryl Harris, a recognized leader in civil rights education and critical race theory. The author of “Whiteness as Property,” an important and influential law review treatise, discussed how slavery was not a pre-capitalist system, but quintessential in the system of trade and finance and “central to the development of capitalism itself.”

“The market is not a neutral field,” said Harris, outlining the role that race continues to play in the making of exclusion as well as profit. For example, she noted that the high and disproportionate rate of minority incarceration in America provides cost savings in the form of labor as well as a market for products of prison labor. Harris added that the incarcerated themselves are also forced to be consumers of goods and services related to their incarceration.

The Right to the City: From South to North

Harris’ keynote presentation led into contributions by scholars and activists representing ongoing worldwide struggles against eviction, banishment and spatial injustice from Chicago and Brazil to South Africa and India.

Toussaint Losier, assistant professor at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and co-founder of the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign, shared his experiences from the front lines of anti-eviction action, including eviction blockades, inspired by work being done in South Africa. “Why aren’t you doing this in the U.S.?” was the take-away question from a trip to South Africa by Losier, who said that this connection became the model for action in Chicago.

Raquel Rolnik, professor, architect and urban planner from Brazil, and former Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing at the United Nations, spoke about a global pattern of evictions and land grabs fueled by financialization. She described this as a “permanent transitory” state for the urban poor.

“The language of liberalism and the markets is inadequate to describe the world we are living in,” said Richard Pithouse, a scholar at Rhodes University in South Africa. Pithouse said that a “proper name” does not yet exist in academia. “Maybe it is in the struggle but not in the university,” said Pithouse, asking where the locus of academic work should be. “It’s a messy space, but it is the space if you are serious about struggle.”

Gautam Bhan, who teaches urban politics, planning and development at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements in Bangalore, also looked inward at institutions such as universities to talk about the problem of inequality.

“Institutions have become predictable. We’ve lost the ability to fight with anyone that thinks another way … some of our thinking has to be about practice,” said the Berkeley-trained scholar (and former student of Ananya Roy), who has focused on the politics of poverty in India including urban displacement and affordable housing. Bhan described India’s contemporary politics of “you shouldn’t be here” to explain the predicament of the overwhelming majority of people who are unrecognized as residents and do not have a “right to the city.”

Black, Brown and Banished: Ending Urban Displacement in 21st Century Democracies

Black Brown & Banished: Ending Urban Displacement in 21st Century Democracies

SLIDE SHOW: 65 Photos, Black Brown & Banished: Ending Urban Displacement in 21st Century Democracies

The first day of the institute’s inauguration concluded with an evening gathering at the Japanese American National Museum in downtown Los Angeles. It included a series of dramatic arts performances, and ended with a panel discussion on eviction/action featuring testimony of those who have both lived through and fought back against eviction.

The performances included a reading, Nonfiction Eviction Depiction: Excerpts from Oral History Transcripts, featuring Bernard Brown, Dorothy Dubrule and Robert Een; and a dance performance, “Champion,” featuring Valerie Braaten, Leanna Bremond, Timna Naim, Silvia Park, Raphael Smith and Bernard Brown, who also wrote and directed the performance.

The anti-eviction discussion included dramatic testimony from Ashraf Cassiem, of the Western Cape Anti-Eviction Campaign in South Africa; Willie “JR” Fleming, with the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign; Patricia Hill, also with the Chicago Anti-Eviction Campaign; and Pete White, with the LA Community Action Network, who wore a t-shirt that said “This Is a Movement, Not a Moment.”

Fleming talked about his group’s campaign in Chicago, calling what was happening there an “urban and economic cleansing.” He proudly pointed out that the members of the anti-eviction campaign “broke the law to change the law.”

And Hill, a retired police officer and public school teacher, recounted how banks twice arbitrarily increased her mortgage payments on a house she had owned for years, almost forcing her and her children to move out, until the anti-eviction campaign stepped in and helped her save the home in 2011. “I’m still there,” she said to loud applause.

“This is about our responsibility to leave a world that’s better for our women and children,” Fleming said.

Day 2

Debtors’ Prisons and Debtors’ Unions: Direct Action in Finance Capitalism

Hannah Appel is a UCLA scholar who describes herself as an economic anthropologist and an activist who looks at the daily life of finance capitalism and debt through different lenses: as “racialized social control” and as a “potential platform for collective action.” Appel, who also works with ongoing Occupy Wall Street projects such as Debt Collective, said her viewpoints are grounded and informed by her work as an organizer, thinker, critic and dreamer in this “particular moment in finance capitalism.”

