Longtime Los Angeles political stalwart Zev Yaroslavsky will reveal the results of the sixth annual Quality of Life Index, which annually polls a cross-section of Los Angeles County residents on their satisfaction with up to 40 aspects of their lives across nine categories.
With cities in Los Angeles County facing a requirement to build 800,000 new homes over the next eight years, this morning-long event will focus on the lessons that can be learned from coalitions in places such as Seattle, Minneapolis, the East Bay and elsewhere that have achieved political and legislative wins in recent years while strengthening protections for those most vulnerable to displacement.
Welcome and Introduction: A Housing Vision for the Future — What the housing crisis looks like in data and on the ground, highlighting affordable housing solutions that protect existing communities and promote sustainability, provide good jobs and emphasize community involvement. (30 minutes)
Panel 1: Examples From Elsewhere — A roundtable discussion featuring representatives of housing coalitions that have successfully advocated for change. (one hour)
Panel 2: Applying the Lessons — Housing advocates and agency leaders examine the unique challenges of L.A. County and how obstacles to inclusive and effective coalitions can be overcome. (one hour)
The COVID-19 pandemic illuminated the depths of a chronic and severe affordable housing shortage in Los Angeles County, where almost 70,000 people are unhoused. The unemployment rate topped 20 percent just a few months ago, and up to 1.8 million residents lost jobs during the pandemic, one analysis suggests. Explore the magnitude of existing problems, particularly in communities of color, during a session that will focus on solutions that avoid repeating past policy mistakes.
The pandemic has proved the importance of public parks for our physical and mental well-being, as well as the environmental health of communities. During this watershed moment, new funding offers an opportunity to improve access to public spaces for all. This discussion will illuminate pathways to increase park equity in Los Angeles and beyond.
Wildfires ravaged an unprecedented amount of California in the past 12 months. This session will explore the impacts of wildfires on health, low-income housing and small water systems, as well as highlight innovative tactics to increase resiliency, especially for populations that are most vulnerable to wildfire.
Community choice in energy is transforming California's electricity sector while transitioning the Golden State to carbon-free energy and serving as an effective tool for climate action. Community choice aggregators (CCAs) offer communities control over their electricity purchasing decisions.
Join us for this webinar, which features new research on how CCAs have exceeded California’s renewable energy targets and how rapid CCA growth has resulted in investor-owned utilities to also outpace California’s requirements for renewable energy. Then a discussion with energy leaders in California will address opportunities, concerns, and recommendations for the future of CCAs, clean energy policy, and system reliability in California and beyond.
Kelly Trumbull, Energy and Climate Project Manager, UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation
Beth Vaughan, Executive Director of CalCCA
Angelina Galiteva, Chair, California Independent System Operator
Tom Habashi, CEO, Central Coast Community Energy
Edward Randolph, Deputy Executive Director for Energy and Climate Policy, California Public Utilities Commission
JR DeShazo (Moderator) Director, UCLA Luskin Center for Innovation
Wildfires ravaged an unprecedented amount of California in the past 12 months. This session will explore the impacts of wildfires on health, low-income housing and small water systems, as well as highlight innovative tactics to increase resiliency, especially for populations that are most vulnerable to wildfire.
Please join us to discuss Civic Space in Los Angeles.
With the election, pandemic and social justice still top of mind as we enter the Fall, people are also thinking about what our lives and common spaces may be like as we begin to reconnect.
With prospects of better testing, a vaccine, and a change in leadership, how will our transportation and open spaces evolve? Will streets given over to pedestrians, restaurants, bicycles remain like that? How can parks and other civic gathering places better accommodate the diverse needs of citizens in these new circumstances, especially the elderly and those with less access to traditional open spaces? How can the design of neighborhoods effect our public health, economics, education, civic life?
This panel will include experts discussing the past, present, future of LA’s civic spaces in relation to neighborhoods, urban design, and environmental justice: how we got here, where we are now, and potential solutions for the healthy and beautiful city in which all can thrive.
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_eK7CJrqFStCqjNrydEqXEQ
Save the date for a first-of-its-kind national symposium featuring social science research that measures the scale and scope of climate impacts, as well as how to address those impacts through adaptive markets, public policies, and planning.
Interested in presenting your research at the symposium? We invite abstracts from within economics, geography, law, public health, sociology, urban planning, climate science, and related disciplines. Abstracts are due by January 31st. Learn more here and RSVP.
Leaders of Los Angeles' philanthropic community discuss how the upcoming Olympic Games can serve as a "bright line" goal to address the challenges of the region's disadvantaged well beyond the COVID-19 era.
Anti-immigrant sentiment continues to reverberate throughout our economy and within the public health, education, political and criminal justice systems. What does community mobilization mean in the Trump era?
Keep your eyes out for upcoming details and registration info.
Hopefully, the landmark COVID-19 stimulus packages will restore our battered economy. But what about restoring our planet? Join a conversation with leaders from the private sector, government and academia about how long-term economic recovery can also mean advancing sustainability and environmental health.
Keep your eyes out for upcoming details and registration info.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, social workers still walk Skid Row. They still go to homes where children are in need. They still report to work at hospitals where patients die alone and families need to be located and told. It’s their job — their essential job. Join Laura Abrams, professor and chair of social welfare, as she talks with UCLA Luskin Social Welfare alumni about how the coronavirus pandemic has affected their work with vulnerable clients and communities.
Keep your eyes out for upcoming details and registration info.
In his new book, "Man of Tomorrow: The Relentless Life of Jerry Brown," award-winning journalist and bestselling author Jim Newton explores the unconventional arc of former Gov. Jerry Brown’s career. Newton reveals the complex and often contradictory nature of Brown’s personality and politics — and how Brown’s leadership stood up to the Trump White House policies on climate change, immigration and more.
