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Luskin Summit Brainstorms Solutions for Housing Justice

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Experts, scholars and activists convened to discuss successful housing strategies — and their potential application in the L.A. region — at the Luskin Summit webinar “Homes for All: Building Coalitions for Equitable Planning in Los Angeles County.” Culver City Vice Mayor Daniel Lee delivered the keynote address at the April 9 event, co-sponsored by UCLA’s Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and Ziman Center for Real Estate. Lee suggested that social housing is the key to addressing homelessness and the affordable housing crisis. Paavo Monkkonen, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, moderated a panel on the successes and challenges of housing initiatives in other areas. Berkeley City Council member Terry Taplin shared his personal experiences with homelessness and discussed efforts to end exclusionary zoning practices. Laura Loe, founder of Share the Cities, spoke about her work building housing coalitions in Seattle and the importance of building trust within communities. Alison McIntosh of the Oregon nonprofit Neighborhood Partnerships explained that, “while these problems are complex and thorny, they are solvable.” A second panel, moderated by Tommy Newman of the United Way of Greater Los Angeles, focused on how Los Angeles might apply these strategies. Andy Cohen of the architecture and design firm Gensler pointed to COVID-19 as an “opportunity to reimagine the future of cities and prioritize the human experience,” while Joss Tillard-Gates of Enterprise Community Partners spoke about preserving supportive housing for homeless populations. Mahdi Manji of the Inner City Law Center discussed serving the lowest-income clients, and Leonora Camner of Abundant Housing LA stressed the importance of “moving at the speed of trust.” — Zoe Day

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Yaroslavsky on Impending Closure of Ralph’s Market

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the impending closure of a Ralph’s grocery store that serves a large Jewish community. The Pico-Robertson market, which has an extensive kosher section, is scheduled to close in May after the Los Angeles City Council voted to require large grocery stores to pay workers an extra $5 an hour for about four months as compensation for working on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic. The pending shutdown has sparked fierce debates on social media over who is to blame: parent company Kroger or city politicians. “It’s unusual for a business to pull out and just selectively pull out,” said Yaroslavsky, a former city councilman and county supervisor in Los Angeles. “They’re walking away from a community that’s been loyal to them.” The article also cited Zev Hurwitz MPP ’18, who started an online petition to keep the Westside market open. 

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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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Wachs Expresses Skepticism About L.A. Monorail Project

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Professor Emeritus of Urban Planning Martin Wachs spoke to Forbes about the possible construction of a high-speed monorail in Los Angeles. Local officials are evaluating proposals for a $6.1 billion monorail that would aim to reduce traffic congestion in the city. Transit systems in Germany, Japan, China and India use monorails, but the Los Angeles project would be the first in the United States. Wachs is skeptical but open to the possibility that a monorail could work in Los Angeles. “When you actually work out the numbers and do a careful and thorough design, and consider that in most places where a transit route is being contemplated it’s being added to an existing network, it just hasn’t penciled out,” he said. Wachs recalled working with science fiction author Ray Bradbury on a monorail proposal that was rejected 50 years ago. “The world’s a better place for having people who are visionaries, but it also needs traditional engineers.”

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It’s Like Reliving History, Yaroslavsky Says

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Thirty years after the video of the brutal police beating of Rodney King went viral, Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavsky spoke to USA Today about the killing of George Floyd and the jarring similarities between the two events. A group of white police officers who beat King in March 1991 were acquitted the following year by a mostly white jury in Los Angeles, prompting massive unrest and calls for social reforms. At the time, Yaroslavsky was a Los Angeles city councilman. Last year, Floyd’s death in Minneapolis prompted protests led by the Black Lives Matter social justice movement, and the police officer involved is now on trial for murder. “What happened that instant, on that sidewalk, at that moment, that was not a one-off. It’s a story that has replayed itself for decades, over and over again,” Yaroslavsky said of Floyd’s death. “When I look at what’s happening in Minneapolis, I see L.A. in 1992, so it’s like reliving history again.”

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Turner on Promise of Tree Planting to Cool Cities

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Assistant Professor of Urban Planning V. Kelly Turner spoke to Popular Science about local government campaigns to plant trees to mitigate rising urban temperatures. In Los Angeles, for example, Mayor Eric Garcetti’s “Green New Deal” from 2019 calls for the planting and maintenance of 90,000 trees by this year. Turner said the effectiveness of this type of climate intervention depends on many factors. “I think that there’s typically this sort of blind faith that we place in trees, that they will provide all of these wonderful social benefits,” she said. “But the environmental benefits that trees provide are entirely context-dependent.” It takes years for trees to mature into full-fledged shade-providers, so there is much to learn about the success of this type of  initiative. In the future, Turner said, cities will need to ask not only if they hit a numerical goal for planting trees but how well those trees brought about the cooling benefits that the community needs.

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Mukhija on New Backyard Homes Project

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Professor of Urban Planning Vinit Mukhija spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the launch of the Backyard Homes Project, a new initiative that aims to address the affordable housing crisis in Los Angeles. Accessory dwelling units, or ADUs, are becoming more popular since state regulations have eased. The Backyard Homes Project, led by the nonprofit LA Más, aims to provide homeowners with affordable design and construction of ADUs if they agree to rent the units to Section 8 voucher holders for at least five years. The goal of the program is to confront high housing prices by making ADU rentals affordable and helping low- and moderate-income homeowners become landlords. “We are nowhere near running out of space for housing in most American cities, including L.A.,” said Mukhija, who also serves as a board member at LA Más. He welcomed the incubation of new ideas in a city that’s long been known for advances in residential design. 

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Dominguez-Villegas on Prioritizing Vaccination of Latinos

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Rodrigo Dominguez-Villegas, director of research at the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative (LPPI) at UCLA Luskin, was featured in a Univision video discussing a letter to Gov. Gavin Newsom about the importance of prioritizing the vaccination of Latino residents. Sent by LPPI and Latino leaders from across California, the letter is “a call to action for the governor, his administration and state leaders to increase the investment of resources and necessary information so that the vaccines get to Latino communities,” Dominguez-Villegas said. Despite making up the majority of the essential workforce and suffering a disproportionate number of COVID-19 cases and deaths in California, people of color are not receiving equitable access to vaccines, he said. “This is why we wrote the letter and called on Latino leaders to get the governor’s attention,” he explained, adding that the letter was signed by more than 60 leaders who are important in the Latino community.

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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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COVID-19 Vaccine Rollout Reflects Disparities, Diaz Says

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Sonja Diaz, executive director of the Latino Policy and Politics Initiative, spoke to NBC News about her personal experiences with the confusing rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in California. Initially, the rollout relied on county and city health departments to distribute the vaccines to eligible populations, a strategy that exacerbated disparities between wealthy areas and vulnerable communities. Affluent regions like San Francisco and Long Beach were able to efficiently vaccinate their first batch of eligible residents, while overburdened communities in Los Angeles struggled due to dwindling supplies. Residents with limited access to technology and the internet have had trouble signing up for appointments, even if they are eligible. Diaz spent hours navigating the Los Angeles County online portal to book appointments for several older relatives who were having trouble with QR code attachments and text codes. “It’s like winning the Lotto or getting the Golden Ticket at Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” Diaz said.

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