Ong Highlights Economic Obstacles Facing Asian Americans

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Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, was cited in Los Angeles Times and USA Today articles about economic hardships among Asian Americans in the United States. Many hotels, restaurants, shopping centers and beauty salons were forced to close at the beginning of the pandemic, and a report by Ong found that Asian Americans accounted for one in four workers within those sectors. Now, long-term unemployment levels among Asian Americans have been exacerbated by a surge in anti-Asian sentiment. Among all racial and ethnic groups in the United States, Asians have the largest income gap between the top and bottom 10%, and this trend has been accelerated by the economic shutdown caused by the pandemic. Ong explained that Los Angeles’ Chinatown “was hit earlier, even before the lockdowns, and it lost much more business and has recovered much more slowly,” a trend also seen in New York and San Francisco.

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Policies Reflect Preferences of Affluent Americans, Gilens Finds

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Professor of Public Policy and Social Welfare Martin Gilens was featured in an Atlantic article about the influence of wealth on politics. In his research, Gilens has found notable differences in the policy preferences of affluent Americans compared to the middle class. These differences are not limited to economic matters like taxation, but also include funding for public education, racial equity and environmental protections, which the wealthy are less likely to support. These differences in policy preferences are significant because of the influence the rich have over government officials. In one report, Gilens analyzed thousands of public survey responses and found that, on issues where the views of wealthy voters diverged significantly from those of the rest of the populace, the policies ultimately put in place “strongly reflected the desires of the most affluent respondents.” Gilens concluded that the policies on these controversial issues “bore virtually no relationship to the preferences of poorer Americans.”

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Matute on Improving Public Transit Apps

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Juan Matute, deputy director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Wall Street Journal about the growing role of technology in public transit service. New York, London and Los Angeles are releasing new apps and digital versions of their subway maps, which give riders access to information about how close a train is to their station as well as any closures or delays. Matute explained that the new platforms are designed with more focus on the user experience than some predecessors, which first appeared on app stores around 2010 and were often neglected by transit agencies afterward. “These apps just fell out of favor and ended up being removed from the marketplace,” he said. The growth of ride-share services like Lyft and Uber and competition with other navigation apps such as Google Maps and Apple Maps has prompted public transit agencies to invest resources in improving the digital experience for riders.

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Holloway on Pandemic’s Impact on Gay Social Life

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A Daily Beast article about the impact of the pandemic on gay communities cited research by Ian Holloway, director of the Hub for Health Intervention, Policy and Practice at UCLA Luskin. Stay-at-home orders resulted in the closing of many gay bars and other social spaces for LGBTQ individuals. Holloway was the lead author of a study that surveyed 10,000 gay men in 20 countries about their mental health and use of social networking during the pandemic lockdown. The study found that those who only left their homes for essentials during the first COVID lockdowns were 37% more likely to feel anxious than those who didn’t, and 36% more likely to feel lonely. It’s important to remember that gay men “come to this pandemic with disproportionate rates of mental health issues,” said Holloway, an associate professor of social welfare. Distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine is allowing some businesses to reopen, but no one knows when bars and nightclubs will return to normal.

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Now Rescinded, Trump-Era ‘Public Charge’ Policy May Still Harm Immigrants’ Health

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The Trump administration’s expansion of the “public charge” rule — a move that sought to disqualify immigrants who used social programs like Medicaid from obtaining legal residency in the U.S. — led to widespread disenrollment from these programs and left scores of children in California without access to health care in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. What’s more, say the authors of a new report from the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, the fear and confusion that the now-rescinded Trump-era policy sowed in the state will likely have a chilling long-term effect. The researchers’ analysis determined that the number of Latino children of immigrant parents who do not have a usual source of medical care could increase from the current level of just over 64,000 to more than 180,000 as parents avoid enrolling or disenroll their children from non-cash public assistance programs out of fear of jeopardizing their immigration status. Additionally, the researchers say, the number who have not seen a doctor within the previous 12 months could eventually jump from approximately 99,000 to almost 240,000. The public health consequences are likely to extend to U.S.-born children, who are already citizens but whose immigrant parents may fear that enrolling them in public assistance programs might limit their own path to a “green card,” or lawful permanent residency, the authors say. The report indicated that immigrant communities in Los Angeles County have been more acutely impacted by the complex and often confusing changes to immigration policies than those in any other region in the state.

