Student Research
The Lewis Center seeks to support graduate students from all three departments at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs for capstone projects on topics that advance the center’s interests on the quality of life for residents in the Los Angeles region, with a focus on how people live, move, and work.
Graduate student fellows are selected through a merit-based process during the year they intend to complete a capstone project. All projects must be geographically focused in the LA region and relate to one of the Lewis Center’s primary areas of interest: housing affordability, transportation equity, or jobs and the regional economy.
Your organization has the opportunity to work with one of these graduate students. We encourage you to submit a short proposal that outlines your concept and research question, especially if you have a need or opportunity related to how people live, move and work in the Southern California region.
Learn more about fellowship and grant opportunities for the 2024-25 school year, including important dates. The application period opens on Oct. 1, 2024.
Learn more about our most recent cohort of student fellows. See the projects completed by the Class of 2024.
2024 Capstone Projects
Aryon Shahidzadeh
Client: Emerging Markets Development Corporation
This report explores establishing community ownership structures in Fresno’s Chinatown in order to ensure local residents and business owners benefit from the anticipated redevelopment spurred by the planned California High Speed Rail Station. Chinatown Fresno is characterized by a historic diverse immigrant community, historic disinvestment and multigenerational business ownership. It faces significant gentrification risks with incoming investments. Conducted for Emerging Markets Development Corporation, this report assesses the feasibility and potential process of implementing a Neighborhood Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT) or other models to build wealth for community members and prevent their displacement. Methods included surveying U.S. community ownership models, analyzing current plans for Chinatown Fresno, examining tax increment financing, and interviewing key stakeholders in government, philanthropy and the private sector. Findings reveal strong local investment in the neighborhood’s future, extensive planning efforts lacking cohesive financial feasibility assessments, and the potential for master-planned pro forma development to enhance the implementation of state and federal grants and coordinate external investments. It also suggests a Joint Powers Authority to align public resources and foster predictable investment conditions, with a Neighborhood REIT proposed as a vehicle to blend institutional and local investments, distributing returns to community members. The report aims to advise urban planners, foundations, community organizations, and government officials on how community ownership ideas can be incorporated into Chinatown Fresno and promote wealth building, prevent displacement, and achieve sustainable, inclusive redevelopment.
Alyssa Suzukawa
Client: Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT)
This project focuses on carless and car-deficit households in the Westlake-MacArthur Park and Pacoima-Panorama City neighborhoods that have experienced challenges in traveling to their destinations due to their limited access to household vehicles. Car ownership in the U.S. is causally linked with positive economic outcomes such as being employed, gaining employment, working additional hours, and earning higher wages (Brown 2017). In the U.S., however, “carless” households, or zero-car households, make up 7% of all households, and “car-deficit” households, households with fewer cars than drivers, make up 15% of all households (Blumenberg et al. 2018). Those who do not own a vehicle or do not always have access to one, however, are left to navigate on modes other than the private vehicle to meet their transportation needs.
Using quantitative and qualitative methods, I find that carless and car-deficit respondents from Pacoima-Panorama City reported carpooling and riding the bus as their most used transportation modes, whereas Westlake-MacArthur Park reported higher use of transit such as bus and rail. Over half of all carless and car-deficit respondents, however, shared that they have skipped and/or rescheduled trips to healthcare, school, work, and other destinations due to transportation issues. Furthermore, both neighborhoods reported similar concerns related to safety, time associated with transit use, and saw low rates of participations in public programs that aim to alleviate the cost of transportation.
Alejandra Rios Gutiérrez
Client: Pacoima Beautiful
Extreme commuting is increasing worldwide, especially in urban areas, driven by factors like limited affordable housing and job opportunities. In Los Angeles, individuals, particularly those in lower-income jobs, often face long commutes due to affordable housing constraints and proximity to job centers. Extreme commutes refer to spending 180 minutes or more traveling to and from work. This report expands on this concept to define ‘extreme travel,’ which aims to include travel to all destinations.
This report examines how extreme travel affects economic, social, environmental, and health outcomes for lower-income people living, working, or studying in the San Fernando Valley (SFV) through a collaborative effort with Pacoima Beautiful (PB). PB is an environmental justice community-based organization primarily serving Northeast San Fernando Valley Latinx communities. The report investigates the causes of extreme travel, the impacts on socioeconomic, health, and environmental outcomes, and transportation challenges associated with extreme travel using a qualitative research approach. The data collected includes fourteen semi-structured interviews and 93 survey responses. The interviews allowed for in-depth conversations and documentation of first-hand experiences, while the survey provided data to compare experiences between people experiencing extreme travel and people who do not. Findings reveal that people who experience extreme travel face barriers to accessing transportation services, affordable housing near job centers, and quality jobs closer to home. Moreover, people with extreme travel feel it negatively impacts their social, economic, health, and environmental outcomes. The findings can inform policy and planning efforts, particularly in anticipation of the East San Fernando Valley Light Rail Transit Project, and contribute to environmental justice and transportation equity discourse.
Chase Engelhardt
Client: Adobe Communities
Producing less than 20,000 units on average annually in California, the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) cannot meet the outsized demand for subsidized housing alone . This report examines alternatives to the Low Income Housing Tax Credit in the State of California, with particular emphasis on the Los Angeles market. This report analyzes project feasibility in today’s conditions, as well as an analysis of the financial impact that certain international policies could have on affordable housing development at the project level. The analyses aim to illustrate possible project models as additional options beyond LIHTC, and demonstrate the value of including higher income projects within an affordable housing system on being able to leverage more debt, equity and other financial resources and thereby produce more affordable housing at all levels.
Brian Kohaya
Client: Little Tokyo Community Council
This research project analyzes the distribution of bus shelters at Los Angeles Metro bus stops and the process for funding, building and maintaining bus shelters in unincorporated areas. The study employs quantitative methods using data from Metro, the County, and other publicly available data to measure distribution along three geographies (Supervisorial Districts, unincorporated areas, and Supervisorial District 2), and four equity measures to characterize neighborhoods with unsheltered bus stops (heat exposure, access to shade, wait time, and socio-economic and transit-related conditions). The study also uses qualitative methods to examine Public Works’ process for implementing bus shelters in unincorporated areas. The analysis shows that Supervisorial District 2 has the greatest bus shelter need compared to other County districts. In addition, Public Works is at a critical moment for bus shelter development in unincorporated Los Angeles County as it seeks to replace all ad-shelters and to engage with a new vendor. Public Works has an opportunity to improve data collection for evaluating past and future bus shelter siting along lines of equity.
Miles Austin Cressy
Client: The Office of Councilmember Bob Blumenfield, Council District 3
Removing a center turn lane from a three-lane road does not appear to interfere with safety goals. In fact, in some cases, it appears it may improve safety. I compared streets with a center turn lane to those that once had a center turn lane, but later removed it. The streets that once had center turn lanes — but later removed them in favor of treatments such as bike lanes — registered an average of 42% fewer crashes per million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) than the comparison streets with center turn lanes. Furthermore, the additional safety benefits held up when measuring across a selection of sub-crash groups, such as fatal and severe crashes and pedestrian and bicycle collisions. While a before-and-after analysis suggested that part of this effect can be attributed to lower crash densities on our treatment streets, this did not invalidate the fact that these streets still observed absolute reductions in crash rates after the removal of a center turn lane, suggesting that center turn lane removal can coexist with safety objectives.
