UCLA forum brings together experts to address California's foreclosure crisis
posted: May 06, 2009
The Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies convened a symposium on Friday, May 1, 2009 to address California’s foreclosure crisis, and the impact of the recently announced California Foreclosure Prevention Act. The keynote address was delivered by Assemblymember Ted Lieu (53rd District), who authored the bill that was signed into law by Governor Schwarzenegger.
“California is unique—we provided one-third of the nation’s foreclosures,” commented Lieu, “in February alone we had over 80,000 foreclosures, that’s about one every thirty seconds. Until we stem this, our economic recovery is just not going to begin.”
Bringing together representatives from both public and private sectors, the panelists provided insight into the origins of the historic housing crisis, an assessment of the local impacts on communities and local government, as well as forecasts and responses.
“What we’re going to be seeing on the developer side, is a very pregnant pause in activity,” remarked Katherine Perez, executive director of the Urban Land Institute of Los Angeles. “Some people say it’s going to be two years, until it passes, although I think it’s closer to five. What I’m hearing is no more megaprojects, no more megadeals, it’s going to be much smaller and leaner.”
Proceedings from the event will be published in an edited volume made available by the Lewis Center.