 

Yaroslavsky on Impending Closure of Ralph’s Market

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the impending closure of a Ralph’s grocery store that serves a large Jewish community. The Pico-Robertson market, which has an extensive kosher section, is scheduled to close in May after the Los Angeles City Council voted to require large grocery stores to pay workers an extra $5 an hour for about four months as compensation for working on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pending shutdown has sparked fierce debates on social media over who is to blame: parent company Kroger or city politicians. “It’s unusual for a business to pull out and just selectively pull out,” said Yaroslavsky, a former city councilman and county supervisor in Los Angeles. “They’re walking away from a community that’s been loyal to them.” The article also cited Zev Hurwitz MPP ’18, who started an online petition to keep the Westside market open. 

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Taylor on Transit Opportunities in a Post-COVID Era

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Brian Taylor, director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke to Time magazine about COVID-19’s impact on public transit systems around the world. Mass transit has seen steep declines in ridership and revenue as people have begun to work from home or opted for cars over public transportation. However, the COVID-19 disruption has also led to a global reckoning as leaders ponder how to positively reshape their cities for the post-pandemic era. “Many are arguing this pause could give us an opportunity to reallocate street space, to reconsider how much curb space we devote to the storage of people’s private property, which cars are,” Taylor said. Improving public transit and phasing out cars could lower greenhouse-gas emissions, make streets safer and more pleasant for pedestrians, and create opportunities for retail and hospitality sectors. According to Taylor, it all depends on the decisions city leaders take now to “intelligently manage automobiles” and protect public transit.

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Luskin Summit Focuses on Seizing Opportunity to Address Homelessness

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On April 1, a panel of experts gathered for a Luskin Summit webinar about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on unhoused populations in Los Angeles. The event was moderated by Miguel A. Santana, president and CEO of the Weingart Foundation and an emeritus member of the Luskin Board of Advisors. Santana is also chair of the Committee for Greater LA, which produced “No Going Back,” a report on how to build a more equitable Los Angeles. Almost 70,000 people are unhoused in the region, and up to 1.8 million residents lost jobs during the pandemic. Sarah Dusseault, former commission chair of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority, said the pandemic “revealed the depth and breadth of the chronic and severe housing shortage, which has been amplified by failed safety nets, historic housing discrimination and mass incarceration.” She identified homelessness as “a man-made problem that we can address … by creating a system that is effective for everyone with equity at its center.” Jacqueline Waggoner, UCLA alumna and member of the UCLA Luskin Board of Advisors, called for “systems that are driven by data and informed by lived expertise.” Deeper collaboration and more resources, leadership and strategic planning are needed to create efficient systems to address homelessness, she said. Raphael Sonenshein, executive director of the Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State L.A., said addressing homelessness requires a shared vision across institutions. “Let’s seize this moment of maximum peril and maximum opportunity to make Los Angeles not a cautionary tale, but a true model,” Sonenshein said. — Zoe Day

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Storper Research Points to Roots of L.A.’s Problems

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A Zocalo Public Square column on the urgency of fixing Los Angeles’ longstanding economic and equity problems cited research by Michael Storper, distinguished professor of urban planning. Storper studied the different trajectories of the Bay Area and Los Angeles, two big regional economies that were at parity in 1970, with similar education levels and numbers of engineers. The Bay Area’s leading institutions in education, business and government became highly networked and planned collaboratively. The Los Angeles region remained a collection of separate, siloed communities that competed with one another. Today, the Bay Area is 30% richer than the L.A. region, Storper found. Noting that COVID-19 made the depths of Los Angeles’ problems undeniable, the column called on leaders to build real foundations that allow people to find stability and health in the short term, while reducing inequality to spread prosperity in the long term. 

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Diaz Testifies at U.S. Hearing on Ensuring Free and Fair Access to the Ballot

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Sonja Diaz, founding director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, testified April 1 during a virtual hearing about ensuring ballot access held by a U.S. House subcommittee. The hearing was held at a time when the Brennan Center’s legislative tracker shows 361 restrictive voting bills introduced in 47 states and as the U.S. Senate considers an expansive voting rights bill, the For the People Act, already passed by the House. Diaz, who was one of five witnesses, argued that the avalanche of restrictive voting bills comes in response to a more youthful and diverse American electorate. “Oftentimes, when we talk about voter suppression, we focus on a set of jurisdictions that have long been bad actors in our law textbooks — places like Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida,” Diaz said. “But this frame too often leaves out an important fact: Vote dilution, voter suppression, and the attack on Americans’ fundamental right to free and fair access to the ballot happens everywhere.” A vibrant democracy requires that everyone have fair and equal access to practice their constitutional rights, and she said it’s no coincidence that the restrictive bills come from states where Latinos and voters of color were consequential to the 2020 election. “Voter suppression is a feedback loop,” she said, and one that elected officials need to act to end. With support from Voting Rights Project staff and fellows, Diaz submitted written testimony in advance of the hearing that is now part of the Congressional Record. — Lys Mendes