Monisha Reginald
Client: Kounkuey Design Initiative
In Los Angeles, bus shelters are a crucial source of relief from the heat and lighting after dark, but shelters are inadequately and inequitably distributed throughout the City. Although the City is making significant progress towards increasing the number of shelters and distributing them more equitably, there is limited understanding of how site constraints may limit shelter installation at priority locations or how other aspects of the built environment affect the distribution of adequate shade and nighttime lighting. To address these gaps, this project assessed the adequacy of shade and lighting at bus stops in Los Angeles, the alignment between the current locations of bus shelters and priority bus stops, and the magnitude and spatial distribution of site constraints that create obstacles to the installation of bus shelters. It combined an in-depth analysis of three neighborhoods (Sawtelle, Sun Valley, and Watts) that used original data collected during 202 nighttime site visits and a citywide analysis of all Metro, Big Blue Bus, and LADOT Transit bus stops in Los Angeles that used existing quantitative data. This research found that there are significant disparities in adequate shade and lighting across Los Angeles, and that the locations and types of bus shelters often exacerbate these disparities. Further, “higher-priority” stops where providing amenities is the most crucial are highly clustered in certain areas of the City. Finally, restrictions on installing bus shelters on narrow sidewalks or in residential areas may limit the installation of bus shelters at a significant number of high-priority bus stops.
Jack Kearns, Andrew Rock, Ana Rodriguez, Gloria Magallanes, Sydney Smanpongse
Client: UNITE HERE Local 11
Los Angeles County is in an affordable housing crisis. This crisis is particularly pronounced for low-income workers. With the government and private sector unable to solve the crisis on their own, many labor unions are looking for ways to get involved. Our client, UNITE HERE Local 11 (UH11) – a hospitality workers’ union – is looking into creative methods of addressing the housing crisis for its members, other hospitality workers, and the rest of the region’s working class. This report investigates two solutions: converting hotels and motels into housing and establishing housing cooperatives. This research employs a mixed-methods approach consisting of literature reviews, document analysis, quantitative data and spatial analyses, and expert interviews. On the hotel/motel conversion side, our findings suggest that there are opportunities to convert hotels/motels into housing, but further municipal action is needed to implement this model at scale. Our findings on the cooperative side suggest that financial, tax, and legal challenges may stymy the establishment of new cooperatives, but community land trusts present a feasible intermediate model. Our report concludes with several recommendations: regarding conversions, UH11 should pilot conversion projects and advocate for certain state and local reforms to further facilitate conversions; and regarding cooperatives, UH11 should partner with existing community land trusts to develop cooperative housing. With these strategies, UH11 can play a pivotal role in expanding affordable housing options for its members and other low-income workers in Los Angeles County and provide models for union-led initiatives to address housing insecurity in other high-cost metropolitan areas.
Adria Stauber
Client: Los Angeles Department of Transportation
Los Angeles County’s 15-year initiative to overhaul its transportation infrastructure aims to reduce car reliance and promote public transit, walking, and cycling through dense, transit-oriented development (TOD) near stations. Despite significant investment, numerous challenges remain including bureaucratic obstacles, declining per capita ridership, and concerns about displacement and gentrification. The study evaluated LA Metro rail stations’ impact on nearby communities, using ACS data from 2009 to 2022 to analyze demographic, housing, and mode choice changes within a half-mile radius of stations built between 2010 and 2020.
Findings indicated increased population density, racial diversification, and higher education levels near stations. Median household income and housing costs surged, signaling economic growth and gentrification. Urban renewal was evident with increased construction activity, rising rent and home values, and rise in remote work. Decline in public transportation usage was less significant near stations compared to city-wide.
To enhance Los Angeles’ existing TOD policies, several recommendations were proposed. Encouraging diverse housing types near transit stations through mixed-use zoning, multi-family homes, and ADUs can increase density without major disruption. Innovative housing models like community land trusts and modular housing can improve affordability. Implementing robust anti-displacement measures, such as extending rent control, can safeguard low-income residents from gentrification. Promoting economic development near transit stations through local hire policies can reduce unemployment and foster economic stability. Lastly, expanded monitoring of TOD areas are necessary to better understand residential and travel behaviors, refining strategies to promote sustainable development and ensure inclusive, resilient, and thriving transit-oriented communities in Los Angeles.
Josephine Dine
Client: Southern California Association of Governments
This research is intended to support the implementation of a program led by the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) to support new transportation-related pilot projects in the region through 2026. Although pilot projects have become popular in transportation planning and other policy sectors, often to test new technologies or ideas before fully committing to them, agencies are struggling to turn their successful pilots into permanent programs. To further analyze the use of transportation pilots in the U.S., 15 interviews with practitioners were conducted and seven case studies of specific projects were analyzed. Findings revealed many shared experiences across agencies, despite their unique circumstances. Identifying long-term funding and adequate staff capacity were some of the most commonly cited challenges, but pilots can also come up against unexpected external barriers. Pilot-operating staff must be adaptable and willing to make significant adjustments or give up on a project when necessary. Also crucial are the method and scale of pilot evaluation, communication strategies with the public before and during the pilot, and partnerships with local organizations or universities. The recommendations provided for SCAG and other agencies are organized into five categories: long-term planning, goals and evaluation, partnerships, community involvement, and decision-making. This research contributes to a growing interest in the use of pilot projects for streamlining government processes and promoting risk-taking and innovation in public agencies.
Gabriella Noemi Carmona
Client: UCLA Latino Policy & Politics Institute
California faces a severe housing crisis, characterized by soaring rents, limited affordability, and increasing homelessness. Latinos, in particular, suffer disproportionately from housing insecurity, which is defined as a spectrum of housing precarity – ranging from homelessness to substandard living conditions. This report employs a mixed-methods approach to analyze housing insecurity in California. Its quantitative analysis introduces novel housing insecurity estimates, using data from the California Department of Education and the American Community Survey. Qualitative data from literature reviews and semi-structured interviews provide deeper insights into the factors driving housing insecurity and potential policy solutions.
The findings reveal a high prevalence of housing insecurity, especially among Latinos. In 2022, approximately 1.3 million Californians were housing insecure, significantly higher than the 820,961 in doubled-up housing in 2021 and nearly eight times the 171,521 counted as homeless in 2022. Latinos, comprising 39.5% of the state’s population, represent 68% of the housing insecure. The majority of housing insecure individuals reside in Southern California, with over 55% concentrated in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino, San Diego, and San Bernardino counties, and Latinos account for 71.8% of this housing insecure population.
Ultimately, this analysis underscores the imperative of broadening the conceptualization of homelessness support to encompass a spectrum of services for those experiencing housing insecurity. By adopting the inclusive framework of housing insecurity, policymakers and stakeholders can develop tailored interventions to address some identified causes of housing insecurity, including housing affordability, access to transportation, culturally competent services, and immigration support.
