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Newton on Jenner’s Race for Governor

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Jim Newton, editor of UCLA’s Blueprint magazine, spoke to Vox about Caitlyn Jenner’s decision to run as a Republican candidate in the race to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom. Jenner, a former Olympian and reality TV star, helped increase transgender visibility through her own transition. However, her support for former President Donald Trump and other conservative colleagues who have attacked the trans community have alienated her from the liberal trans community. “If her base is trans-sympathetic Republicans, well, that’s not 51%,” Newton said. “But in this race, if there are enough candidates, and they divide up the vote enough ways, she could win with a lot less than that.” Still, more than half of voters would need to vote to recall Newsom for that to happen. “If California continues to battle COVID successfully in the fall, then I think it’s very hard for me to imagine that [Newsom] gets recalled,” Newton said. “Then it doesn’t matter where Jenner gets her support.”

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Report Documents Struggle to Keep the Lights and Water On

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A Grist article highlighted the findings of a UCLA Luskin report about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on utility debt, particularly in communities of color. Scholars from the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and Center for Neighborhood Knowledge co-authored the report, including CNK Director Paul Ong, LCI Associate Director Greg Pierce, senior researcher Silvia González and graduate research fellow Ariana Hernandez. The paper, “Keeping the Lights and Water On: COVID-19 and Utility Debt in Los Angeles’ Communities of Color,” evaluates utility debt levels to measure residents’ difficulty paying rent during the pandemic. They found that one-quarter to one-third of households in Los Angeles have utility debt, but Black, Latino and lower-income neighborhoods are most severely impacted, as well as renters and people with limited English proficiency. The authors recommended developing and implementing debt-forgiveness and relief programs in order to support low-income households and severely burdened neighborhoods.

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Diaz Highlights Opportunity to Expand Health Care Coverage

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In a Sacramento Bee article on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget priorities, Sonja Diaz, executive director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, discussed the possibility of expanding Medi-Cal coverage to undocumented adults and seniors. Newsom is expected to release a revised state budget proposal this week with a huge budget surplus, which could be used to fund a variety of proposals to help Californians, including more stimulus checks, school funding and expanded health care coverage for undocumented adults. California recently expanded Medi-Cal coverage to undocumented children and adults up to 25 years old; expanding coverage to undocumented adults over 65 is estimated to cost the state about $250 million. “We’re in an unprecedented situation where we actually have resources to find robust and bold ideas that can correct failed systems,” Diaz said. “This includes expanding health care coverage to people irrespective of their immigration status and irrespective of their age.”

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Pierce on Tackling Failing Water Systems in California

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Gregory Pierce, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, was featured in a Revelator article about addressing the drinking water crisis in California. The Center for Innovation collaborated on a Drinking Water Needs Assessment that provided a detailed analysis of the problem and the cost of solutions in California. The study estimated it would cost about $10 billion to address the drinking water problem, but Piece explained that small-scale regional solutions could reduce the cost and make infrastructure more integrated. “What’s really novel is that [the report] also tries to comprehensively assess where our water quality is likely to fail next if nothing is done to prevent it,” Pierce said. While the problem is expensive, he argued that the costs of not fixing the problems will be higher in the long run. “One way or the other, society pays for this and it’s better to invest up front,” he said.

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Yaroslavsky on COVID-19 and the Price of Saving Lives

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to USA Today about California’s roller-coaster recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Months of shifting restrictions about lockdowns and stay-at-home orders took a significant toll on California residents. Yaroslavsky pointed out that when you ask the question “Were all the strict mandates worth it?” you are ultimately asking whether saving even one additional life was worth it. “Losing your business is an existential event; it’s a brutal price to pay,” he said. “But you can rebuild your business. You can’t do that with your life.” Yaroslavsky also said that accusations of inconsistency and hypocrisy surrounding Gov. Gavin Newsom’s management of the crisis “hurt public trust at a moment when it was sorely needed. … Any politician today has taken a hit politically because this has been an unprecedented societal disaster, but there have definitely been some who are paying a bigger price than others.”

