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LA Social Science Rising Scholars Series Featuring Dr. José Loya Discussing the Mortgage Market for Latinxs

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LA Social Science interviews Dr. José Loya, a UCLA Assistant Professor in Urban Planning and a faculty affiliate with the Chicano Studies Research Center. His research examines racial stratification among Latinxs in the mortgage market. He discusses how discrimination in housing creates barriers for upward mobility in the Latinx community.

Interview Chapters:

00:00 – Intro

00:39 – Social stratification and racial discrimination in housing

01:03 – Article in Race and Social Problems Journal

02:12 – Research methods

02:51 – Interesting findings – tri-racial hierarchy

04:27 – Research impact on Latinx community

05:20 – Closing

 

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UCLA Professor Eric Avila Discusses Infrastructure and Racial Equity with The New York Times and NPR

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Dr. Eric Avila, UCLA Professor of History, Chicana/o and Central American Studies, and Urban Planning, was recently featured in The New York Times and NPR to discuss infrastructure and racial equity in light of President Biden’s new plan, which seeks to address racial disparities.

In The New York Times, Dr. Avila discusses how federal redevelopment programs negatively affected and excluded minority communities. “‘These highways were essentially built as conduits for wealth,’ Mr. Avila said. ‘Primarily white wealth, jobs, people, markets. The highways were built to promote the connectivity between suburbs and cities. The people that were left out were urban minorities. African Americans, immigrants, Latinos.'”

To read the NYT article, click HERE.

With NPR, Dr. Avila expands further on the impact of highway construction: “It destroyed many communities, and it destroyed the economic, social and cultural lifeblood of these communities. It also divided them, creating these huge barriers within communities or between communities. The best example I can think of in Los Angeles is the Boyle Heights neighborhood. You could imagine an army of bulldozers and wrecking balls invading Boyle Heights to clear neighborhoods to build these massive freeway interchanges that have a huge footprint upon what used to be racially and ethnically diverse working class, sustainable communities. But the freeways and their interchanges destroyed that. And that happened on a national pattern throughout the United States.”

To read or listen to the NPR “For All Things Considered” interview, click HERE.

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UCLA Professor Eric Avila Discusses the Historical Link between White Supremacy and Los Angeles Transportation Plans

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In a recent KCRW Greater L.A. podcast titled, “LA Freeways: The infrastructure of racism,” UCLA Professor Eric Avila spoke about how White Supremacy motivated some city transportation plans. For example, “Boyle Heights…was redlined by banks and home insurance providers because its mix of races was considered unsafe. ‘It was described by the federal government as hopelessly heterogeneous. A Homeowners Loan Corporation report called it an ideal location for a slum clearance project. That slum clearance project was highway construction,’ says Avila.”

To listen and read the entire podcast, click HERE.

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Do Legislative Bills Build Housing?

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Downtown Los Angeles protest
Photo by: Gara McCarthy

By Jan Breidenbach

Senior Fellow, UCLA Department of Urban Planning

This was the question addressed by the 2018 Community Scholars project. A joint initiative of UCLA’s Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Labor Center, and the Department of Urban Planning, Community Scholars is a two-quarter class that convenes graduate students with community, labor, and city leaders to conduct applied research on pressing local issues.

In 2017, the California legislature passed a historic housing package consisting of fifteen bills that provided new funding for affordable housing and facilitated the siting and building of new housing throughout the state.

 

These bills include a variety of provisions. One of the laws establishes a statewide source of funding for affordable housing by adding a fifty-dollar document recording fee when certain real estate transactions are recorded. Another put a $4 billion bond on the upcoming November ballot with proceeds going to a number of affordable housing programs. A third bill permits local governments to pass housing ordinances that require market-rate builders to include affordable housing. Yet another helps protect tenants presently living in subsidized housing from being evicted when their buildings are sold.

Most of the bills, however, make it easier for builders to build. They make changes to California’s Housing Element laws (the State requirement that all cities and counties identify where housing can be built based on a projection of housing need provided by the State) and an older law, the Housing Accountability Act (HAA). The HAA has been on the books for over thirty years but has been almost completely ignored until now.

The point of all this activity was to spur production of desperately needed housing in California. Advocates around the state fought for these bills and celebrated a great victory when they passed. But after the immediate celebrations, advocates had to sit down and figure out how all this was actually going to play out. What did we really do?

In January, thirteen planning scholars and thirteen community scholars set out to answer this question. At the request of Public Counsel (the nation’s largest pro bono law organization dedicated to social justice for low-income neighborhoods), this year’s Community Scholars separated out the bills and held them up to the light of day-to-day struggles around affordable housing.

The scholars scoured the language for consistency (and inconsistency), applied the new policies to the existing practices of a number of cities, and mapped out what might really happen on the ground. The class created scenarios to demonstrate where the new policies would work best and where they may make little difference. The students interviewed city planners, reviewed local plans, and talked with builders and activists.

So, what did they find?

The new legislation has the potential of making great change, but there are limits on the ground that give us pause. Many cities fight more housing. Homeowners often don’t want more density and sometimes don’t want the people who will live in denser housing. Local voters want the homeless to be housed but often not in their neighborhoods. It is important that we build more densely, but policies that allow for building near transit can lead to gentrification and displacement; without tools to address this concern, tenants may be at risk of eviction. And, although it was proposed, repealing the California law that limits rent control, the Costa-Hawkins Rental Housing Act, did not pass.

The Community Scholars ultimately agreed that while the housing package was unprecedented, it is only a first step in our long struggle to make sure all Californians have a place to call home.

Read the 2018 Community Scholars Report: Do Bills Build Homes? An Assessment of California’s 2017 Housing Package on Addressing the Housing Crisis in Los Angeles County 

 

Jan Breidenbach teaches housing and community development at Occidental College. Before teaching, she was a long-time advocate, leading the So CA Association of Non-Profit Housing for 15 years. She was a union organizer for the Service Employees International Union and the founder of an economic development organization that worked with poor women excluded from the traditional labor force. She is a Senior Fellow of the UCLA Department of Urban Planning, on the editorial board of the National Housing Institute and a board member with the Economic Roundtable.

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