2023 Capstone Projects
Brittany Montaño
Client: Los Angeles Department of Transportation
Mayor Garcetti launched the temporary Al Fresco Program in the City of Los Angeles to allow outdoor dining to support economically distressed eateries in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic and stay-at-home orders. Since the program’s inception, the City of Los Angeles has had a goal of a 50% participation rate in disadvantaged communities. The report aims to explore barriers disadvantaged communities face to apply to the L.A. Al Fresco program and finds solutions to increase program participation in these communities. The researcher conducted an eligibility survey of 7 and from that group 5 in-depth interviews with food and beverage establishment owners to understand the barriers to participating in the L.A. Al Fresco Program and the impact of COVID. Along with qualitative analysis, the report found that 27% of active eateries in the City of Los Angeles currently participate in the L.A. Al Fresco program. Interviewees expressed how they are still recovering economically from COVID-19, which has been compounded by inflation, leaving no interest in expanding their business through outdoor dining. The report recommends that the L.A. Al Fresco Program create a small restaurant outreach strategy through an L.A. Al Fresco ambassador program and develop partnerships with local economic development organizations to increase specialized support services for small businesses in under-invested communities to ensure access to the program without barriers.
Brittney Lu
Client: Office of Supervisor Holly Mitchell, District 2
The cooling and environmental benefits of an urban tree canopy are well-documented, but its full and balanced integration into urban infrastructure, and specifically so for climate vulnerable communities, has not always been achieved. This capstone project is prepared for the Office of Supervisor Holly J. Mitchell, and seeks to better understand and respond to challenges of urban tree canopy implementation and management. The guiding research questions are: (1) What existing programs and design standards in other major urban US cities increase, maintain, and preserve urban tree canopy for climate vulnerable communities? (2) How can urban forest strategies also balance existing infrastructure needs? and (3) What best practices could be applied to unincorporated South LA for increased shade equity? This project drew on recent and relevant literature, scanned existing data on LA’s urban forestry practices, and studied eleven different US cities’ tree and/or built environment policies to summarize key lessons and develop preliminary recommendations using a socio-ecological model to comprehensively target multiple levels of intervention. Best practices were sorted into programming-based, policy-based, or design-based solutions, and the most relevant recommendations were categorized at the individual, interpersonal, institutional, community, and structural levels. Some examples include: offering rebates for lower-income residents wanting to plant and maintain a parkway tree, providing workforce development training to diversify urban forestry, creating sidewalk design guidelines that balance mobility and tree health, and preventing green gentrification.
Emmanuel Proussaloglou
Since 1986, only 10% of the over 2.5 million housing units produced using the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), America’s chief vehicle for affordable housing production, have been built in high opportunity areas. These LIHTC projects are unique, as they offer greatly needed housing options to lower-income residents in communities that they would otherwise lack access to. Accordingly, this begs the guiding research question for this project: Is there a statistically significant difference between LIHTC projects built in high opportunity areas versus those built elsewhere?
Emily Biro
Client: San Francisco Planning Department
California is currently facing an affordable housing crisis, despite recent legislative efforts to spur housing development. Much of this shortage can be attributed to restrictive land use policies, such as zoning, that limit the amount of housing allowed. In 2021, Senate Bill 9 (SB 9) passed allowing for the development of up to four units on single-family zoned parcels. However, housing professionals and recent studies indicate that the rules of SB 9 do not allow for financially feasible development. This research explores whether larger developments, with 5-to-10 units, are more financially feasible on single-family zoned parcels in California and whether opportunities exist to improve the feasibility of small multi-family housing development. This research presents findings from semi-structured interviews with housing professionals and a financial analysis using a pro forma model for various 5-to-10-unit project scenarios. I find that limited financial feasibility exists for new 5-to-10-unit projects in primarily single-family zoned areas in San Francisco and Los Angeles under existing economic and design conditions. None of the modeled 5-unit projects would be financially feasible. Most 10-unit rental projects are not viable and would require reduced city fees, a partial property tax abatement, or a per-unit subsidy to be financially feasible and meet industry standard profit expectations in San Francisco or Los Angeles. I recommend several actions for the State and San Francisco Planning Department to consider, including increasing allowable density on single-family zoned lots in high-opportunity areas to 10 units, allowing single-stair/vertical shared access buildings, and revising local development design regulations.
Anne Yoon
Client: Office of Supervisor Holly Mitchell, District 2
This research project analyzes the distribution of bus shelters at Los Angeles Metro bus stops and the process for funding, building and maintaining bus shelters in unincorporated areas. The study employs quantitative methods using data from Metro, the County, and other publicly available data to measure distribution along three geographies (Supervisorial Districts, unincorporated areas, and Supervisorial District 2), and four equity measures to characterize neighborhoods with unsheltered bus stops (heat exposure, access to shade, wait time, and socio-economic and transit-related conditions). The study also uses qualitative methods to examine Public Works’ process for implementing bus shelters in unincorporated areas. The analysis shows that Supervisorial District 2 has the greatest bus shelter need compared to other County districts. In addition, Public Works is at a critical moment for bus shelter development in unincorporated Los Angeles County as it seeks to replace all ad-shelters and to engage with a new vendor. Public Works has an opportunity to improve data collection for evaluating past and future bus shelter siting along lines of equity.
Michael Rosen
Client: Los Angeles Department of Transportation
Removing a center turn lane from a three-lane road does not appear to interfere with safety goals. In fact, in some cases, it appears it may improve safety. I compared streets with a center turn lane to those that once had a center turn lane, but later removed it. The streets that once had center turn lanes — but later removed them in favor of treatments such as bike lanes — registered an average of 42% fewer crashes per million vehicle miles traveled (VMT) than the comparison streets with center turn lanes. Furthermore, the additional safety benefits held up when measuring across a selection of sub-crash groups, such as fatal and severe crashes and pedestrian and bicycle collisions. While a before-and-after analysis suggested that part of this effect can be attributed to lower crash densities on our treatment streets, this did not invalidate the fact that these streets still observed absolute reductions in crash rates after the removal of a center turn lane, suggesting that center turn lane removal can coexist with safety objectives.
Zoe A. Frumin
Client: Kounkuey Design Initiative
Street vendors are routinely excluded and criminalized for existing in the public realm. A group of individuals who are primarily elderly, undocumented, female, disabled, and immigrants, vendors withstand hardship and discrimination on compounding scales. Many states have anti-vending laws and regulations that limit vendor behavior. But this tide is changing across the US; thanks to decades of advocacy, street vending laws are being updated nationwide to decriminalize vending. More can be done to support street vendors in the public realm. This toolkit is meant to outline design and policy recommendations for urban designers, planners, and park advocates to better support the vendor community in public spaces.
Madeleine French
Client: Kounkuey Design Initiative
Increasingly hostile public space design has created parks that ostracize people experiencing homelessness. Hostile design not only excludes unhoused people from public space, but makes public environments less accessible for all. Inclusive design can be used to combat defensive architecture and build parks that are more valuable and accessible public assets. In order to combat hostile design, exclusionary park planning, and discrimination in public spaces, urban planners and designers must design parks to evoke a sense of ownership and belonging for all. I argue that planners and designers can restore unhoused individuals’ spatial rights to public parks by including them in the planning and engagement process, by programming parks with their needs in mind, and by designing park facilities to support this population. I began with a review of relevant planning literature to document the existing research on unhoused people’s use of public space. My research methodology includes three case studies of parks designed with and for unhoused park users: Folkets Park in Copenhagen, Woodruff Park in Atlanta, and Lafayette Square Park in Oakland. I validated my research findings through interviews with urban designers and an advocate for the rights of unhoused people. My research findings demonstrate that urban designers, planners, policymakers, and advocates can create parks that are inclusive of unhoused people by engaging them in the participatory planning process, offering place-based outreach, programming for community cohesion, and designing parks with flexible, inviting spaces and well maintained facilities. By including people experiencing homelessness in the planning and design process, planners can make park spaces equitable for all users.