Newton and Brown will discuss the arc of Brown’s career, his impact on national politics and his take on the future.
This Luskin Summit session is presented by Writers Bloc and the Los Angeles World Affairs Council & Town Hall.
Learn more and register here.
What should be done to keep Angelenos stably housed and protected from eviction and foreclosure during the coronavirus crisis? What does shelter in place mean to people already living without shelter? Join us for a discussion on housing in the era of coronavirus and how today’s challenges might shape future policy.
With Michael Lens, associate professor of urban planning and public policy, in conversation with Jacqueline Waggoner, MA UP '96, VP, Enterprise Community Partners, Inc.; Randall Kuhn , associate professor of community health sciences, UCLA Fielding School of Public Health; and Chancela al-Mansour, executive director, Housing Rights Center Southern California.
This Luskin Summit Session is a part of the Housing, Equity and Community Series, a collaboration between the UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies and the UCLA Ziman Center for Real Estate.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed the world. Millions of students in schools worldwide are either attending classes online or not being educated at all, making more apparent the systemic disparity in resources. Our expert panel will describe strategies and programs they are currently working on in Los Angeles, Israel, Chile and other countries to provide support for students and the educators who serve them.
With Ron Avi Astor, professor and Marjorie Crump Chair in Social Welfare, UCLA Luskin, in conversation with Rami Benbenishty, professor emeritus, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Joel E. Cisneros, director, school mental health, LAUSD; and Pia V. Escudero, executive director, student health and human services, LAUSD.
With Matt Barreto, faculty director, UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Initiative
and Chad Dunn, director of litigation, UCLA Voting Rights Project
Stay tuned for more info!
With Ian Holloway, director, UCLA Hub for Health Intervention, Policy, and Practice
and Ayako Miyashita Ochoa, associate director, Southern California HIV/AIDS Policy Research Center
Stay tuned for more info!
A conversation with Zev Yaroslavsky, director of Los Angeles Initiative, to discuss the 5th annual Los Angeles Quality of Life Index.
Providing a framework for summit discussions will be the unveiling of the fifth Quality of Life Index, a project at UCLA Luskin that is supported by The California Endowment under the direction of longtime Los Angeles political stalwart Zev Yaroslavsky, director of the Los Angeles Initiative.
The Quality of Life Index polls a cross-section of Los Angeles County residents each year to understand the public’s perception of the quality of their own lives. Respondents are asked to rate the quality of approximately 40 different aspects of life organized into nine different categories: public safety, education, intergroup relations, cost of living, transportation and traffic, jobs and the economy, health care, the environment, and neighborhoods. Respondents are also asked to rate the salience or importance of each item. Results are calculated into an index figure; the annual figure, as well as the individual rankings, can be compared over time. The index is not simply a mean satisfaction score, but rather a weighted measure that gives greater importance as the respondents rank them.
In addition to the quality of life questions, each survey addresses a small number of additional, timely issues. These have included hunger, homelessness, fears of being deported, gentrification, and other contemporaneous matters.
Zev Yaroslavsky is Director of the Los Angeles Initiative at UCLA Luskin, focusing on the intersection of policy, politics and history of the Los Angeles Region. Yaroslavsky previously served long tenures as an elected official for the Los Angeles City Council and the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.
#Luskin25
This year's Luskin Summit will debut with a webinar featuring a conversation about public policy and health responses to COVID-19.
The UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs wraps up its 25th anniversary celebration with the second convening of the Luskin Summit, a research-informed, cross-sector conversation about major issues facing the Los Angeles region. In light of the health crisis, this event will now be a virtual series of talks. This session marks the start of the series, featuring a conversation about public policy and health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic with Dean Gary Segura of UCLA Luskin and Dean Ron Brookmeyer of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.
Gary M. Segura is the Dean at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. His work focuses on issues of political representation and social cleavages, the domestic politics of wartime public opinion, and the politics of America's growing Latino minority. Segura served as an expert witness on the nature of political power in all three landmark LGBT marriage-rights cases in 2013 and 2015.
Ron Brookmeyer serves as Dean of the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health. In his research, Ron Brookmeyer uses the tools of the statistical, informational and mathematical sciences to address global public health problems. During a span of over three decades he developed statistical methods that sounded the alarm which helped address major global health challenges of our times. Ron Brookmeyer earned worldwide recognition for his work on predicting the magnitude of the impending HIV/AIDS epidemic with work beginning in the mid-1980s. His work on global public health problems also includes issues in bio-security, disease surveillance and health challenges of aging populations. Ron Brookmeyer’s research interests in biostatistical methodology include survival analysis, epidemic models, epidemiological methods and clinical trials.
#Luskin25
UCLA Luskin, in partnership with Asia Society Southern California, presents this webinar on the global response to the pandemic that is affecting the world. As the COVID-19 crisis intensifies in the United States, misinformation and misunderstanding abound. In order to successfully manage the spread of the coronavirus, we must listen to the guidance of medical experts – notably, those who can share best practices and lessons learned from the front lines of the outbreak in China and the United States.
Join Drs. Zhang Wen-hong and Jonathan Fielding for a deep dive into the epidemiology of this pandemic. They will share their insights on the observed rate of spread in each country and effective countermeasures taken by their respective national governments and local authorities in “bending the curve.” Dr. Seagull Haiyan Song, an Advisory Board member of the Asia Society Southern California Center, who has been very active in anti-coronavirus efforts on both sides of the Pacific, will moderate.
Tuesday, April 7th
4:30 p.m. PT
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