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DeShazo Points to Success of Clean Energy Initiatives

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JR DeShazo, director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, was featured in an E&E News article about the success of clean electricity standards in California. The state requires that 60% of electricity come from eligible renewable energy resources, including solar, wind, geothermal, biomass and other sources, by the year 2030, with a transition to 100% renewable sources by 2045. California has already hit the first goal, DeShazo said, crediting the clean electricity standards with prodding the state’s utilities to procure more clean resources. The electricity standards have “probably been the single most important emission-reduction force in policy the state has adopted, more effective than cap and trade, and more effective than [our] energy efficiency or transportation initiatives,” said DeShazo, a professor of urban planning and public policy. Spectrum News also highlighted work from the Center for Innovation in a report on the need for California to prioritize issues of equity as it crafts its clean transportation goals. 

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Diaz Highlights Power of Latino Voters

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Latino Policy and Politics Initiative Director Sonja Diaz spoke to ABC7 about the role Latino voters are expected to play in the upcoming recall election faced by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Voter turnout has been historically lower for special elections, but Latino voters have turned out in large numbers in recent elections. “Our research showed that more Latinos in California cast a ballot in the 2020 presidential election than ever before,” Diaz said. She explained that both Asian Americans and Latinos are youthful demographic groups with increasing numbers of eligible voters. “This recall is really about a referendum of how we reopen — how our elected leaders including at the top, the governor, is able to ensure that people are having access to things to keep them not only safe, but making sure the world’s fifth-largest economy can continue to thrive,” Diaz said. She added that grassroots and civic engagement this year will carry into future races.

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Unpaid Utility Bills Are Disproportionately Piling Up in L.A. Study shows 25-30% of Angelenos have unpaid energy and water bills, with debts unevenly impacting people of color

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A new report authored by the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation and Center for Neighborhood Knowledge measures the extent of utility debt accumulation among customers served by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. 

Disparities in unpaid bills predate COVID-19 but have deepened since the pandemic’s outbreak. Using data from a November 2020 California State Water Resources Control Board survey, the researchers found one-quarter to one-third of all Los Angeles households faced financial difficulties paying for their utilities. 

“We didn’t expect the magnitude to be this big,” said Silvia R. González, co-author of the study and a senior researcher at the Luskin Center for Innovation. “For many families, this means choosing between keeping their lights on or skipping meals or medical treatment.”

The debt burden is unevenly distributed across Los Angeles — 64% of the population in severely affected neighborhoods are Latino. Black communities also face disproportionate debt, and racial disparities persist even after accounting for socioeconomic characteristics. Further, the study found that lower-income neighborhoods, residents with limited English proficiency and renters face unequal debt burdens. 

Early on in the pandemic, Gov. Gavin Newsom suspended water and energy utility shut-offs, which has provided continued utility access for households in California. But accumulating debt has not been forgiven, and this crisis will need to be resolved once the suspension is lifted. 

Researchers said they hope to guide policymakers and utility operators in formulating targeted debt-relief programs, and calls for financial support from COVID-19-related aid to ensure that vulnerable Angelenos will still have access to water and energy after the pandemic.  

“We need an equitable relief plan,” González said. “These communities are already historically underserved areas and they’ve been left behind more broadly during the pandemic. These debts will be impossible for many families to repay.”

Pierce Recommends Investing in Clean Water Now

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Greg Pierce, associate director of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation, was cited in a Radio Free article discussing a report he co-authored about access to clean drinking water in California. The Center for Innovation collaborated with the California State Water Resources Control Board and others on the report, which found that 620 public water systems and 80,000 domestic wells are at risk of failing to provide affordable and uncontaminated water — an issue that will cost billions to fix. The report was “the most comprehensive assessment that’s been done on the state level anywhere in the U.S.,” Pierce said. “Drought and access and water quality are all related.” He argued that temporary solutions, like providing bottled water to people whose water systems fail, are more expensive in the long run than fixing systems before they fail.

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A Focus on Meeting the Demand for Clean Energy

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A National Geographic article highlighted the main points of a report by the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation about accelerating the transition to clean energy. Many Americans support clean energy but can’t necessarily afford to install solar panels or change where their power is coming from. In California, community choice aggregators (CCAs), which buy energy on behalf of residents, have become increasingly popular. Unlike utilities, CCAs are nonprofits and are governed locally, which makes them familiar with a community’s needs and desires. The Center for Innovation report found that almost all California CCAs exceeded the interim goal of 33% carbon-free power by 2020 — and they also indirectly nudged traditional utilities into a more renewables-heavy energy mix. The report concluded that CCAs are accelerating the transition to green energy that many Americans are demanding. “Especially as the climate crisis gets worse, people are looking for ways to help move the transition forward,” said Center for Innovation project manager Kelly Trumbull.

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