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Hurdles to Breaking Into the Housing Market

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A Washington Post article on millennials saving up to buy a home by living rent-free with family or friends cited José Loya, assistant professor of urban planning at UCLA Luskin. Record-high rental prices, along with student loan debt, car payments, child-care costs and other expenses, have tapped the finances of many young adults. Breaking into the housing market is particularly difficult for Black and Latino homebuyers, who have applied for mortgages at declining rates since the start of the pandemic, said Loya, who researches housing inequality. Such groups are disproportionately affected by rising home prices because they tend to have lower incomes. “They’re getting squeezed out,” he said. Loya also reviewed a Futuro Investigates project that found that financial institutions in New Jersey rejected Latino mortgage applicants at higher rates than their white counterparts between 2018 and 2022. Latinos who did get mortgages, meanwhile, paid higher interest rates than white borrowers on comparable home loans.

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Paying for the Proposed Inglewood People-Mover

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A Los Angeles Times article about the financing of a proposed elevated train that would connect SoFi Stadium and other entertainment venues with the Metro K Line cited Jacob Wasserman of the Institute of Transportation Studies at UCLA Luskin. The Federal Transit Administration has pledged up to $1 billion for the people-mover designed to ferry riders through downtown Inglewood. The remainder of the project’s $2 billion price tag must be raised to lock down the federal award. While some officials noted that providing transportation is the job of government, Wasserman said a good case can be made that the owners of the entertainment facilities, including SoFi, the Kia Forum and the soon-to-be-opened Intuit Dome, should offer a financial contribution. “It is going to serve the customers there who pay money to go see events and games,” he said. “All transit serves businesses, and it’s a public service, but I think that this is disproportionately focused on these event venues.”

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Wooing the Fast-Growing Latino Electorate

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UCLA Luskin Public Policy Professor Gary Segura spoke to the Pennsylvania Capital-Star and public radio station WITF about the fast-growing segment of Latino voters who are a key target for 2024 elections. Economic issues, particularly concerns about better pay and the cost of prescriptions and health insurance, are a top priority for Latinos in the swing state of Pennsylvania, according to a survey conducted by BSP Research, co-founded by Segura. “Latinos are often worried that their jobs don’t pay well enough, or they have to take a second job in order to make ends meet,” Segura said. He noted that Pennsylvania’s Latino electorate includes a substantial number of Puerto Ricans, a group that historically has leaned Democratic. However, many Latino voters feel that neither of the two main U.S. political parties has shown sufficient interest in connecting with them, according to the national survey conducted on behalf of UnidosUS.

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Germany in the Doldrums

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Helmut Anheier, adjunct professor of public policy and social welfare at UCLA Luskin, penned a commentary about Germany’s political and economic doldrums for Project Syndicate. Once a beacon of stability, the Germany of recent years has proved itself unprepared for global shocks and shifting geopolitics, including a pandemic, energy shortages, and hostilities in Europe and the Middle East. Anheier points to the “liability of success” as a key cause of the country’s woes. “What is true for companies is true for countries: good financial performance can lead to complacency. During periods of strong economic growth, governments become overconfident and disregard changing conditions,” he writes. “Sitting on its laurels for too long left [Germany] ill-prepared for today’s world.”

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Blumenberg on Affordable Housing, Long Commutes

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Evelyn Blumenberg, director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA Luskin, spoke to the Los Angeles Times about the tradeoff between affordable housing and long commute times. Census data highlight two Los Angeles County areas where commutes are especially long: South Los Angeles and the San Fernando Valley. Blumenberg said residents of South L.A. typically live far from their workplaces and often lack serviceable public transit options. As for the Valley, “it’s a pretty dispersed environment and it takes a long time to get to destinations,” she said. Blumenberg noted that while more people are working from home, there has been an increase in traffic from delivery vehicles, such as Amazon trucks and cars used by UberEats. Congestion is currently less severe at peak hours but more widespread over the course of the average day, and “my hunch is that some of these new patterns are here to stay,” she said.

