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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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Monkkonen on UCLA as a Model for Affordable Housing

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Paavo Monkkonen spoke to Curbed about UCLA’s new guaranteed student housing plan. UCLA is the first University of California school to offer four years of housing for first-year students and two years of housing for transfer students. Meanwhile, the city of L.A. continues to struggle to produce affordable housing. According to Monkkonen, the biggest lesson to be learned from UCLA is the power of consolidating everything from planning to financing in one department and essentially becoming a public-housing developer. “UCLA develops its own land-use plan and then executes capital programs like the construction of dorms,” Monkkonen said. “Proactively planning for housing to be built rather than setting up rules and waiting to see if developers build or not is the kind of paradigm shift we need.” He also recommended expanding affordable housing closer to schools in order to benefit students, families, teachers and staff.

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Luskin Summit Takes On Global Climate Justice

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Assistant Professor of Urban Planning Kian Goh led a dialogue about equity, grassroots activism and climate change in the Mar. 2 Luskin Summit webinar “Cities and Global Climate Justice.” Goh, who serves as associate faculty director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, started the conversation by discussing community-based activism in Jakarta, Indonesia. Eric Chu of UC Davis spoke about competing visions of the urban built environment and the power of activist groups to reimagine what their communities will look like through a lens of justice and equity. Hugo Sarmiento of Columbia University noted that, in Colombia, the main drivers of risk are social, economic, political and oftentimes racial exclusion from the housing market. “Residents have already been displaced by war and conflict, and now they are being displaced by the city,” he explained. Idowu “Jola” Ajibade of Portland State University said issues such as environmental degradation, homelessness, joblessness, and lack of access to sanitation and health care affect the way that climate change is perceived in the Global South, where many communities are already marginalized. “The ways in which people are challenging the system also helps us think about how we might transform the urban society more equitably,” Ajibade said. Kasia Paprocki of the London School of Economics and Political Science discussed how the transition from a rural to urban economy is seen as a necessary and even positive development, which dismisses the experiences of many of the individuals being displaced. Michael Fleming of the UCLA Luskin Board of Advisors was on hand to welcome the panelists.

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Vestal on Barriers to Addressing Homelessness

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Assistant Professor of Urban Planning Mark Vestal spoke to LAist about Section 8, a federal program that subsidizes housing for low-income individuals and families, the elderly and disabled. This program allows individuals experiencing homelessness to secure housing through vouchers. However, Vestal noted that about 50% of the people who get vouchers still can’t find housing. Landlords are incentivized to accept housing vouchers when they are in communities in decline and they are unable to get market-rate rent, but the incentive disappears when neighborhoods start to gentrify. “Landlords can discriminate against voucher holders and they have complete discretion,” Vestal explained. Furthermore, once an individual finds an apartment, it can still take a long time for the housing voucher to be approved. Vestal concluded that unhoused people have ideas about how they want to live with belongings and social space, and we should have a housing system that respects their needs and wants.

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Luskin Summit Draws Inspiration from Europe to Combat Homelessness

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A panel of experts from around the world joined the Feb. 23 Luskin Summit webinar “International Models of Social Housing: Lessons for California” to brainstorm strategies to address housing affordability and homelessness. California Assembly member Alex Lee welcomed attendees and kicked off the event by noting that nearly half of California residents qualify as rent-burdened as a result of the affordable housing crisis. Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Paavo Monkkonen led the conversation about the successes of social housing and urban planning in Europe that could be adopted in California. Researcher Kath Scanlon from the London School of Economics noted that the goal of social housing is to solve housing affordability, but a successful social housing program will start by alleviating some of the pressure in the housing market. “For a variety of reasons, not everyone is going to be able to house themselves in the way we think they should be housed,” Scanlon said. “If California wants to step up, it will not be straightforward, but you have to start somewhere.” Helsinki’s housing program manager, Hanna Dhalmann, discussed Finland’s largest and most successful municipal housing company. “The first step is to give people real homes,” Dhalmann said. She recommended starting by investing in building affordable housing and turning housing shelters into apartments. Finally, former Deputy Mayor Jean-Louis Missika described how Paris was able to significantly expand housing production. Vivian Rescalvo, a member of the Board of Advisors of the Luskin School of Public Affairs, offered a closing statement for the event.

