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Experts Decry Decision That Would Gut L.A.’s Affordable Housing Plan

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Experts at the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies based at UCLA Luskin are at the forefront of research relating to affordable housing, and this work served as the basis for an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times questioning a city planning department decision that would shield some wealthier neighborhoods from multifamily development. Aaron Barrall and Shane Phillips of the Lewis Center’s Housing Initiative write that a review of data “shows that L.A.’s current capacity for development … is disproportionately concentrated in lower-income neighborhoods and communities of color.” Half of this capacity is in the poorest quarter of Los Angeles, while the wealthiest 10% furnishes less than 1%. Although the authors call the situation “disheartening,” they say the city still has time to adopt a strategy to add homes where they’re needed most. “Until L.A. takes those steps,” they note, “very little about this housing plan can be called fair.”

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Yin on the Burden of Medical Debt in L.A.

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Wesley Yin, associate professor of public policy at UCLA Luskin, spoke to LAist about the burdens of medical debt. In Los Angeles County, 1 in 10 adults are currently in debt due to medical care. Yin’s research shows that when hospitals wipe out patients’ debt and temporarily reduce how much they pay in co-pays, they are more likely to fill prescriptions and utilize health care resources. Yet within six months, even those whose debt was forgiven had returned to getting less care due to high costs. “Getting rid of medical debt may help in the short term, but a one-time cancellation doesn’t impact the future debts they may incur,” Yin said. He added that medical credit cards and other loans for medical bills can have high interest rates that deepen debt and threaten patients’ financial security.

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Manville on Road Tolls: ‘There Is No Other Way to Reduce Congestion’

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Michael Manville, associate professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Times and KTLA and KNBC about an expected pilot program that would charge a toll on some Los Angeles roads. The program aims to ease traffic congestion, reduce carbon emissions and raise funds at a time when gas taxes are down due to the surge in electric vehicles. Manville said that revenues can and should be used to ensure that low-income drivers are not disproportionately burdened by the tolls. Some businesses are concerned that drivers who want to avoid paying freeway tolls will clog local roads; others argue that safety and convenience issues continue to surround many public transit options. Manville said charging a premium toll during peak hours would reduce traffic as well as the risk of crashes. “There is no other way to reduce congestion,” he said. “So you can do something like this or basically you can just live with congestion.”

Read the L.A. Times article
Watch the KTLA report
Watch the KNBC report

 

Ong Weighs In on Inequity in Internet Access

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Paul Ong, research professor and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the lack of affordable and reliable internet access available to low-income communities within Los Angeles County. Data has shown that big internet providers like Spectrum, AT&T and Frontier often charge higher rates for identical internet services to high-poverty neighborhoods compared with non-high-poverty neighborhoods. “By the time our young people graduate from high school and either move to college or to the labor market, they’re severely disadvantaged because we have moved to a system where we believe access to the computer and internet and broadband is taken for granted by most people. People who don’t have that access, they are left behind,” Ong said.

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On the Harmful Impacts of Clearing Unhoused People From View

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A Hollywood Reporter article about the harmful impacts of dismantling homeless encampments in Los Angeles, often to accommodate Hollywood productions and film shoots, cited a report from the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy. While authorities said a January 2020 “cleaning” operation at Echo Park Lake was set in motion by a film permit, the entertainment firm seeking the permit said it never sought removal of the unhoused community, according to the report. Theo Henderson, Activist-in-Residence at the institute, said production companies have “plausible deniability of what is going on” and added that unhoused individuals should be offered work by productions that use the streets and sidewalks where they live. Henderson also spoke to Buzzfeed News about mobile memorials called “Can You See Me?” The memorials are placed around Los Angeles to give people a place to grieve their unhoused family and friends who have died on the streets and in shelters.

