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Center for Neighborhood Knowledge on L.A.’s Housing Crisis

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A New Yorker article on homelessness and the affordable housing crisis in California cited data from the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge (CNK). The article focused on Weekend Warriors, a company that hires individuals facing housing insecurity to house-sit vacant homes in gentrifying neighborhoods. Weekend Warrior employees live in properties that are being flipped, guarding them through the renovation, staging, open-house and inspection periods. CNK research shows that Los Angeles has the highest median home prices, relative to income, and among the lowest homeownership rates of any major city. As for rental units, Los Angeles has one of the lowest vacancy rates in the country and the average rent is $2,200 a month. The housing shortage, caused in part by restrictive zoning laws and NIMBYism, has exacerbated homelessness in Los Angeles, with about 66,000 individuals sleeping in cars, in shelters or on the street on any given night.

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Ong on the Plight of Small-Business Owners

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Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge  at UCLA Luskin, was featured in the Chicago Reader discussing the obstacles facing small-business owners struggling to stay afloat during the COVID-19 pandemic. Minority-owned businesses are especially vulnerable, Ong said, noting that the closure of these businesses impacts not only individual companies but ultimately the fabric of their communities. “The vacancies and opportunities created by minority business closures will speed up the transformation, and can lead to additional waves of business and residential displacement,” he said. The pandemic threatens to further gentrification in many communities of color, which “already suffer from a history of disinvestment and a lack of new investment, leaving them job-poor and underserved by businesses,” Ong said. “So, it will be a downward spiral, a process of further marginalization of disadvantaged communities.” Ong’s research was also cited in a Bloomberg News piece on the devastating impact of COVID-19 on U.S. dry-cleaning businesses, which are largely Asian-owned. 

Read the Chigago Reader article
Read the Bloomberg article

Monkkonen on COVID-19 and the L.A. Arts Scene

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Paavo Monkkonen, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the impact of gentrification and pandemic on the eclectic arts and music scene in Highland Park. The COVID-19 lockdown has devastated the northeast Los Angeles neighborhood and widened the divide between old-school and upstart artists. “You see a correlation between gentrifiers maintaining their income and lower-income people losing it,” Monkkonen said. SB1410, a pending state bill offering landlords tax breaks for forgiving rent, might help keep tenants of all sorts in place, he said. But real estate speculation and further gentrification remain real possibilities, he said. “There’s a big concern that mom-and-pop landlords will decide they don’t want to deal with tenants who can’t pay, and sell their buildings,” Monkkonen said. “Times of crisis are good times to buy, and a lot of these distressed properties are bought up by private equity.”

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Stoll Comments on How Housing Crisis Affects Black Californians

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Public Policy Professor Michael Stoll commented in a CalMatters article on how California’s housing crisis is worse for Black communities following decades of systemic racism. The article shows that significant barriers continue to exist for Black communities and individuals in building and retaining wealth compared to whites and other ethnic groups within the state. Data shows that California cities are typically less segregated than in the Northeast or Midwest. In part, this is due to gentrification and displacement pressures on Black communities in urban cores, notably Los Angeles and the Bay Area. “African Americans and to a lesser extent Latinos are moving to suburban areas at the fastest clip we’ve observed since the civil rights era,” Stoll said. But patterns of segregation continue, he said, noting, “It’s hard to become a socially cohesive place if people are living in different neighborhoods and not being able to communicate and work together around common interests.”

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Loukaitou-Sideris on Combating Gentrification With Street Art

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Research by Urban Planning Professor Anastasia Loukaitou-Sideris was featured in an Age of Awareness article about the use of street art to combat gentrification in Los Angeles. Gentrification has turned areas like Gallery Row into flourishing arts districts with steadily rising rent while nearby areas like Skid Row have slid further into poverty, the article noted. To build a better community in the poor districts of Los Angeles, urban planners recommend increasing arts program funding and research for communities like Skid Row. A 2016 study co-authored by Loukaitou-Sideris found that spontaneous art events in Gallery Row and Skid Row lit up city streets “at a time when most Angelenos still avoided this downtown area because of its reputation for being dangerous and dilapidated.” The article argued that murals brighten concrete structures, create maintenance jobs and bring in tourist revenue. Research also shows that street art may decrease the amount of neighborhood graffiti.