Kevin Liu
Client: Alliance for Community Transit – Los Angeles
Despite cuts to bus service in Los Angeles, bus ridership has remained high compared to other cities, showing LA’s reliance on the bus. Bus riders deserve better service, and transit agencies have been turning to the bus lane as a low-cost and reliable way to improve bus service. This study answered the research question through case studies of bus lane implementation in Boston, Chicago, Seattle, and Sydney. This study found that pilot project bus lanes, also known as tactical lanes, provide immediate low-cost benefits while also collecting public input from riders and motorists. Bus lane implementation can be a political battle, and often hinges on the support of key political and transit agency players. Matching the type of bus lane to the corridor requires consideration of physical space and political realities. Automated bus lane enforcement through cameras is low cost and avoids interactions between police and people. Bus lane designs that prevent drivers from parking or driving in the lane, also known as self-enforcing design, should also be considered. Los Angeles advocates and agency staff should consider implementing more tactical bus lane projects as they offer benefits in a short timeline for low capital costs, and also serve as data and input gathering forums. When moving tactical projects forward as permanent lanes, advocates can take pilot data and find a policy champion that will petition for implementation. Bus lanes might not win over choice riders from driving their cars, but they do prioritize bus riders, which can boost loyalty and retain ridership. The working class, immigrant, and BIPOC bus riders of LA should be prioritized in transit projects as they are the lifeblood of the system.
Antonia Izuogu
Client: Downtown Crenshaw Rising
This report was created to aid future business plans to build local Black-centered and -led cooperative businesses that will maintain sustainable growth, pay livable wages, and operate under eco-friendly standards. My client is Downtown Crenshaw Rising (DCR) and Worker Ownership Resources and Cooperative Services (WORCS). My overall research question is: What is the feasibility of establishing and maintaining a manufacturing worker-owned cooperative in the Crenshaw District and South Los Angeles area?My client had an interest in producing electric vehicle charging stations because of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (2021) The federal goal is to create a network of 500,000 EV chargers by 2030 across America’s highways and communities. Federal dollars are flowing to support its production, largely in California.My findings depicted that are three related primary barriers my client may face trying to open this cooperative. The first is the capital-intensive nature of the business. The second is the lack of experience in EVSE manufacturing within the Crenshaw community. The third is that this lack of experience reduces opportunities for alternative sources of capital. As of now, the feasibility of my client creating a manufacturing cooperative to produce electric vehicle charging stations is very low.With client interest, I gathered information to help understand the path to creating an electrician cooperative to install and fix stations. I researched a path acknowledging the skills needed, training options, and available funding in the industry. Opening an electrician cooperative is more feasible than manufacturing, especially when starting with licensed worker-owners.
Hana Abdelatty, Dimitri English, Adan Garcia, Selena Melgoza, Austin Mendoza
Client: Los Angeles Climate Emergency Mobilization Office
Los Angeles has been rated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as the city facing the highest risk of natural hazards in the near future. In particular, Los Angeles is vulnerable to the adverse health impacts of climate change-induced extreme heat. Communities of color and low-income households face the greatest risk from extreme heat due to unjust policies like redlining, which have today led to the inequitable distribution of the resources necessary for communities to protect themselves against extreme heat.This report uses existing research and municipal climate plans, a geospatial analysis, interviews with subject matter experts, community focus groups, and an online community survey to assess how the City of Los Angeles can better build equitable heat policy and long-term resilience among the most impacted and vulnerable communities.In this report, we assess nine policy options based on their alignment with community preferences, their effectiveness at improving the health outcomes of frontline communities, whether they target an equitable redistribution of heat adaptation resources distribution and their financial and administrative feasibility for implementation by the City of Los Angeles.Based on this analysis, we recommend that the City of Los Angeles immediately expand access to green space in frontline neighborhoods, increase available at-home heat adaptation resources for frontline communities, equitably distribute pedestrian shade structures and water access in frontline communities, and improve the accessibility of communications about available heat adaptation resources. We also recommend the implementation of community ambassador programs, more accessible heat workplace trainings, and the expansion of the resilience center network after measures are put in place to improve their desirability to frontline community members. In addition, this report provides meaningful steps which the City of Los Angeles can take to implement or improve upon equity within existing policies and programs.
Client: UCLA cityLAB
The goal of this study is to evaluate the BruinHub one year after its opening in Fall 2021. BruinHub is a space dedicated to serve long-distance commuter students at UCLA. Primary research questions for this project are:1. Does BruinHub serve the intended target audience of long-distance commuters, including commuters who experience some form of housing insecurity?2. What changes to the current and proposed BruinHub program(s) would further benefit the intended audience?For this study, I analyzed the BruinHub Passholder registration data, conducted one-on-one interviews with UCLA students and staff, and conducted on site observations in the BruinHub space.BruinHub is the first step in the right direction in addressing the needs of long-distance commuters. However, there are more improvements that can be implemented in order to reach its full potential, especially by prioritizing and directly serving its intended audience.Recommendations to come out of this study involve spatial recommendations, programming recommendations, and recommendations for outreach and data collection. While many of the suggested improvements will be challenging to implement, students and staff must actively advocate for the changes. The newly opened second location, BruinHub Strathmore, presents an opportunity to address many of the current concerns and service gaps that BruinHub experiences.
2022 Capstone Projects
A Tale of Two City Streets: Evaluating the Safety, Congestion, and Cut-Through Effects of Road Diets
Clients: Los Angeles Department of Transportation
Every year, more than 200 people are killed in Los Angeles while walking, bicycling, or driving. In 2015, Mayor Eric Garcetti launched a citywide Vision Zero initiative, which set a goal to eliminate traffic fatalities by 2025. One key tool the city can use to improve traffic safety on dangerous roads is the road diet, a reconfiguration of lanes that removes vehicle travel lanes. Road diets often face opposition, though. This opposition typically stems from fear of increased traffic congestion and neighborhood cut-through traffic as well as doubt that road diets actually improve traffic safety. My project analyzes crash data, traffic count data, and bluetooth travel data on two similar streets in Northeast Los Angeles to gauge whether road diets have these effects. One of the streets underwent a road diet in 2016 while the other didn’t, making them an effective test case. My analysis of shows no evidence that the road diet caused unacceptable traffic conditions or additional neighborhood cut-through traffic. I also find some evidence that the road diet improved traffic safety outcomes. My review of the literature bolsters my findings that road diets are an effective safety countermeasure and that in most scenarios they do not cause unacceptable increases in traffic congestion. The literature on neighborhood cut-through traffic is much less developed. Based on these findings, I recommend that Los Angeles identify additional opportunities to both research and implement road diets.
