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Tilly on Raising California’s Minimum Wage

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UCLA Luskin Urban Planning Professor Chris Tilly spoke to CalMatters for a story about California’s Proposition 32, a measure on the November ballot that would raise the state’s minimum wage to $18 in the coming year. The proposed increase follows minimum hikes enacted in 2016 to boost the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2022. Experts, advocates and workers have questioned whether the most recent hike will be enough to make a significant difference in Californians’ lives. A number of California cities already have enacted higher minimum wages, motivated by the higher cost of living, while unions have successfully pushed for higher wages for specific industries including fast food and health care, and are pushing for more. “In some ways, at the point where this measure is heading to the ballot, it’s kind of underwhelming,” said Tilly, who studies labor markets.

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UCLA Public Interest Research Awards Recognize Tenant Advocacy Project

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When millions of Americans lost wages at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, mass evictions loomed. California, and particularly Los Angeles County, with an estimated 365,000 renter households at risk, were no exception. In response, UCLA scholars Hannah Appel, Gary Blasi and Ananya Roy and their colleagues launched an online eviction-defense application called the Tenant Power Toolkit. Working with housing justice lawyers, technologists and community partners, the UCLA team coded the regulatory landscape of California’s 580 jurisdictions into a program tenants can easily use on any internet-connected device, in Spanish or English, to prepare their defenses. For this work, the three scholars have received UCLA Public Impact Research Awards, which celebrate the efforts of faculty who translate research into positive public action that benefits local, national and global communities. The UCLA Office of Research and Creative Activities, which bestows the annual awards, will host a ceremony honoring the recipients later this year. Since the Tenant Power Toolkit launched in July 2022, the program has prepared more than 8,000 eviction defenses, allowing approximately 21,000 tenants — over a third of them children — to avoid default eviction. “Eviction is a systemic problem,” said Appel, who noted that tenants face civil court eviction proceedings alone. “Our toolkit seeks to provide people the tools to fight their eviction while building the collective tenant power necessary to meet that of landlords and a financialized housing market.” Roy is founding director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, where Appel is associate faculty director. Blasi is a professor emeritus at UCLA Law. — Madeline Adamo

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Pierce on California’s Water Quality

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Greg Pierce, director of UCLA’s Human Right to Water Solutions Lab, commented in a CalMatters article about nearly 1 million California residents whose water does not meet state standards, according to an annual assessment released by California’s State Water Resources Control Board. The report, which updates earlier research by Pierce and colleagues at the Luskin Center for Innovation, notes that while more than a decade has passed since the state recognized clean, safe, affordable and accessible drinking water as a human right, nearly 400 water systems statewide don’t meet state requirements, particularly in disadvantaged and lower income communities of color. Despite nearly a billion dollars spent on grants in disadvantaged communities, estimated costs of fixing water systems would require billions of dollars over the next several years. “The subtext of this report is pretty clear,” said Pierce, who commended the water board’s transparency and extensive analysis. “The state just needs to put its money where its mouth is.”

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Reframing Perspectives on Who’s Helped, Hurt by Minimum Wage Hikes

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Urban Planning Professor Chris Tilly spoke to news outlets about the impact of California’s new wage law on fast-food chains as well as smaller businesses. The law sets a $20 minimum hourly wage for fast-food workers at chains with 60 or more restaurants nationwide. But the impact is also felt by local ethnic restaurants and other small businesses, which must compete to retain workers. “These grassroots businesses are part of the glue that holds communities together, and they’re what give the community an identity,” Tilly told the Los Angeles Times. He also spoke to USA Today about the wage hike’s effect on consumer prices and hiring practices. “The big critique of minimum wages is ultimately it’s a job killer, that it hurts the people that you’re trying to help,” but data from the last three decades has not shown those effects, Tilly said. “We do have to think about how to help people. But to do that by hurting other low-income people doesn’t seem like the right strategy to me.”

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Read the USA Today article

 

Persistent Gaps for Black Californians Would Take Over 248 Years to Close

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Almost two decades ago, the inaugural State of Black California report, authored by UCLA Luskin Public Policy Professor Michael Stoll, was the first to provide a comprehensive look at how the material conditions and socioeconomic outcomes for Black Californians fared compared to other racial and ethnic groups. The latest report, published by the Black Policy Project, an initiative of the UCLA Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, builds upon its predecessor by providing a comparative analysis with a sobering message: Despite improvements in the quality of life for Black communities in California since 2000, racial inequality stubbornly persists and may continue to do so for centuries to come unless more is done. Using an extensive set of census data, researchers found:

  • Black Californians’ overall socioeconomic outcomes improved by an average of 21.7% from 2000 to 2020, yet they still have the lowest index score of all racial minority groups and a 30% lower score than white Californians.
  • For the first time in decades, the Black Californian population decreased in size, from 2.2 million to 2.1 million, and many moved out of urban centers.
  • The biggest improvements in outcomes were bolstered by policy changes, particularly in relation to education and criminal justice.