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Racial Disparities in Mortgage Approval Rates

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José Loya of the UCLA Luskin Urban Planning faculty spoke to CNN about disparities discovered in the mortgage approval rates at the largest credit union in the nation. CNN reported that Navy Federal Credit Union approved more than 75% of the white borrowers who applied for a new conventional home purchase mortgage in 2022, but fewer than 50% of Black borrowers who applied for the same type of loan. This is the widest disparity in mortgage approval rates between white and Black borrowers of any major lender, the news organization concluded. The disparities are alarming, said Loya, who studies racial gaps in mortgage approvals and reviewed CNN’s analysis. “It does surprise me that they’re doing significantly worse than other big lenders” because of Navy Federal’s status as a credit union, he added.

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Local Laws Limiting Gun Sales Fall Short

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A Los Angeles Times story on the limited impact of regulations restricting where and how firearm dealers are allowed to operate cited Jorja Leap of UCLA Luskin Social Welfare. There is little evidence that barring firearm retailers from certain neighborhoods or requiring them to install video cameras will significantly drive down gun violence. The newspaper cited research showing that only large-scale changes in the number of firearms dealers across multiple neighboring counties had a meaningful impact on local gun homicides. Leap explained that generations of racist economic policies and inequitable social structures correspond to higher rates of gun crime in certain areas. “People are poor. People don’t have resources. They don’t have mental health services,” Leap said. “A 12-year-old has lost a parent, or parents have walked out. He doesn’t go to therapy to deal with his feelings of anxiety and depression. He gets a gun.”

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Reducing the Risk of Collision Between Cars, Cyclists

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A Los Angeles Times article on “dooring,” the collision caused when a car door is opened in front of an oncoming cyclist, cited Madeline Brozen, deputy director of the Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies at UCLA Luskin. The impact can lead to serious injuries, and cyclists and transit advocates call for greater awareness and better road infrastructure to reduce the risks. Some roadways feature green bike lanes, but Brozen said “protective infrastructure” — buffer zones that separate cyclists from parked cars and traffic — would further increase bicycle safety. At issue is the “political battle over convenience or delay for vehicles over the safety of people biking and walking,” Brozen said. “It’s really at the whim of the council member and the council member’s office to decide whether they’re willing to take on those battles or not.”

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Improving Accountability in L.A. City Government

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UCLA Luskin Public Policy Professor Gary Segura appeared on LAist’s “AirTalk” to discuss recommendations for reforming governance in Los Angeles after a series of scandals that have shaken voter confidence. Segura is co-chair of the LA Governance Reform Project, a group of scholars whose final report calls for the establishment of independent redistricting commissions and an increase in the size of the City Council, Los Angeles Unified Board of Education and Los Angeles Ethics Commission. The scholars conducted extensive polling and focus groups to collect feedback reflecting “every corner of the city, every demographic group, every interest, every point of view,” Segura said. One of the recommendations — the inclusion of five at-large seats in a 25-member City Council — would “increase the number of ways people can have their voice heard” and guard against abuses of power, he added. The reform coalition urges that the measures be put before voters in November 2024; if passed, new districts could be established for the 2028 elections.

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Chris Tilly on the Impact of Rising Minimum Wages

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UCLA Luskin Urban Planning Professor Chris Tilly spoke to the New York Times for a story about West Hollywood’s minimum wage — at $19.08 an hour, the highest in the country. Many West Hollywood businesses complain that high labor costs put them at a disadvantage compared to competitors in neighboring communities. Recently, workers in several California industries have seen significant pay raises, including fast-food workers, who will soon make a minimum wage of $20 an hour. Tilly, who studies labor markets and public policies that shape the workplace, said research shows that gradual and moderate increases to the minimum wage have no significant impact on employment levels. “The claim that minimum wage increases are job-killers is overblown,” Tilly said. But he added that there are possible downsides to dramatic changes in pay scales. “Economic theory tells us an overly large increase in the minimum is bound to deter businesses from hiring,” he said.

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