Client: Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust (BVCLT)
The Greater Los Angeles region is rich in resources. Its culture and history are vibrant and complex, largely due to the many immigrant communities that call it home. LA offers access to housing, public transit, and job opportunities. However, due to the housing affordability crisis plaguing the region, this access has become increasingly strained, particularly for low-income renters of color. This research project considered the work of the Beverly-Vermont Community Land Trust(BVCLT), an organization based in LA’s Koreatown neighborhood focused on anti-displacement and permanent housing affordability for LA’s low-income renters of color. The organization does this by acquiring “naturally occurring affordable housing” (NOAH), removing it from the speculative real estate market, and rehabilitating it to provide existing renters with a safe and permanently affordable living environment.
Client: Milken Institute’s Center for Regional Economics
As California faces a crisis for affordable housing, policymakers must consider alternatives that will lead to the creation of equitable housing solutions. The enactment of Proposition 13 in 1978 prevented the influx of an abundance of state generated revenue that could be used for the development of affordable housing in California. This report examines three policy alternatives to foster additional revenue generation towards the development of affordable housing units throughout California: a land value lax (LVT), progressive property transfer tax, and reform of Proposition 13. Additionally, this report evaluates each policy alternative according to four criteria: political feasibility, technical feasibility, revenue generation, and equity. The study frames alternative projections in terms of their effects on thirteen ‘case study’ cities representing California’s most populated areas: Anaheim, Bakersfield, Fresno, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Oakland, Riverside, Sacramento, San Diego, San Jose, San Francisco, Santa Ana, and Stockton. These 13 cities represent a large proportion of California’s population, and additionally are representative of the many diverse demographics, landscapes, housing types, and densities that can be found within the state. Our analysis finds that all of our alternatives would generate substantial revenue towards the development of affordable housing in California. While no one alternative emerges as the clear best option, each features its own strengths and weaknesses. A land value tax excels most at revenue generation, a progressive property transfer tax poses the least political and technical feasibility issues, and a reformed Proposition 13 would best reverse policy decisions that have harmed California’s most historically marginalized populations. Additionally, reform of revenue-agnostic measures such as cumbersome bureaucratic processes and restrictive zoning ordinances is necessary to fully address the state’s housing shortfall. As there is no panacea for California’s affordable housing crisis, researchers recommend pursuing the alternative, or combination of alternatives, that best fits each municipality’s political context, demographic make-up, and municipal financing framework.
Adult protective services (APS) are the primary form of state intervention in cases of elder mistreatment in the United States. Accurate and unbiased identification of elder abuse and neglect is crucial to protect elders from mistreatment and also to reduce overpolicing of vulnerable groups. This study uses APS report microdata (N=14,448) from a county APS agency in Southern California to identify racial disproportionality in the rate of confirmed elder abuse. Our analysis finds that APS investigators are significantly less likely to confirm reported cases of elder mistreatment for Latinx victims than for white victims. While we found no significant relationship between APS case confirmation and API identity overall, disaggregation of the API identity group reveals a bimodal effect. East Asian APS victims are significantly more likely to be confirmed for elder abuse than whites, while Southeast Asians are significantly less likely to be confirmed. English proficiency also moderates APS confirmation rate for Southeast Asians, with non-English-speaking Southeast Asians being significantly more likely to be confirmed for elder abuse. Contrary to expectations, Black racialized identity did not have a statistically significant relationship with APS case confirmation as compared to whites. Study findings illustrate the need for improved outreach and reporting practices around elder mistreatment and the importance of examining inter-ethnic differences within the API monolith when designing policy interventions for older adults.
Client: Century Villages of Cabrillo
The purpose of my research was to understand the transportation needs for residents living at the Century Villages of Cabrillo (CVC) in terms of increasing transportation access to groceries, and recommend interventions that would improve grocery access for residents. CVC is a 27-acre residential community located in the western part of Long Beach that caters to formerly-unhoused folks and veterans. The surrounding land uses and existing transportation conditions make it potentially challenging for community members without access to a car to get groceries. My research question therefore was ‘what are the transportation needs of community members of the Century Villages at Cabrillo to ensure they have access to groceries’. To answer this question, I used a quantitative approach where I surveyed 69 residents throughout the community about how they got to the grocery store, transportation challenges that they faced, and solutions they wanted to see CVC implement.The results revealed several key findings: the majority of CVC respondents traveled greater than two miles to get to the grocery store, and most respondents visited the same grocery stores.. Most respondents primarily took the bus or drove on their last trip to the grocery store regardless of race or ethnicity, with people aged 55 and over, white people and men overwhelmingly taking the bus. On the other hand, people aged 35-54, Black people and women had similar rates of taking the bus and driving. Common transportation challenges when traveling to the grocery store could be broken down into three categories: personal mobility issues, public transit issues, and car-ownership/lack of car-ownership issues. Another finding was that most survey respondents never or rarely experienced food insecurity within the month that they took the survey. Finally, in terms of solutions residents desired, when controlling for the most vulnerable CVC residents with the greatest need for increased grocery access (people who do not own a vehicle and people who face food insecurity), more of these people wanted a free grocery shuttle or grocery delivery service.
Client: Kounkuey Design Initiative
Urban planning theory and practice have created gendered environments that mainly privilege the needs of cisgender men. Women, nonbinary, and genderqueer people face various constraints on their use of public space which has profound effects on their health, daily living, and safety. This research study seeks to understand gender disparities in park usage, planning, and design in Los Angeles parks and offers recommendations to mitigate those disparities through improvements to planning processes.
Client: Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT)
Bus lanes in Los Angeles have rapidly increased in the past ten years. Bus lanes are lanes designated exclusively for buses on general traffic streets. Understanding if bus lanes make streets safer for all users is imperative, especially in a city like Los Angeles where traffic fatalities are rampant. This study considers if there are differences in severe and fatal traffic collisions among streets with all-day bus lanes, peak hour bus lanes, and no bus lanes. A descriptive statistical analysis of crash data revealed that collisions increased on all studied bus lane corridors except one peak hour bus lane. Collisions became less severe and less fatal on all studied bus lane corridors. Collisions either stayed constant or decreased on corridors with no bus lane, but fatality and severe-injury outcomes were mixed. Site visits to corridors with a decrease and increase in collisions found similarly accommodated bus lanes, but other key differences that may have contributed to their divergent safety outcomes such as block length and left turn availability. Parked cars often obstructed bus lanes on both corridors, specifically near restaurants. Still, bus lanes can enhance street safety if installed in tandem with context-sensitive, complementary design elements such as painting bus lanes red, operating off-set running bus lanes, limiting left turns, and providing short-term parking on nearby streets during operating hours. Bus lanes are an effective tool to increase bus efficiency, but their inclusion in streetscapes must be done thoughtfully and effectively to promote safer streets.
