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Too Much and Not Enough: 2018 Downtown LA Forum tackles housing costs and scarcity
By Stan Paul “Too Much and Not Enough” is a recipe for a crisis when it comes to rising rents and lack of available and affordable housing in Los Angeles County. It also was an apt title of the Lewis Center's 11th annual Downtown Los Angeles Forum on Transportation, Land Use and the Environment, held May 18 at the California Endowment. “The short story is the rent has been getting ‘too damn high’ for decades, and renter wages have not kept up,” said moderator Michael Lens, Lewis Center associate director and associate professor of urban planning and public policy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. In the last few years, a threshold has been crossed [...]
Videos: 2017-18 Housing, Equity, and Community Series
The 2017-18 edition of the Housing, Equity, and Community Series — a collaboration between the Lewis Center, the Institute for Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin, and the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate — kicked off in the fall with a screening of the award-winning documentary “East LA Interchange.” The film traces the intersections of pollution, transportation, and gentrification in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles. Director Betsy Kalin and longtime Boyle Heights resident Nancy Romero joined Lewis Center associate director Michael Lens, the host of the series, for a moderated discussion. Part 1 of the series' lunchtime panel discussions tackled the homelessness crisis in Los Angeles and featured Jerry Ramirez, manager of Los Angeles County’s homeless initiative; [...]
Housing, Equity, and Community Series: Discussions of rent control, stabilization, and evictions
By Zev Hurwitz Though housing prices in Los Angeles are seemingly out of control, it may be control that can start to ease the burden for struggling renters. At a panel conversation held at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs on February 26, a trio of experts discussed the housing crisis in the area and the potential for new rent control and eviction protections to help stabilize living situations in Los Angeles. The event was the second in the Housing, Equity, and Community Series hosted by the Lewis Center, the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate, and the Institute on Inequality and Democracy at UCLA Luskin. The next installment in the series will take place during [...]
UCLA Luskin study documents lack of economic progress in South LA in 50 years since Kerner Commission
On the 50th anniversary of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders report on racial inequality and inner-city conditions — better known as the Kerner Commission — researchers at UCLA Luskin’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge (CNK) have found that one of the commission's primary areas of focus, South Los Angeles, has experienced little economic progress over the past half-century. The new study, supported by the Lewis Center and many other partners, determined that the wage gap for South LA workers has actually widened since the Kerner Commission, decreasing from 80 cents on the dollar compared to average Los Angeles County workers in 1960 to about 60 cents on the dollar today. It's one of several striking findings [...]
Guest post: Proposition HHH and the housing-first approach to ending chronic homelessness in LA
By Stephanie Klasky-Gamer, president and CEO of LA Family Housing Angelenos care deeply about our city’s homelessness crisis. And we know what the solution is: Building more homes. Last January, as part of the annual census of people experiencing homelessness, nearly 8,000 volunteers counted 58,000 people experiencing homelessness across Los Angeles County — a 23 percent rise over the previous year. More than 34,000 people were counted within the city limits, nearly three-quarters of whom were living unsheltered and almost one-third of whom were defined as chronically homeless. The 2018 homeless count begins on January 23. This city is in dire need of more supportive housing, a model that combines low-barrier affordable housing, healthcare, and other supportive [...]
New research briefs: Why isn’t there enough affordable housing in LA?
The research is clear: Los Angeles needs to build more housing. The city’s affordability crisis, which drives its growing homelessness, displacement, and resident cost burdens, is indisputably the result of a severe housing shortage. The pace of housing development has not remotely kept pace with the increase in new residents over the past three decades. Why isn’t there enough affordable housing in LA? And what could be done to create more? Lewis Center faculty and students have spent the past year studying these question in detail, and have produced three briefs detailing new research into the causes of, and potential solutions to, LA’s housing problems: Is Los Angeles Destroying Its Affordable Housing Stock to Build [...]