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Yaroslavsky Assesses Candidates’ Plans for Tackling Homelessness

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about plans to combat homelessness put forth by Karen Bass and Rick Caruso, who are vying to become L.A.’s next mayor. With Election Day two months away, the candidates have offered details about their ambitious proposals for sheltering the city’s unhoused, including cost estimates and strategies for clearing bureaucratic hurdles. “I don’t think either of those plans will accomplish what they say they are going to accomplish in a year … but I think it’s good to set the goal,” said Yaroslavsky, who served as a city councilman and county supervisor in his decades of public service. Yaroslavsky proposed a single, countywide homelessness executive empowered to budget money and make land-use decisions. “Let the city and the county create a new paradigm, set a new template of political collaboration and cooperation and effectiveness,” he said.

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Yaroslavsky on Shifts in the L.A. Mayor’s Race

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Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, spoke to CBSLA News about a new poll showing Rick Caruso and Karen Bass leading the pack in the contest to become Los Angeles’ next mayor. After an early media blitz, Caruso’s poll numbers have tripled, with 24% of respondents expressing their support, just ahead of Bass’ 23%. Yaroslavsky said the trajectory of the race will shift as other candidates step up their marketing campaigns. “Karen Bass hasn’t been on television at all. Kevin de León can’t be discounted, hasn’t been on television at all. … So, it will change, I’m sure, in the weeks ahead,” he said. The race also stands to tighten as undecided voters make their choices as the June 7 primary nears, he said. “Most people don’t know all that they want to know about the candidates. Forty percent don’t know enough to make a decision at this point or they are withholding their judgment until they hear more.” 

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Yaroslavsky on Tipping Point of Homelessness

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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. 

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

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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.”

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Matute, Taylor on Prospective Promotion for Garcetti

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Director Brian Taylor and Deputy Director Juan Matute of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the possibility that Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti will be appointed to a Cabinet post in the Biden administration. After serving as national co-chair of President-elect Joe Biden’s campaign, Garcetti is a potential candidate for transportation secretary. While Garcetti has only held local office, Taylor noted that he would not be the first mayor to run the federal department of transportation. Taylor added that big-city mayors like Garcetti have to know how to pull federal, state and local resources together, along with political will, to get transportation projects moving. Matute acknowledged the success of Measure M as Garcetti’s signature legacy but said he wished he “had more success in the implementation of his vision for a better Los Angeles,” given the mayor’s grasp of the intricacies of transportation planning.

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Yaroslavsky and Newton Weigh In on Garcetti’s Record

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Los Angeles Initiative Director Zev Yaroslavsky and lecturer Jim Newton were featured in a Forward article highlighting the successes and shortcomings of Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, who is reportedly being considered for a Cabinet appointment in the Joe Biden administration. Garcetti established his reputation as a mayor who could get things done after he signed a $15 minimum wage into law in 2015 and with the 2016 passage of Measure M, which expanded public transit and bike networks. “Today, no county in America has so much local money invested in building transportation infrastructure as L.A. County has,” Yaroslavsky said. “He has a considerable record under his belt in that regard.” However, critics point out Garcetti’s failures to address homelessness and traffic congestion. “I’m one of the people who wanted to see him be more ambitious and swing higher,” Newton said. “I don’t think homelessness is his fault, … but I also don’t believe he can point to much evidence that he’s succeeded.”

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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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