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Transformative Climate Communities Built Resilience During Pandemic, Studies Find 

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New reports from the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation show that the local knowledge, partnerships and established trust that underlie Transformative Climate Community (TCC) partnerships have allowed them to identify changing needs and respond quickly during the pandemic. These responses were bolstered by government-funded community engagement plans that offer leadership opportunities that tackle community goals around climate action and resiliency. TCC was established by the California Legislature in 2016 to provide funds to the state’s most disadvantaged communities while simultaneously reducing pollution, strengthening the local economy and improving public health through community-based projects. Cap-and-trade dollars have funded the first three rounds of the program under the direction of the California Strategic Growth Council, and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s current budget proposal includes $420 million for TCC implementation and planning grants over three years. The latest round of reports by UCLA document the progress of TCC grants in four sites: Fresno, Ontario, Watts/South L.A. and Northeast Valley L.A. A fifth site, Stockton, will soon be added to UCLA’s TCC evaluation cohort. “We can learn a lot from these five living laboratories for holistic climate action,” said Professor JR DeShazo, principal investigator on the ongoing study and director of the Luskin Center for Innovation. “It’s impressive,” said Jason Karpman MURP ’16, project manager of UCLA’s TCC evaluation. “During a year when so much has come to a halt, these initiatives have continued to quickly adapt and meet the needs of residents.”

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Social Welfare Issues Update About Anti-Racism Efforts

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The UCLA Luskin Social Welfare faculty, students and alumni who joined forces in summer 2020 to craft an Action Plan to Address Anti-Blackness and Racism recently issued a progress report and accompanying video explaining their efforts. The team came together following the killing of George Floyd to examine the curriculum and culture, developing a set of action items to address racial disparities within the department and across the education of social workers. Their new report details progress that has been made so far, including a series of virtual events during the 2020-21 academic year that focused on racial justice and the history of how white supremacy has impacted the practice of social work. The progress report also discusses areas where further progress is needed at UCLA Luskin, such as recruiting more Black faculty members and providing additional funding opportunities to students of color. Read more about the team and their efforts.

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Reber Addresses Inequalities in School Funding

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Associate Professor of Public Policy Sarah Reber co-authored a commentary in The Hill about the need for more equitable distribution of federal funding for schools. Congress has increased school funding in response to the COVID-19 crisis, with aid distributed using a formula laid out in Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which sends more money to high-poverty schools. However, Reber and Nora Gordon of Georgetown University argued that “funding under the program is not a clean proxy for economic disadvantage.” They recommended turning to “simpler and better alternatives for distributing much-needed additional funding for school infrastructure and to address educational inequities.” The Title I formula has created confusion and political pushback; for example, it directs more funding per student to larger districts compared to smaller ones with the same child poverty rate. “It is past time for Congress to address these concerns with additional funding distributed with an eye to equity,” they concluded.

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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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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 on Ensuring Equitable Distribution of COVID-19 Vaccines

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Director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative Sonja Diaz was featured in the Sacramento Bee, CNN and the San Francisco Chronicle discussing the importance of prioritizing Latino and other disadvantaged communities’ access to vaccines. Gov. Gavin Newsom has announced a new plan to ensure that COVID-19 vaccines reach California’s most disadvantaged communities by targeting neighborhoods in the bottom quartile of the “Healthy Places Index.” Diaz explained that minority communities have been hit the hardest by the pandemic and that California has a responsibility to get them help first and fast. “Communities of color are keeping the economy afloat, and prioritizing them is not only the right thing to do, but an economic imperative,” she said. “The state’s new approach is the right step to stop the bleeding and affirm that Californians of color are not collateral damage but the catalysts to recovery.”

