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Stoll on Housing Vouchers, Race and Discrimination

Michael Stoll, professor of public policy and urban planning, spoke to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on his research posing the question, “Do Black voucher recipients’ moves to the suburbs increase crime rates?” The answer to this question, according to his study, is no. Using federal data for the nation’s 100 largest metropolitan areas, Stoll analyzed the impact that Housing Choice Voucher recipients had on majority-white suburbs. The research determined that non-white voucher holders moving into white suburbs did not cause crime rates to increase. However, the mere perception that lower-income residents will have a negative impact on an affluent neighborhood can have real consequences. “It can influence neighbors’ resistance to landlords’ willingness to rent,” Stoll said. He called for more enforcement of housing fairness laws to ensure that voucher holders are not forced into lower-income and racially segregated neighborhoods due to discrimination from landlords.


 

A Tool to Aid Renters Fighting Eviction

Media outlets including CalMatters, Los Angeles magazine, Telemundo48 and Truthout covered the launch of the Tenant Power Toolkit, an online platform that helps renters facing eviction navigate a complicated legal process. The UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy (II&D) is one of several groups that collaborated on the toolkit, which helps California tenants who receive an eviction notice prepare an initial response under tight deadlines, protecting them against default judgments. The online tool also educates renters about their rights and connects them with advocacy groups that can provide legal assistance. More than 50 tenant advocates and attorneys worked on the Tenant Power Toolkit over the last two years. In addition to the Institute on Inequality and Democracy, they represented groups including the Debt Collective, co-founded by II&D Associate Faculty Director Hannah Appel; the LA Tenants Union; the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project; and the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment.


 

Ong on L.A.’s ‘Web of Urban Inequality’

A Los Angeles Times story on landlords who skirt anti-eviction rules enacted in response to the COVID-19 outbreak cited research from the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge (CNK) at UCLA Luskin. A Times analysis of data from the Los Angeles Police Department revealed more than 290 instances of potential illegal lockouts and utility shutoffs across the city over 10 weeks beginning in March. The largest share of those police calls was in predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods in South L.A. CNK research shows that members of these communities, who faced disproportionately high rent burdens even before the pandemic, often work in food service and other sectors with significant wage reductions and job losses due to COVID-19. “This is a web of urban inequality,” CNK Director Paul Ong said. “We could talk about housing, we could talk about jobs, we could talk about health. But the truth of the matter is all these things are interlocked.”


 

Lens on Surprising Decline in Evictions

Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, spoke to CalMatters for a story about a California housing crisis mystery: There has been a major run-up in rents, and delinquent payments are the most common reason a landlord sues to remove tenants from their property. Yet the state has seen an unexpected decline in eviction filings. The article cited Lens’ research into what made one Southern California neighborhood more likely than another to see landlords initiate formal evictions, with surprising findings on the impact of gentrification. “The conventional wisdom is that landlords will be more aggressive in trying to push people out … when they think they can get somebody who will pay more,” Lens said. “But that’s not what we find, on the court side of things.” Instead the factors that had a strong correlation with eviction filings were whether a neighborhood was very poor or was largely African American, Lens found.

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