Ong on the Little Tokyo Community Impact Fund

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Paul Ong, director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, spoke to KCRW’s Greater L.A. podcast about community mobilization against gentrification in Little Tokyo. Local residents and business owners organized the Little Tokyo Community Impact Fund to raise $2 million to collectively buy a building in Little Tokyo and rent it out below market value to selected tenants. Ong, a UCLA Luskin research professor, said the group has the credibility to make it happen but asked, “Will they be able to get enough investors?” He commented, “In many ways, you have to factor in things that normal businesses would not think about. That is, what is the cultural value, for example, of these businesses? What do they represent symbolically?”

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Public Policy Hosts Weekend of Learning and Service

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About 30 undergraduate students from California and beyond convened at UCLA for a weekend of learning and public service, part of the not-for-profit Public Policy and International Affairs (PPIA) program. UCLA Luskin Public Policy hosted the program, “Advancing Social Justice Through Public Service: Lessons From California,” with senior lecturer Kenya Covington coordinating a full weekend of lectures, conversations and off-campus experiences. Students ventured out to MacArthur Park west of downtown Los Angeles, the Crenshaw District and the office of Los Angeles County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl to hear how policymakers are grappling with homelessness and gentrification. They heard from several MPP alumni from both the policy field and academia, and learned about public service career paths from Dean Gary Segura and other UCLA Luskin staff. Several members of the public policy and urban planning faculty shared research, insights and data-gathering techniques during the Oct. 4-6 event, including Amada Armenta, Kevin de León, Michael Lens, Michael Stoll and Chris Zepeda-Millán. Public Policy Chair JR DeShazo encouraged the students to engage intellectually, socially and emotionally as they explored policy challenges and prepared to make an impact in their own careers. The students formed working groups to synthesize what they had seen and heard, and presented their findings at the close of the program. Joining the large contingent of students from four-year and community colleges in California were participants from Arizona, Illinois, Michigan and Washington. The public service weekend was one of several outreaches around the country that are coordinated through PPIA to promote diversity in public service.

View photos from the PPIA public service weekend on Flickr.

PPIA Public Service Weekend

 

Ong Foresees Upscaling and Displacement in Crenshaw

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Paul Ong, research professor and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, expressed his concerns about upscaling and displacement in a recent Curbed article on the community’s response to planned redevelopment in South Los Angeles’ Crenshaw district. Residents worry that the expansion of the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Mall will lead to higher housing costs, ultimately displacing low-income residents. Last year, Ong authored a study tracking economic progress in South Los Angeles over the past 50 years that found that 42 percent of renters in the region are “rent-burdened.” He predicted that the opening of the new Crenshaw Metro station will lead to a rise in housing costs in the area. “We certainly see that there are particular interests in developing that area that would lead to upscaling,” he said. The Crenshaw Subway Coalition, led by local community leaders, aims to inform residents about six major developments in the district and educate them about gentrification.

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Ong on the Undermining of Ethnic Enclaves

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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 imminent departure of two Chinatown grocery stores following disputes with landlords. Such grocery stores act as anchors for ethnic communities, bringing foot traffic to barbers, bankers, restaurants, remittance businesses and other culturally specific vendors, the column noted. Ong said that ethnic enclaves such as Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Historic Filipinotown and Boyle Heights find themselves directly in the path of change because they’re located in the core of the city, where redevelopment is most intense. “There’s still a need for these culturally specific services in the urban core. But the question is, are we going to see these needs served?” Ong asked.

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Grants Support Challenging Convention, Strengthening Communities

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Four members of the UCLA Luskin faculty have received research grants from the Institute on Inequality and Democracy. The 2019-20 grants, among 10 awarded to faculty across the UCLA campus, support research, scholarship and teaching that challenge established academic wisdom, contribute to public debate and/or strengthen communities and movements, the institute said. UCLA Luskin recipients are:

  • Amada Armenta, assistant professor of urban planning, who will study undocumented Mexican immigrants in Philadelphia and their layered, complex relationship with the legal system in their everyday lives.
  • Kian Goh, assistant professor of urban planning, who will use the lessons of Hurricane Sandy to research the key role public housing and infrastructure play in the quest for climate justice.
  • Paul Ong, research professor and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, who will create multimedia public narratives that document the stresses of gentrification, displacement and other community changes.
  • Amy Ritterbusch, assistant professor of social welfare, who will develop a restorative justice initiative to take research to the streets, producing knowledge about historically misrepresented communities beyond the confines of academic publication traditions.

In addition to awarding faculty grants of up to $10,000, the Institute on Inequality and Democracy supports research by graduate student working groups. The six groups announced for the 2019-2020 academic year include several urban planning and social welfare students from UCLA Luskin.