Posts

Blumenberg on Car Access and Upward Mobility

/0 Comments/in /by

Urban Planning Professor Evelyn Blumenberg spoke to station WFAE about attempts to increase transportation options for low-income residents of Charlotte, North Carolina. Officials have adopted a plan to make the city more dense, walkable and transit-accessible, but it would take decades to implement. Since the city was designed around the automobile, some are advocating increasing access to cars. Options include subsidies to purchase a vehicle, vouchers for ride-share services and neighborhood car-sharing programs. Blumenberg, director of the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies, said her research shows that low-income people with cars are able to move to better neighborhoods and are more likely to find and keep a job. “A car gives you a lot of flexibility and a lot of choice,” she said. Blumenberg also described the Los Angeles program BlueLA, which subsidizes the sharing of electric vehicles, noting that encouraging the use of EVs could make increased access to cars more politically palatable.

Listen to the report

 

Roy on Court-Ordered Psychiatric Care for the Unhoused

/0 Comments/in /by

Professor of Urban Planning and Social Welfare Ananya Roy spoke to the Guardian about Gov. Gavin Newsom’s proposed Care Court program, which would force some unhoused people with severe mental illness and addiction disorders into psychiatric treatment. The plan aims to address the growing issue of homelessness in Los Angeles by requiring people with serious mental health issues to accept treatment and also mandating that counties provide services. However, the proposal has received backlash from disability rights and civil liberties advocates. Roy, who serves as director of the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, said the court proposal is part of a trend in California of criminalizing the unhoused. “There is seemingly a lot of compassion for the unhoused, but that is coupled with a deliberate and enforced state of stripping the unhoused of rights in the name of saving them and doing good,” Roy said.

Read the article

Stiffer Housing Requirement Will Benefit Angelenos, Monkkonen Says

/0 Comments/in /by

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.”

Read the article

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

/0 Comments/in /by

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.

Read the article
Read the full report

Yaroslavsky on West Hollywood’s Ex-Soviet Immigrants

/0 Comments/in /by

A CBS2 News report on West Hollywood residents’ reaction to the Russian invasion of Ukraine featured Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin. In the 1970s, West Hollywood offered a fresh start for Jews fleeing religious oppression in the former Soviet Union after World War II. Now, the city claims more Russian speakers than any U.S. city outside of New York, the report noted. “West Hollywood became a magnet for those fleeing the Soviet Union,” said Yaroslavsky, whose parents emigrated from Ukraine earlier in the 20th century. “You had the very liberal, progressive gay and lesbian community in West Hollywood and then you had the Russian community. But over time, they became partners, and it’s really a beautiful history they have in West Hollywood.”

Watch the video

 

Yaroslavsky on Caruso’s Campaign for L.A. Mayor

/0 Comments/in /by

Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to media outlets including the Los Angeles Times and Financial Times about billionaire developer Rick Caruso’s entrance into the L.A. mayor’s race. The L.A. Times piece focused on Caruso’s real estate company, which would be put into a blind trust to avoid conflicts of interest if he is elected to office. Referring to recent corruption scandals involving City Hall and local developers, Yaroslavsky said voters are keenly aware of the breach of trust among city leadership. He added, however, that homelessness and crime are the biggest issues facing the city right now. “It’s much lower than it was 20 years ago, but crime is more ubiquitous now,” he told the Financial Times. “It’s shown up throughout the city.” Caruso joins several other candidates who are campaigning on public safety, including front-runner Rep. Karen Bass, Yaroslavsky said. 

Read the L.A. Times article
Read the Financial Times article

 

Doctoral Student Honored for Transportation Research

/0 Comments/in , /by

Julene Paul, a Ph.D. student in urban planning, was named the 2021 student of the year by the Pacific Southwest Region University Transportation Center, a federally funded network of eight partner campuses in Arizona, California and Hawaii. Paul works closely with the Institute of Transportation Studies and the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA Luskin. Her research includes a study of the effects of COVID-19 on transportation behavior, an investigation into trends in automobile ownership, and a deep dive into BlueLA, an electric-car-sharing program that provides services to low-income areas of Los Angeles. She has presented some of her work at national conferences and has been published along with her co-authors, including her advisors, Evelyn Blumenberg and Brian Taylor. Paul’s interest in transportation was stoked while studying urban policy and working as a research assistant for the Education Innovation Laboratory as an undergraduate at Harvard University. Later, while pursuing her master’s degree in city and regional planning at Rutgers University, Paul worked for the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. After graduating from Rutgers, she went on to work as a program manager at the Federal Transit Administration. When asked for advice for the current generation of urban planning students, Paul recommended taking advantage of internship opportunities and seeking out mentors from these experiences. She also encouraged students to venture out beyond their required classes when possible. Paul said a UCLA Law course in employment law challenged her to think critically about transportation policies and their effects on workers.

 

Yaroslavsky on Tipping Point of Homelessness

/0 Comments/in /by

Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to USA Today about the growing issue of homelessness in Los Angeles and the role that it will play in the city’s upcoming mayoral election. The homelessness crisis has grown and is now visible in parks, on sidewalks and at freeway underpasses. Experts estimate that there are at least 40,000 unhoused people in Los Angeles, and a Los Angeles Times poll found that 94% of respondents considered homelessness a serious or very serious problem. “This problem has been around for a long time, [but] we’re past the tipping point now, the political tipping point,” Yaroslavsky said. “This is as potent a political issue as there is in the election coming forward.” The article cited a report from the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy that estimated that 1,500 people without homes died in Los Angeles between March 2020 and July 2021. 

Read the article

Monkkonen on a Model for Affordable Housing

/0 Comments/in /by

The Los Angeles Times spoke to Paavo Monkkonen, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, about the tenancy-in-common homeownership model, in which residents own a share of an overall lot and have exclusive rights to live in their unit. Some Los Angeles developers are using this model to replace single-family homes with new townhomes, adding to the overall stock of housing. Critics are concerned that investors may displace tenants in cheaper rentals to convert them into tenancy-in-common units. UCLA’s Monkkonen said it’s important to consider that demolished houses are sometimes renovated into high-end homes, which do not ease the affordable housing crunch. Tenancy-in-common units are typically cheaper than many housing options and could provide a quicker way to expand affordability than waiting for more supply to trickle down, he said.

Read the article

 

Diaz on Caruso’s Entry Into the L.A. Mayor’s Race

/0 Comments/in /by

Sonja Diaz, executive director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, spoke to the Los Angeles Times and New York Times about billionaire developer Rick Caruso’s entry into the race for L.A. mayor. Caruso has said that elected politicians have failed voters on issues such as homelessness and crime. His résumé, which includes serving as head of the city’s Police Commission and chairman of the board of trustees of the University of Southern California, evokes an older generation of Los Angeles power brokers. Diaz said the success of any mayoral candidate will depend, at least in part, on the ability to appeal to Latino voters. “Obviously, COVID-19 has had a disparate impact on Latino households in this city,” she told the L.A. Times. “So a mayor is going to have to articulate a policy agenda that centers Latino workers and Latino households in ways that they can remain in the city and not just survive but thrive.”

Read the L.A. Times article
Read the New York Times article