Client: Los Angeles County Dept. of Regional Planning – East San Gabriel Valley Area Plan
Open space, defined as any open piece of land that is undeveloped, and is accessible to the public, may be particularly beneficial to seniors (defined as those aged 65+), who are often at high risk of social isolation and deteriorating physical and mental health. Despite documented benefits, seniors remain one of the most underserved groups in terms of physical activity and open space use, with opportunities being limited even further due to the COVID-19 pandemic. This report seeks to explore seniors’ preferences for the design of open spaces that fulfill their physical activity and other social needs in the communities of Rowland Heights and Hacienda Heights. Methods used to obtain data included surveys, site visits to major open spaces, and digital scans of online data about public park usage during the pandemic. The findings revealed open spaces in these areas being hard to navigate on foot, parks conceived as central “pandemic” meeting places, and a high demand for open spaces in neighborhoods distant from parks. The final recommendations provide ways to transform nontraditional open spaces, defined as areas not typically utilized as open spaces, such as vacant lots and parklets, using affordable and senior-friendly elements. Specifically, findings are made replicable across different neighborhoods in the East San Gabriel Valley through 6 general themes that translate into actionable constructs: Control, Safety, Access, Social Support, Biophilic Design, Active Recreation. By providing a guideline to designing open spaces in underutilized areas within a budget, the goal is that there will be greater leverage towards creating nontraditional open spaces.
Client: Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE)
The Los Angeles Housing Movement Lab is a coalition of housing justice organizations co-led by Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE) to support the decommodification of 20% of housing units in Los Angeles County by 2050. The Movement Lab broadly defines decommodified as housing that no longer generates profit or acts as a vehicle for investment. This project analyzes the feasibility of four property sources for decommodified housing: congregation-owned land, publicly-owned land, naturally occurring affordable housing, and expiring affordability covenants. For each property source, I calculate a potential unit yield and then use a feasibility matrix to evaluate each property source by cost, scalability, community control, process barriers, and political will. From the unit analysis, I find that publicly-owned land and naturally occurring affordable housing have the largest yields and therefore the most potential to scale. From the feasibility matrix analysis, I find the property sources are generally favorable for cost and scalability but unfavorable for process barriers and political will due to the lack of infrastructure for alternative property ownership models. Finally, I make policy recommendations to remove barriers and scale up decommodification efforts for each property source.
Katherine Sánchez, Lily Cain, Sonita Tan, and Anahí Cruz
Client: CLEAN Carwash Campaign
As of today, the car wash industry in the United States has close to 17,000 establishments with 163,178 paid employees. Like in many industries with predominantly immigrant workforces, car wash employers skirt minimum wage laws by paying workers through only tips, by having workers on stand-by without pay, or through per car and daily rates. In 2003, AB 1688 passed in the legislatures, and required car wash owners to register with the Labor Commissioner’s Office (DLSE) and imposed a fine on car wash owners who refused to comply. However, by 2008, only 65% of the estimated 1,600 car washes were registered and in compliance with the law. Our report was compiled to answer the following policy question: How effective have AB 1688 (2003) and AB 1387 (2013) been in addressing wage theft for carwashers in California? Our research consists of a combination of quantitative data analysis of wage claim filings and qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with carwashers, labor law attorneys, Deputy Labor Commissioners, and industry stakeholders conducted between January and March 2022.Based on our findings we provided four policy alternatives to optimize the existing Car Wash Worker Law and deter wage theft violations in the industry. Each policy option was evaluated based on four selected criteria through a Criteria Alternative Matrix model. Based on the evaluation of our proposed policies, we recommend CLEAN advocate for:(1) A budget change proposal to hire more personnel at the DLSE, (2) Improve data collection and transparency by the DLSE,(3) Require car wash industry specific postings in English and Spanish to inform carwashers of their rights, and(4) Inserting more punitive legislative language into the Car Wash Worker Law that penalizes “off-the- clock” wage theft” wage theft.
Nataly Rios Gutierrez
Client: Saban Community Clinic
People without adequate transportation can often have trouble getting to medical appointments and miss or delay their care (Syed et al., 2013). In 2017, 5.8 million people delayed or missed medical appointments due to a lack of transportation options (Wang 2021; Wolfe et al. 2020). This report evaluates the transportation challenges faced by patients seeking care at one of the Saban Community Clinic (SCC) locations. SCC is a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) that provides healthcare to patients who are underinsured or without insurance to a predominantly Latinx population. This report explored SCC patient transportation needs by examining the spatial patterns of patient residential locations, surveying patient transportation needs, and evaluating an SCC effort to reduce transportation barriers by offering free Lyft rides to patients. Findings reveal that unreliable transportation options in addition to lack of affordability and limited accessibility results in transportation difficulties for patients at SCC. Despite these challenges, many patients continue to seek care at SCC because they value the quality of service. Increasing flexibility around appointments, diversifying transportation funding, expanding care to patients living further away from current SCC sites, and working with local transportation providers are strategies SCC can pursue to address patients’ transportation challenges. The research provides insights into how healthcare and insurance providers and transportation agencies can best improve access to healthcare for patients similar to those served by SCC.
2021 Capstone Projects
Muthia Faizah
Clients: Little Tokyo Service Center
The purpose of this research was to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on Los Angeles Based Community Development Corporations (CDCs) and highlight specific strategies for organizational resilience during unprecedented times. This research aimed to study the experience of Los Angeles CDCs when facing an unprecedented crisis such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Regardless of the changing landscape, the study’s findings suggest that the overall goals of CDCs in Los Angeles have not changed; rather, the methods to implement their mission have shifted. To ensure stability and maintain vitality during the COVID-19 pandemic, strategic methods included: collaborating with other organizations, utilizing new funding sources, expanding/reorganizing the roles of different employees, creating new programs, and strengthening interpersonal employee talent and relationships. Overall, the survey and interview findings from Los Angeles-based CDCs suggest that neighborhood-based organizations can reorient their work to fit the specific needs of their constituents and maintain viability.
Irene Takako Farr
Client: Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning
In August 2019, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors adopted OurCounty, an extensive and thorough regional sustainability plan for Los Angeles. Within Strategy 3A, which calls on the County to increase housing density and limit urban sprawl, is Action 47, which institutionalizes a County effort to “Support the preservation of agricultural and working lands, including rangelands, by limiting the conversion of these lands to residential or other uses…” The Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning (LACDRP) has been tasked by the Los Angeles County Chief Sustainability Office to identify responses that promote “equitable and sustainable land use and development without displacement.”
In this brief, the Antelope Valley is framed as an important case study that (1) highlights the current state of California’s desert farmlands and (2) the impact solar might have on these rural places. Specifically, this brief describes the patterns associated with these lands by farmland quality, physical land uses, and zoning, and assesses how these characteristics might influence or be influenced by the relationship the land has with ground-mounted utility-scale solar energy development. The brief then identifies policy mechanisms that the LACDRP can implement to better plan for both agriculture and solar.
Kimberly Fuentes
The punitive foundation that social work is built on limits our ability to align affirming care to community members who engage in sex work. By engaging in a process of collective knowledge production, this participatory action research (PAR) contextualizes the ways in which intersecting systems of oppression are magnified within sex worker communities and explores the ways that criminalization complicates social mobility and networks of harm reduction. Through using the qualitative methods of photo-elicitation and dialogue aligned with participatory principles, this community-driven study uplifts individual and collective protections that 13 sex workers utilize to protect and care for each other in Los Angeles, California. Drawing from the intersections of Black Feminist and Disability studies frameworks, this study’s findings identify factors influencing a stratified social hierarchy amongst sex workers, the systems of collective care that they create, and the ways that they navigate and resist the structural oppressions that are complicated by operating within a criminalized profession. This paper explores the hindrances that social work navigates by its alignment to the state as an agent of social control and its potential for engagement with criminalized communities. The implications from this study advocate for future lines of inquiry that benefit sex worker organizers and service providers in strengthening systems of care for sex workers resisting state violence.