Stoll, the faculty director of the Black Policy Project who also authored this year’s report, noted that Black Californians closed the overall racial gap in social and economic outcomes with whites by only 4% since 2000. “According to that rate of change, closing the racial gap between Black and white Californians would take over 248 years,” he said. — Kacey Bonner and Barbra Ramos

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View the 2024 State of Black California report

 

Fairlie Discusses Economic Impact of High Unemployment in California

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Robert Fairlie, a professor of economics and public policy, recently discussed the long-term implications should the state’s job growth continue to lag behind the national average. Joblessness reduces overall earnings, said Fairlie, chair of UCLA Luskin Public Policy, and that lowers consumer demand and hinders investment. “There is a negative multiplier effect on the state economy from the higher unemployment rates we are seeing,” he said. The story in the New York Times, which was picked up by other news outlets, focuses on the impacts of California’s high unemployment rate — 5.1% in January, which exceeded the national rate of 3.7% and was behind only Nevada’s rate of 5.4%. Among the contributing factors explored in the story are layoffs in the technology sector, a slow rebound in Southern California from prolonged strikes in the entertainment industry and varying demand for agricultural workers.

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Ballot Measure to Change Mental Health in State Could Backfire, Cohen Says

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In a story about the potential impact of Proposition 1, UCLA Luskin’s David Cohen discussed the implications of an effort to reform California’s mental health system. The statewide ballot measure is backed by Gov. Gavin Newsom as a step in solving the state’s homelessness crisis. But opponents say it would siphon money away from preventative mental health to add psychiatric institutions and promote involuntary treatment. Researchers like Cohen see involuntary or coerced care as counterproductive. “Few who review the existing evidence conclude that on balance, involuntary treatment improves the lives of those who experience it,” said Cohen, a professor of social welfare and associate dean. People contending with mental health issues can be traumatized by enforced treatment. “Being deprived of freedom is maddening. Being robbed of credibility is humiliating.” Plus, studies show that suicidal people who are institutionalized may actually be at heightened risk of self-harm upon discharge.

Read the Guardian story

 

On the CSU Picket Line, Anger Over Pay Gap

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An LAist article on a strike by California State University faculty called on Urban Planning Professor Chris Tilly for insights on equitable pay. The strike by the union representing 29,000 coaches, counselors, lecturers, librarians and professors led to a tentative agreement after one day. However, many of the union members remain indignant over the salaries awarded to top executives — including the CSU chancellor’s compensation package, which is worth nearly $1 million and includes a $96,000 annual housing allowance. The stark pay gap between workers and executives is an issue across many labor sectors, Tilly said. “I think it’s a disgrace that the gap is that big. But I would not put that just on the CSU,” he said. “CEO pay is completely out of control. I think that it sort of spilled over to higher education, with the private higher education institutions in the lead.”

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Political Courage Is Key to Curing Traffic Ills, Manville Says

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UCLA Luskin Urban Planning chair Michael Manville spoke to the Los Angeles Times about plans to tap into artificial intelligence to find ways to make California’s roads safer and less congested. Caltrans is asking tech companies to pitch generative AI tools that could analyze immense amounts of data quickly, perhaps helping the state’s traffic engineers make decisions on signal timing and lane usage. Manville said that the problem is not a lack of data-backed solutions but rather a lack of political courage to put existing solutions, such as congestion pricing, into play. “If you want to make cities safer for pedestrians, if you want to lower speeds, if you want to deal with congestion in a meaningful way, technology is not going to rescue you from difficult political decisions,” he said.

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How Stockton’s Asian Enclaves Fell Victim to ‘Progress’

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A Zocalo article authored by researchers from the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin tells of the thriving Asian enclaves of Stockton, California, that were razed in the mid-20th century in the name of “progress” — and efforts today to make amends. The city’s Chinatown, Japantown and Little Manila were once filled with stores, restaurants, religious institutions and communal gathering spaces. But discriminatory laws meant the Asian community had to live in crowded, poorly maintained housing. Stockton leaders deemed the enclaves “undesirable slums” and set out to replace them with mainstream commercial development. The effort was accelerated by California’s Division of Highways, now known as Caltrans, which razed the community to make way for the Crosstown Freeway linking Interstate 5 and Route 99. Caltrans is now proposing a project that would revitalize the enclaves displaced by the freeway. The authors note, “It’s too early to know if such rhetoric will prove to be tokenism or materialize as real restorative justice.”

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