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Nothing Uglier Than Redistricting, Yaroslavsky Says

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Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavksy spoke with KPCC’s Airtalk about the process of redistricting in relation to recent corruption charges against suspended City Council member Jose Huizar. Every 10 years, district lines are redrawn to reflect changes in population based on the census, and some have noted that the shuffling of districts gave Huizar a large swath of Los Angeles’ asset-rich downtown. “There’s nothing uglier or more difficult than the redistricting process every 10 years,” said Yaroslavsky, who described the political and sentimental factors at play. Most elected officials “want to keep as much of their district as they can” and some have close ties to the neighborhoods and constituents they may have represented for a decade or more. When politicians redistrict for themselves, self-interest can play a role, but Yaroslavsky also noted that there are “unintended consequences of so-called independent commissions.” He concluded, “There is no perfect system for redistricting.” 

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II&D Research Cited in L.A. Proposal to Forgive Household Debt

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News reports about a Los Angeles City Council member’s proposal to forgive the household debt of Angelenos hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic cited a report on the risk of widespread evictions compiled by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy (II&D). Councilman David Ryu pointed to the research in making a case for the debt relief proposal, which would be funded through the Federal Reserve’s Municipal Liquidity Facility program, part of the federal CARES Act. “If we don’t deal with this crisis now, it will create an avalanche of homelessness and a generation of people buried in debt, and Los Angeles will pay the price for decades to come,” Ryu said. News outlets covering the proposal include the Larchmont Buzz, Los Feliz Ledger and Beverly Press. The II&D report was also recently cited by the Los Angeles Daily News and Pasadena Now.

 

Lens Weighs In on Suit Against L.A. Development

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Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s decision to sue the city of Los Angeles over real estate developments related to Councilman Jose Huizar, who has been charged with bribery, money laundering and racketeering. The lawsuit aims to block at least four city projects tied to Huizar and former Councilman Mitchell Englander that have allegedly violated California’s Political Reform Act. The AIDS nonprofit has been vocal on housing and development issues in the state. Some critics questioned whether the new lawsuit was an attempt by the foundation to slow or stop local development, regardless of its merits. Lens, who opposed a 2017 ballot measure championed by the foundation to crack down on “mega projects,” told the Los Angeles Times that “this seems to be a convenient excuse for them to say, once again, ‘We need to stop development.’”

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Yaroslavsky Remembers L.A. City Council Advisor Ron Deaton

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Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavsky spoke to the Los Angeles Times in remembrance of his longtime friend Ron Deaton, who died this week at 77 years old. Deaton worked in L.A. government for over 40 years, including serving as the city’s chief legislative analyst from 1993 to 2004. He advised the 15-member City Council on ballot measures, public works projects and the protracted fight over whether the San Fernando Valley should secede from Los Angeles and become its own city. When the mayor and council were at odds, or council members weren’t speaking to each other, Deaton served as a valuable go-between, Yaroslavsky said, adding, “People trusted him because, at the end of the day, he loved the city. He loved governance.” Deaton showed newly elected council members how the city worked and how they could be more effective. “If you wanted to get something done, you went to [Deaton],” Yaroslavsky said.

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Leap on Expansion of Community Safety Partnership

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Media reports on the Los Angeles Police Department’s expansion of its Community Safety Partnership (CSP) program cited Adjunct Professor of Social Welfare Jorja Leap, who led a yearlong evaluation of the strategy. CSP is credited with reducing crime and improving police relations with residents at city housing developments where the program has been implemented. Leap joined Mayor Eric Garcetti, Police Chief Michel Moore and other leaders at a news conference announcing the creation of a new bureau for CSP, which will be headed by the LAPD’s second Black female deputy chief. “I am grateful when the chief says, ‘It’s going to be a blueprint.’ And, yes, we are going to hold his feet to the fire,” Leap said. “The community put us on notice and said, ‘We want policing, but we want a different kind of policing. We want CSP, but we want it to be participatory and accountable.’ ” News outlets covering the announcement include the Los Angeles Times, LAist, NBC4 News and FOX11 News.

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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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Leap Calls for Accountability Among Probation Authorities

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Adjunct Professor of Social Welfare Jorja Leap spoke to Witness LA about a lawsuit against Los Angeles County regarding a teenage boy who was allegedly administered estrogen as a behavioral control while in juvenile hall. After a physical examination while in detention, the boy, then 16, was reportedly prescribed estradiol, a form of the female hormone estrogen, to make him less aggressive, all without his parents’ knowledge or permission. The article noted that the case further supports the need for funding the independent Probation Oversight Commission (POC). As a co-author of the L.A. County Probation Governance Report and a proponent of the POC, Leap was disturbed by the implications of the lawsuit. “These troubling developments point to the need for real oversight with power to hold probation — and those from other county agencies who work inside probation’s facilities — fully accountable when they harm those in their care,” she said.

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Newton on Garcetti’s Steady Response to Crisis

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Jim Newton, lecturer of public policy, spoke to the Washington Post about Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti’s approach to managing the city’s response to the coronavirus pandemic. Garcetti has made it a priority to be well-versed in all the numbers, he said. “I think the book on Garcetti, correctly, has been that he is smart, articulate, principled, kind of an incrementalist and cautious,” Newton said. “And so what I think all of that has added up to — up to this point, anyway — is a kind of steady but unspectacular time as mayor.” As pressure has increased to reopen the economy, Garcetti’s decision-making process has been driven by cautious reason. Newton explained that the coronavirus pandemic is “the sort of crisis well-suited to [Garcetti’s] strengths: He is smart, good with data, comfortable with science. There’s no blaming. There’s no ridiculousness. It’s very steady and even and straightforward.”

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Yaroslavsky Sees Tectonic Shift in Los Angeles History

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In a Los Angeles Times article, Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavsky weighed in on Mayor Eric Garcetti’s proposal to redistribute funding from police to communities. After decades of efforts to expand the Los Angeles Police Department with the aim of making the city safer, the news proposal would direct $250 million from other city operations to youth jobs, health initiatives and “peace centers” to heal trauma, with as much as $150 million coming from the LAPD. The proposal comes in response to widespread demands that the government provide poor and minority communities with more than a police presence following the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. “If you look at the arc of the city’s history for three decades, there is a tectonic shift here with this growing constituency for reform,” Yaroslavsky said. “There is the emergence of this multiracial coalition of people, who have formed a powerful constituency, and they are making their voices heard.”

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Ong on Evictions and the Worsening Housing Crisis

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Paul Ong, research professor and director of the Center for Neighborhood Knowledge at UCLA Luskin, spoke to Fox 11 News about the impact of impending evictions on the housing crisis. A moratorium in Los Angeles prohibited landlords from evicting renters during the coronavirus pandemic, but many families fear they will lose their homes when the moratorium is lifted. The threat of eviction comes as widespread unemployment has pushed many households further into debt. After studying how the coronavirus crisis has affected different communities, Ong said that African American and Latino households in Los Angeles County are at high risk. “These are the same workers that … are on the financial edge,” he said. “By the end of the crisis, [they] will be deeply in debt.” 

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