Rayne Laborde
Client: Kounkuey Design Initiative
The City of Los Angeles faces a deficit of both housing and public open space, issues which have each been magnified through the COVID-19 pandemic. Parks — one of the few shaded and public spaces of the city, and thus appealing both to housed visitors and to unhoused dwellers — have become increasingly contested spaces subjected to larger socioeconomic forces. Yet, this time of significant uncertainty and need also presents unanticipated opportunities for innovation: the COVID-19 pandemic has forced Parks and Recreation Departments across the county to reinvent themselves and take on roles and temporary infrastructure that would have been unthinkable just a few months ago. Applying these same principles of urgency, flexibility, and increased amenity to both short- and long-range solutions presents the opportunity to reimagine the role parks play in communities to better address an increasingly diverse constituency with dramatically different needs. Focusing on the perspective of unhoused park dwellers, whose bodies are on the frontlines but whose voices are rarely centered, this project seeks to develop physical, programmatic, and policy strategies that will enhance feelings of safety and welcome for all.
Gul Nisa Gurbuz
Why do we not see more female drivers in ride-hailing services? The advancement of technology is reshaping transportation for both drivers and riders through platform economies. This study focuses on the gig drivers in Los Angeles county using a gender lens. It attempts to analyze why there is still a gender gap in the ride-hailing sector, although this gap is narrower than in the taxi industry. The questions of the research are: 1) why do women become ride-hailing drivers? 2) Are ride-hailing systems redefining the gendered nature of the driving occupation, which is traditionally male-dominated? 3) What challenges do female ride-hailing drivers face, and 4) how are these challenges different from those faced by men? The study draws from 20 interviews and 400 survey responses of ride-hailing drivers in Los Angeles. The survey and interview data are interpreted with the help of statistical analyses and content analysis. The paper concludes with further research and policy suggestions for ride-hailing companies to welcome more female drivers on board and turn their work into a safer and fairer model. The study finds that female drivers’ ongoing safety concerns and the possibility of getting harassed hold them back from attending to this labor force as much as men do. Also, it finds that many gig workers, who lack many employment benefits and a decent income without the support of a partner, have to take care of their households and families regardless of their gender. The ride-hailing companies have a large room to improve their safety systems to welcome more female drivers on board.
2020 Capstone Projects
Yamillet Brizuela
Clients: Casita Coalition and Bay Area Council
California state and local governments have passed legislation encouraging housing production with hopes to address the ongoing housing crisis. In recent years, numerous pieces of legislation have specifically aimed to streamline the construction and use of accessory dwelling units (ADUs) — secondary housing units located on existing residences. ADUs can be a source of affordable housing since they do not require costly land acquisition.Neighborhood opposition to new housing is one of the key enablers of California’s current housing problem (Monkkonen and Livesley-O’Neill, 2017). One of the most powerful types of neighborhood-based groups is the homeowner association (HOA). HOAs establish private land use laws through contracts with homeowners. As many as 60%-80% of newly constructed units in California are within HOA jurisdiction and approximately 25% of existing housing (Clarke and Freedman, 2019). Although state Assembly Bill 670 prevents HOAs from outright banning the construction of ADUs in single-family zoning districts, HOAs may still effectively prohibit the use and construction of ADUs in single-family zoning districts through “reasonable” restrictions. This research aimed to analyze the perceptions of Los Angeles County homeowners in order to gain insight on homeowners’ likelihood of, barriers to, and facilitators in adopting ADUs on their property.
Zachary Cecil, Chloe Horowitz, Sarah Katz, and Nicole White
Client: St. Joseph Center
This study examines what barriers stand in the way of individuals having consistent andmeaningful engagement with their mental health service provider. Through qualitative researchwith mental health consumers and service providers at a partnered community basedorganization in West Los Angeles, we found that there are several significant barriers toengagement, including, but not limited to, poor therapeutic alliance, lack of adequate resources,and differing understandings of what it means to engage in services. Our research provided awealth of insightful findings, which allowed us to offer numerous suggestions on how tostrategize for improved engagement, both at the partnered agency and beyond. As our findingsdemonstrated, many of these barriers can be overcome by improvements made to the agency’sstrategies for service provision. Conversely, some of the barriers that we found are out of thecontrol of the agency or consumer.
Michael Ryzhov
Client: The Los Angeles County Department of Regional Planning
This project examines public financing strategies and best practices that Los Angeles County can use to mitigate the costs the proposed ordinance imposes on small and medium-sized industrial businesses. Unlike many other environmental regulations, the proposed ordinance does not exempt existing businesses from the new regulations. This accelerates the greening process in industrial zones, but also imposes a cost on existing firms, many of which have little capital. During community outreach, stakeholders suggested that the County develop a resource program to help businesses make the required changes while preserving livelihoods.This research project seeks to inform the development of a comprehensive funding program for industrial businesses in unincorporated Los Angeles County subject to the Green Zones ordinance. The central question driving this research is as follows: What public funding methods and strategies can best help small, industrial businesses make green, on-site improvements and comply with Los Angeles County’s forthcoming Green Zones regulations?
Samuel Speroni
Client: HopSkipDrive
The Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) gave foster youth additional legal protections in school, including the right to transportation and the right to remain at their school despite any moves, similar to protections already in place for students experiencing homelessness and students with disabilities. California’s compliance with this mandate was relatively more difficult than other states’, as less than ten percent of students in California travel by school bus, compared with 35 percent nationally. Thus, California schools could not simply tap into their existing services to provide transportation for foster youth. Ride-hailing offers a solution to this gap. HopSkipDrive, a ride-hailing company designed to transport children, engages in contracts with school districts and county governments to provide school transportation for these vulnerable student populations. In 2018 2019, HopSkipDrive provided 32,796 trips to school in Los Angeles county, with massive time savings over the logical alternative: transit. Using Google’s Directions API, I determine that HopSkipDrive offers time savings of nearly 70 percent compared with the same trips simulated on transit. HopSkipDrive’s trips average 28 minutes in duration, yet on transit, only 30 percent would have taken less than 45 minutes. This is despite 90 percent of all origins and destinations being located within a half-mile of a transit stop. This service has important social equity implications beyond just time savings offered to vulnerable student populations, as HopSkipDrive contract trips tend to originate in neighborhoods with high percentages of low-income households and people of color.
Katherine Stiegemeyer
Client: Investing in Place
The purpose of this research is to investigate the current process through which the City of Los Angeles develops and approves its annual budget, with a particular emphasis on the role of transportation funding within this process. Additionally, the research focuses on ways for community-based organizations to become more effectively involved in the City’s budgeting process. The research methods included professional interviews with city staff involved in or knowledgeable on the budgeting process, as well as focus groups with members of community-based organizations interested in potential budget advocacy. The results of the research revealed a much more complex process than the relatively straightforward timeline presented by the City itself. “Transportation” has a complicated role in the budgeting process because it means many different things to many different people. The report concludes with recommendations for community-based organizations to engage most effectively with the City’s budgeting process. The report also includes an educational tool to be used by the research client organization (Investing in Place) in future budget advocacy coalition-building endeavors.