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Ong on COVID-19 Relief for Vulnerable Businesses

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Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, spoke to Marketplace about new rules guiding the federal government’s Paycheck Protection Program. Since its inception, the COVID-19 relief program has distributed more than $600 billion in business loans, but those funds have disproportionately gone to larger, more established companies that are better able to navigate the application process. So for two weeks, the PPP will be open only to the smallest companies, ones that employ fewer than 20 people. While the change is an attempt to level the playing field, Ong said that prioritizing according to company size alone won’t address all disparities. He recommended targeting businesses in vulnerable neighborhoods, as previous rounds of PPP funding favored majority-white neighborhoods in California over communities of color. “I would like to see much more fine-tuning in terms of, how do we prioritize?” Ong said.

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UCLA Helps Civic Leaders Address ‘Vexing Issues’ During Annual Mayoral Summit

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The setting was virtual this time, but UCLA again figured prominently when the Los Angeles Business Council convened a who’s who of California elected officials and civic leaders for its annual Mayoral Summit on Housing, Transportation and Jobs, an event that UCLA has co-hosted for 18 of its 19 years. “This event is near and dear to our hearts,” Chancellor Gene Block said in welcoming remarks. “As a public institution with a deeply rooted service mission, we view it as our obligation to help address the vexing issues facing our city.” Academic research figured prominently in the daylong event presented in partnership with the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate and the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation directed by JR DeShazo, professor of public policy. He moderated a panel focusing on how to promote zero-emission vehicles in an equitable manner, noting that California’s policy investments have brought low-emission vehicles to 10% of sales, a notable accomplishment. “But we have failed miserably to make those policies beneficial to our low-income communities and communities of color,” DeShazo said. Richard Ziman, who is founding chair of the Los Angeles Business Council, opened the virtual summit, and Stuart Gabriel, professor of finance and director of the Ziman Center, led a session on economic recovery efforts. Jacqueline Waggoner, Miguel A. Santana and Michael Mahdesian of the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs Board of Advisors also spoke, as did public officials that included Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, Senate President pro Tempore Toni G. Atkins and Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon.

 

Luskin Summit Illuminates Pathway to Park Equity

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“A Landmark Opportunity for Park Equity,” the fourth webinar in the 2021 Luskin Summit series, focused on the importance of public parks and other outdoor spaces for the physical, mental and environmental well-being of communities. The Feb. 17 panel was moderated by Jon Christensen, an affiliate faculty member of the UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation. Angela Barranco, undersecretary at the California Natural Resources Agency, explained that the “COVID-19 pandemic has elevated and revealed the importance of access to the outdoors for all.” She noted that 1 in 4 Californians has zero access to parks within walking distance, and 6 in 10 Californians live in park-poor neighborhoods. These inequities can lead to severe health consequences and in some cases could be the difference between life and death, she said. California voters have approved multiple statewide environmental bonds recently, making this a “watershed moment for park access,” said Alfredo Gonzalez, Southern California director of the Resources Legacy Fund. Norma García-Gonzalez BA ’95 MA UP ’99, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation, highlighted the important role that the public park system has taken on during the pandemic, including serving as winter shelters and vaccination sites, and providing 40,000 households with food through a partnership with Los Angeles Food Bank. “Investing in parks for Black and brown youth is justice reform,” García-Gonzalez said. “This is a call to action that we must work with local and state leaders to make critical investments to support Black and brown students and their futures.” — Zoe Day

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Reber Points to Racial Inequity in Vaccine Distribution

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Associate Professor of Public Policy Sarah Reber was featured in a ProPublica article about how to make the COVID-19 vaccine rollout more racially equitable. In some locations, people 75 and older have been prioritized in the vaccine distribution, a strategy that ignores the fact that Black Americans have a shorter life expectancy than their white counterparts and are therefore less likely to receive the vaccine. Research has also shown that Black people who die from COVID-19 are, on average, about 10 years younger than white victims. “If you [allocate the vaccine] strictly by age, you’re going to vaccinate white people who have lower risks before you vaccinate Black people with higher risks,” Reber explained. “If you’re trying to avert deaths, you would want to vaccinate Blacks who are about 10 years younger than whites.” The disproportionate impact of the pandemic on Black Americans is expected to further exacerbate the life expectancy gap between Black and white Americans.

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