“I want to talk about how capitalism shape shifts, about how attention to the everyday life of finance and its inverse, debt, offers unexpected opportunities for financial disobedience, rupture and transformation,” said Appel. She pointed out that while the debt financing of everything has rewarded the creditor class from the time of colonial plunder and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, today it has left the overwhelming majority of U.S. households with consumer debt. This debt includes college, health care, housing, “and even our own human caging, or incarceration,” said Appel. She also discussed the more virulent forms of debt like pay day loans — so-called high-interest, sub-prime world of “ghetto loans” to modern debtors prisons as described in U.S. cities such as Ferguson.

“In sum, questions of debt, colonialism and sovereignty within and beyond the U.S. are everywhere still with us,” she said.

But, Appel said, using the “economic imagination” envisions possibilities for radical action within and against finance capitalism, including disrupting the way debt is thought about, as shameful or moral failure. “In this terrain of mass indebtedness … what might economic disobedience look like?” she asked, pointing to the collective leverage of debt, which can be powerful, and which she said is taking hold in America.

“You get inspiration in the weirdest places,” said Appel, citing J.P. Getty: “If you owe the bank $100, that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100 million, that’s the bank’s problem.” Extending this to the more than $1.3 trillion in student debt, Appel said “Together, arguably, in different moments and different configurations, we can be the bank’s problem.”

Decolonizing the University

An international group of scholars and activists examined the role that the university plays now and can play in the future, not only as an outside, objective observer, but from within the institution.

Gaye Theresa Johnson, an associate professor of African American Studies and Chicano Studies at UCLA, has been active with the Los Angeles Community Action Network’s efforts for housing and civil rights in L.A.’s skid row area. The author of a book on “spatial entitlement “ in Los Angeles described the university as a site of invention and of contestation.

“We have to rethink the nature of knowledge itself. We have to do a psychic overhaul, really, of the perception of the work that we do,” said Johnson.

Camalita Naicker is a Ph.D. candidate from Rhodes University in South Africa, where she is studying the practice of popular politics in that country. She is also a student activist in the Black Student Movement at Rhodes, writing about urban land occupations and popular movements in South Africa. Her presentation questioned what an African university today should look like, what it should teach and being a black student in colonial space.

“Who teaches and what they teach matter,” said Naicker, asking what an affordable education in South Africa might look like in a decolonized university.

“Dominant knowledge produces and reproduces coloniality of knowledge and power,” said Carlos Vainer, an economist and sociologist at the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning and Research and the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Hoping to put some “fingers in the wounds,” he included both universities and scholars as part of this dynamic in which “coloniality is co-essential to modernity, to capitalism.”

Vainer said that while the necessity of decolonizing the university is clear, how this is possible is not, pointing to both “new relations with non-academic knowledge” in the north and south as well as reciprocity of scholarship. “You must read us,” he said, citing the lack of translated scholarly works in his own country to use in mainstream academia.

Marques Vestal, a doctoral student in history at UCLA, grew up in Los Angeles, which provided him with an up-close view of black housing politics, culture and residential segregation. And, as a student, his interest is in the implications of private student debt, “a material relationship contrary to social justice,” which produces a mass of indebted students, he said.

“Indebtedness restricts movement,” and “makes commitments to social justice precarious,” said Vestal, describing what it is like for students whose education is “a commodity that must be purchased.”

The Audacity of Despair

the Audacity of Despair with David Simon

SLIDE SHOW: 59 Photos, The Audacity of Despair with David Simon 

David Simon, the journalist, screenwriter and producer of the award-winning HBO series “The Wire,” provided the exclamation point for the two-day inauguration of the institute. His appearance, part of the Luskin Lecture Series, entertained and informed the crowd at UCLA’s James Bridges Theater.

“As Mr. Simon’s creative and journalistic contributions indicate, the university is not the sole producer of knowledge,” Roy said as she introduced Simon. “It is not the sole mover of debates. But it has a role. And it has a responsibility.

“It is the role and responsibility of the university, among other actors, to challenge policies, to contest the willful separation of two separate societies, and, perhaps, to acknowledge how we might also be complicit in producing and perpetuating those policies,” Roy added.

After a screening of an episode of “Show Me A Hero,” another Simon series on HBO, he spoke passionately about, among other things:

The war on drugs: “It was a war about dangerous narcotics, but in truth it was a war on the poor.”

Democracy: “Democracy itself is centrist and incremental. If you’re doing the right things, it gets a little better every day. If you’re doing the wrong things, it gets a little worse every day. Freedom is never won entirely.”

And what can be done: “The only solution for bad government or a weak democracy is better government and a stronger democracy — to have a democracy start to engage democratic ideals, representative ideals and to represent the entire society. It’s all hard work. There’s no singular moment. Let’s start by getting rid of the drug war. That’s job one.”

Finally, Simon gave a heartfelt blessing and endorsement to the new Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin.

“I’m very enamored of the idea of this institute being here,” Simon said. “I can’t think of anything that a university can do that would be more important than to address these issues and to argue these issues.”