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Read the Buzzfeed article

Taylor Reimagines California Dream With Fewer Cars

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Brian Taylor, director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies, authored an opinion piece for the Southern California News Group about the urban landscape of California. “California’s reliance on low-density, sprawling development, with its wide streets and freeways and ubiquitous free parking, requires most Californians to travel by car for almost all of their trips, whether or not they own a car or want to drive that much,” wrote Taylor, a professor of urban planning and public policy. This emphasis on driving is expensive, takes up a lot of land and is harmful to the environment. Residents without access to personal cars, who are disproportionately Black and Latino, are increasingly left behind. Taylor proposed making metropolitan and transportation planning more urban-focused. Increasing housing density, eliminating parking mandates and improving public transit would help improve housing affordability and meet climate goals, he argued. “De-centering cars in central cities can make cities more sustainable, accessible and lively places,” Taylor wrote.

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Luskin Housing Scholars Weigh In on California’s Crisis

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A UCLA Newsroom article on how to tackle California’s affordable housing crisis cited several scholars from UCLA Luskin. Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Paavo Monkkonen sees the housing crisis as a combination of “unaffordability, instability and inability to house” and has urged the state to “use many levers to push cities to allow more new housing.” Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavsky has cautioned against changes that fundamentally undermine the character of neighborhoods. He suggested increasing zoning capacity but allowing the city to decide where it should take place. “You don’t need to destroy communities,” Yaroslavsky said. Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Michael Lens highlighted the urgent need for more money for permanent supportive housing. The article was written by Jim Newton, editor of UCLA’s Blueprint magazine, who concluded that the competing arguments “reflect and shape California’s ongoing and urgent search for ways to adequately house every resident of the state.” 

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Lens on Expanding Middle-Income Housing

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Michael Lens spoke to the Long Beach Post about increasing the availability of middle-income housing. While many tax breaks and credits are available to developers building low-income housing, there aren’t many incentives to build homes for middle-income earners. A new state program will issue bonds to investors who buy existing market-rate buildings and transform them into units that are affordable for middle-income households. Lens said creating new housing for any tier is a good thing. The need for lower-income housing remains great, but the housing market has become so unaffordable that a program like this may have been necessary, he said. “It only happens when you’re so worried about the affordability of housing driving those kinds of people out of the state,” Lens said. “I think we’re there, but whether or not we’ll find a bunch of money to do something about it, it remains to be seen.”

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Lewis Center Reviews Perspectives on Housing Development

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An article in Planetizen highlighted the findings of a recent publication from the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies on the effects of market-rate housing development on surrounding neighborhoods. The report, co-authored by Lewis Center project manager Shane Phillips and UCLA Luskin faculty Michael Manville and Michael Lens, reviews the findings of six papers published since 2019, highlighting different perspectives on the zoning debate. “On one side are those who think new market-rate units — unsubsidized homes whose price often places them beyond the reach of lower- and middle-income households — make nearby housing more affordable by increasing availability and relieving pressure on the existing housing stock,” they explained. “An opposing view, however, is that new housing only attracts more wealthy households, brings new amenities to the neighborhood (including the housing itself), and sends a signal to existing landlords that they should raise their rents.” The report helps to guide the ongoing conversation about the effects of market-rate development.

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Read the report

Corporate Landlords Sought to Profit During Last Economic Crisis, Study Finds Residential property acquisitions by LLCs soared during the Great Recession in Los Angeles’ working-class communities of color

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By Les Dunseith

A recently released research brief from the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy draws fresh attention to the manner in which corporate entities have sought to benefit from an economic crisis by rapidly acquiring residential property in Los Angeles. 

The report builds on insights from several studies released during the COVID-19 pandemic by UCLA researchers that have found social and economic inequalities being reflected disproportionately in working-class communities of color. A significant percentage of residents in such communities face higher risk of unemployment, unsafe jobs, homelessness, and possible eviction and subsequent housing displacement. 

The report analyzes data on the Great Recession, finding that corporate control of residential property in many working-class communities with large Black and Latino populations expanded significantly in Los Angeles County between 2005 and 2015. The report also develops case studies that focus on different types of corporate landlords that have been active in Los Angeles in recent years and their varied strategies to profit from the acquisition of distressed residential properties.

The study seeks to examine the geography of racialized risk in Los Angeles by focusing on working-class communities of color with high rent burdens, grouping data from 20 at-risk ZIP codes into four regions: South Central Los Angeles, the Koreatown/Westlake area, the Hollywood/East Hollywood area, and a portion of the San Fernando Valley that includes Van Nuys and North Hollywood. 