Annaleigh Yahata Ekman
Client: Nancy Pfeffer, Gateway Cities Council of Governments
This research is focused not on transportation solutions, but on the methods of gathering information on the basic issues that individuals face when it comes to their unmet travel needs. The goal of this research is to identify the best practices to collect data on the unmet travel needs of a neighborhood, particularly for disadvantaged populations, so that decision-makers are intimately familiar with the problem before they try to solve it.
2019 Capstone Projects
C.J. Horvath MURP ’19
Client: Partnering for Change
Los Angeles County is in the midst of a housing affordability crisis. Over half of LA County renters are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing costs. To address the housing crisis, county officials established an affordable housing action plan which contained a set of seven policy recommendations. One of the seven policy recommendations, and the focus is this research, is community land trusts (CLTs). CLTs are communityowned and managed nonprofit organizations that acquire or build housing to preserve it for low- and moderate-income households. CLTs are committed to affordability in perpetuity: Housing under their control remains affordable to low- and moderate-income households in the communities they serve. This research seeks to determine the feasibility of CLTs in the county and what might be done to support them.
Christian Mendez MURP ’19
Client: Kounkuey Design Initiative
The focus of this project is to provide an analysis of rural, low-wage worker housing in the Eastern Coachella Valley, examining the development of mobile home parks in unincorporated communities and how access informs housing choice. As a predominantly agricultural area, this community has developed as four low-density communities that span over the unincorporated region of Riverside County. These communities are formed primarily around isolated mobile home parks that many times lack infrastructure but provide housing for its low-income residents. The issues of housing in this community are complex because along with poor housing conditions comes a lack of alternative housing options. For many of the residents of this community mobile homes parks represent the only form of housing that is available for their families.
The purpose of this research project is to understand the housing conditions for residents of the Eastern Coachella Valley and help provide an analysis of the intersection of housing choice and access. One objective of this analysis is to develop a set of recommendations that’ll help assist local community-based organizations in understanding housing conditions and existing typology.
Robert Gamboa, Gabriela Solis, Eric Schroer, Taylor de Laveaga
Client: California Policy Lab and Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority
This project examines the program design of Measure H Homeless Prevention funding with literature reviews on the national landscape, case studies, service delivery analysis with interviews across Los Angeles County’s eight service planning areas (SPAs), an analysis of the HMIS data, and policy implementation across these eight SPAs. This project aims to inform Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) about prevention enrollee outcomes by service type so they may implement effective and efficient services for homelessness prevention, assist LAHSA in identifying the “on-the-ground” implementation of homeless prevention services to identify “best practices,” and assist LAHSA in uniform policy implementation across each SPA.
Terra Graziani MURP ’19
Client: Los Angeles Center for Community Law and Action
Several studies have established that the subprime crash hit minority and low-income communities disproportionately hard and that since then many of the homes that foreclosed have been bought up by corporate real estate entities who have put these homes on the rental market. But the various continued impacts of the foreclosure crisis on renters is less studied.
This research will look at how renters living in investor-purchased foreclosed properties in Los Angeles County have fared since the subprime crash, looking specifically at what legal protections are in place for these renters and how protections might be strengthened to mitigate the ongoing displacement crisis in the region. It will focus on renters living in foreclosed properties now owned by corporate landlords, highlighting Wedgewood Inc. as a case study. This research will focus on: (1) the geographic distribution of corporate ownership in Los Angeles County; (2) how tenants have fared in these properties – if they are more likely to face frequent evictions, rent hikes, harassment, etc; and (3) a policy analysis of the protections in place to prevent the displacement of tenants like these.
Nichole Heil MURP ’19
Client: Los Angeles Street Vendor Coalition
Los Angeles city officials recently passed a motion and drafted an ordinance for a new permit program to legalize street vending in the city. Previously, street vendors operated illegally, opening vendors up to harassment and criminalization. Many immigrants come to Los Angeles seeking economy mobility for their families and are forced to enter the informal economy by vending to make ends meet. Threats of criminalization, deportation, sexual and physical harassment have made life for vendors historically challenging and dangerous.
A draft ordinance which would regulate the mobility, use of public space, and public health standard to be used by street vendors was recently released. In collaboration with the Los Angeles Street Vendor Coalition, this research uses participatory research methods to work with vendors to make this permit program as accessible and fair as possible.
Dustin Khuu MURP ’19
Client: Los Angeles Department of Transportation
Jordan Downs is a 700-unit public housing site that is currently being redeveloped into a mixed-income urban village. Jordan Downs and the surrounding Watts neighborhood were awarded a $50 million implementation grant from the Transformative Climate Communities (TCC) program that allocates California cap-and-trade funds to support projects for Disadvantaged Communities as classified under CalEnviroScreen 3.0. The Los Angeles Department of Transportation (LADOT) is interested in leveraging TCC grant funding to explore transportation improvements in the area.
This study assesses how community members perceive issues of the built environment, and how these perceptions may influence their transportation mode choice. Funding guidelines for the TCC and Affordable Housing and Sustainable Communities (AHSC) grants were analyzed to create a set of recommendations that would be most feasible for implementation. From the analysis and recommendation, a toolkit was created that would help LADOT conduct further mobility assessments in other communities.
Desiree Lopez, Amy Aguilar, Laurie Millan
In 2014, the United States began to experience an influx of migrant youth arriving from Central America. As a result of this phenomenon schools began enrolling large quantities of Central American migrant youth. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the 2nd largest school district in the country, received an unexpected 24-percent increase in Salvadoran students and a 21-percent increase in Guatemalan students in the 2013-14 school year. Nevertheless, schools remain ill-equipped and unprepared to meet the high needs of this population. These youth must manage a variety of stressors and obstacles that disproportionately impact the learning outcomes of unaccompanied minors. This phenomenon elicits the question: What are the unmet needs of newly arrived Central American immigrant youth in the U.S. education system?
This research is intended to report on the expressed needs and desires of migrant youth in American schools. The aim is to provide a well-formulated research report that can help guide appropriate interventions and responses to Central American migrant student needs. The project will engage youth in a participatory research project so that they are able to report on and provide feedback on their experience as recent arrivals in U.S. academic settings.
Client: Rosewood STEM Magnet of Urban Planning and Urban Design
Rosewood STEM Magnet of Urban Planning and Urban Design (Rosewood STEM Magnet) is a magnet school within the Los Angeles Unified School District. The school recently made the decision to convert to a focus on urban planning and design to engage its students more in learning both about the community and the applicable skills that can be used to shape the built environment. Student education at Rosewood is guided by project-based learning that incorporates urban planning themes within LAUSD education standards. As a relatively new program, teachers are still developing their curricula and finding innovative ways to teach planning concepts to children. While urban planning is a key component of the school, many of the teachers who are building their curricula do not have direct experience in urban planning. The purpose of this research study is to understand the current urban planning curriculum at Rosewood STEM and explore how other groups and programs have made the connection between children and planning.
Contact
Madeline Brozen Deputy Director of Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies Email | (424) 255-8737