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Stiffer Housing Requirement Will Benefit Angelenos, Monkkonen Says

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Paavo Monkkonen spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the state’s ruling that Los Angeles must add more than 250,000 homes to its zoning plan. State housing regulators rejected the city’s proposed long-term plan for growth and will require the city to rezone to accommodate the additional quarter-million new homes. City leaders must fix the housing plan by October in order to access billions of dollars in affordable housing grants, which will be necessary to support the growing number of low-income and homeless residents. Monkkonen agreed that the state’s ruling was justifiable given the city’s rejection of more assertive state-led rezoning proposals in favor of greater local control over where growth should go. “Allowing more housing more quickly will benefit Angelenos,” he said. “City officials shouldn’t drag their feet on taking the necessary actions to allow more housing, and should act at the pace that a crisis demands.”

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Vestal on History of L.A.’s Black Homelessness Crisis

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Assistant Professor of Urban Planning Mark Vestal spoke to LAist about the role of racial inequity in the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles. Vestal co-authored the UCLA Luskin Center for History and Policy report “Making of a Crisis: The History of Homelessness in L.A.,” which explored the history of the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles, starting with the Great Depression and leading up to the COVID-19 pandemic. Black unhoused people are one of the largest groups facing homelessness in Los Angeles, and Vestal pointed out that the long history of racist housing policies has led to a discrepancy in homeownership among Black residents. “Black folks were segregated in inner cities and subject to predatory mortgage markets and home-buying schemes that continued to suck Black dollars and wealth from bank accounts for decades,” Vestal explained. Lack of federal support and mental health crises have exacerbated the issue of homelessness, he said.

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Monkkonen Calls for Collaboration on Student Housing

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Associate Professor of Urban Planning and Public Policy Paavo Monkkonen was featured in a CalMatters article about the California State University system’s application to build affordable housing for nearly 3,400 students. The revised plan calls for $823 million in total funding for housing projects across 10 campuses, with $535 million coming from a new state housing grant and the rest from outside funds. The proposal comes as tens of thousands of college students struggle with unstable housing situations and even homelessness. Some campuses are currently building new living facilities to accommodate long waiting lists of students seeking campus housing, but student housing is often expensive. Looking ahead, Monkkonen said the state should better coordinate the student housing construction efforts of California’s public colleges and universities to share financing and other ideas. “This is a very obvious place for knowledge sharing,” he said. “We’re all on the same team.”

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Ling on Struggle to Enact Tenant Protections

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A CalMatters article on the California Legislature’s failure to pass tenant protection bills included comments from Joan Ling, urban planning lecturer and policy analyst. The latest bill, AB 854, would have required landlords to keep units for at least five years before using a state law to evict renters. The bill was backed by a broad coalition but opposed by business and real estate interests, and it died in committee before reaching a floor vote in the Democratic-supermajority Assembly. Opponents argued that AB 854 would have devastated mom-and-pop landlords and stalled the demolition of older buildings to make way for additional housing units, which are sorely needed. “I support homeownership, but the question is: ‘How are you getting there?’” Ling said. “Are you going to get there by dislocating renter families that most likely are going to have to move out of the area where they are living? There’s a big public policy question here.”

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On the Decline and Fall of Parking Requirements

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A StreetsBlog article about the evolution of mandatory parking requirements noted that recommendations put forward long ago by Distinguished Research Professor of Urban Planning Donald Shoup are now gaining wide acceptance. Shoup recommended removing off-street parking requirements, allowing developers and businesses to decide how many parking spaces to provide for their customers. He also recommended pricing on-street parking so that one or two spaces will always be left open in order to avoid parking shortages. Finally, he suggested spending parking revenue on public service projects on the metered streets, which would help increase the popularity of demand-based pricing. Many local governments are taking these recommendations seriously and implementing changes. The article cited Associate Professor of Urban Planning Michael Manville‘s research on San Diego’s 2019 decision to stop requiring parking for housing near transit, which helped make affordable housing projects more economically viable. As Shoup predicted, parking requirements are quickly being eliminated across the United States.

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