Researchers focused on property acquisitions during the 10-year period in which the new owners are listed with the Los Angeles County Office of the Assessor as limited liability companies, or LLCs. Residential unit acquisitions by such LLCs increased significantly in the four regions in the wake of the Great Recession, peaking in 2012. 

Referring to those acquisitions as “housing grabs,” the report finds that corporate control of residential property “is established and maintained through various strategies, including dominance in the single-family rental market, mass acquisition of foreclosed properties, destruction of rent-controlled housing, and running ‘eviction machines’ to displace tenants.”

“Who Profits From Crisis? Housing Grabs in Times of Recovery” is the title of the report issued Oct. 16 and written by Ananya Roy, director of the institute and a professor of urban planning, social welfare and geography; tenants rights activist Terra Graziani MURP ’19; Pamela Stephens, a doctoral student in urban planning; and Joel Montano, MURP ’20.

“Housing grabs are enabled by policies of deliberate deregulation, which also extend to financial lenders and the banking industry,” the authors write in the report. “Rewarded through bailouts and government-sponsored securitizations after the Great Recession, these real-estate and financial actors continue to be enabled in their profit-making on crisis.”

The report argues that action by public officials is needed to protect rent-burdened tenants in communities vulnerable to housing grabs, especially amid the pandemic. “Otherwise, there will be mass displacement of an unprecedented scale.” 

A single property transaction can refer to the acquisition of a single-family home or an apartment building with several hundred units. The focus of the study was primarily on the number of units acquired through LLC transactions because the authors believe that figure best illustrates the scope of impact on a given community. During the period of study, data show a countywide increase in LLC transactions of 433% and a 121% increase in the number of units acquired. In 2015, for example, a total of 30,651 units were acquired through LLC transactions.

The four regions in the study have different housing stocks, the study notes, and thus a property sale in the San Fernando Valley, which has a higher share of single-family units, would likely have different meaning than would a sale in Koreatown/Westlake, which has significantly more high-unit apartment buildings. 

The largest number of unit acquisitions through LLC transactions in any ZIP code in any year of the period of study was 735, which took place in the 90005 ZIP code of Koreatown in 2012. The Koreatown/Westlake region also had a significant spike in 2015 when 665 units were acquired by LLCs in the 90006 ZIP code, which is Pico Union.

South Central Los Angeles had the greatest overall increase in unit acquisition, at 388%, during the study period. Unlike the other regions, South Central had a fairly steady increase in units acquired through LLC transactions between 2007 and 2010, with a sharp increase and peak in 2011. Acquisitions were on the downswing after 2011 until another increase in 2015. This region’s change in unit acquisitions was greatest by far in ZIP code 90016 (West Adams), rising 2,757%.

The average number of units acquired through LLC transactions increased 201% overall during the study period in the region of the San Fernando Valley that was studied. The highest number of units, 550, in that region changed hands in the 91601 ZIP code (North Hollywood) in 2009. 

The rise in units acquired in LLC transactions in the Hollywood/East Hollywood region was the least of the four at-risk regions studied, although still at 40% between 2005 and 2015. 

The study was released at a time when the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Eric Garcetti were considering how to respond to a legal challenge from the Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles to the city’s moratorium on renter evictions amid the pandemic. 

As director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, Roy joined with Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge based at UCLA Luskin, in filing an amicus brief that argues against the landlord association’s effort to persuade a judge to issue a preliminary injunction that would suspend the moratorium on eviction for those renters who have experienced financial hardship during the pandemic.

“The proposed preliminary injunction threatens mass displacement in Los Angeles,” according to the amicus brief filed Oct. 9 in Los Angeles federal court. “Studies of COVID-19 impacts in Los Angeles show that most of this suffering will be concentrated in the city’s working-class communities of color, which are already bearing the burden of high infection and death rates.”

City leaders chose to fight back against the landlord association, and a U.S. District Court denied the motion for a preliminary injunction on Nov. 13, allowing Los Angeles’ eviction moratorium to remain in place.