Recent lewis_reports items

Upzoning for Opportunity: Evaluating Feasibility of Low-Rise Multifamily in California’s High-Resource Single-Family Neighborhoods

Wed, 22 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This report evaluates a proposal from Our Future Los Angeles that would allow developers to build five to 10 units on parcels with single-family houses in higher-opportunity neighborhoods throughout California. It also mandates that developers include affordable units or pay an in-lieu fee.

"Stop” and Think about It: How the Different Interpretations of What Counts as a “Major Transit Stop" in California Make a Difference

Fri, 6 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“Major transit stop”: how these three words are defined determines what can be built where, throughout much of California. In order to address housing supply constraints, the state legislature has enacted a number of laws that streamline approval and remove zoning constraints in areas close to high-quality transit. But what, exactly, is a “major transit stop”? Planners, developers, and elected officials construe the sparse definition in state law in many ways — though genuine interpretive disagreement, due to modeling and data constraints, and/or in order to serve political goals of encouraging or stymying development. Differences in interpreting the definition of “major transit stop” collectively make a big difference in what areas are covered by state zoning incentives. A maximal approach to defining “major transit stop” grows the eligible area by over three times more than a minimal approach. The area within half a mile of a major transit stop has generally increased over time....

Capturing Transit Rider Perspectives on Safety and Harassment: Lessons from San Francisco

Thu, 5 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Personal safety concerns continue to be one of the most critical issues among transit riders and women and gender minorities in particular. These safety concerns stem from the experience of sexual harassment that people who identify as women face frequently. While harassment can be a common occurrence, the vast majority of these experiences go unreported to transit agencies, leaving agencies without information about the magnitude of this problem on their system. This report details work with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) in their efforts to understand and address this problem. The SFMTA, working with two UCLA graduate students, designed a survey that drew from previous survey efforts and was tailored to address their interests and needs. This report documents the process of developing and deploying the questionnaire, in an effort to help other agencies take the first steps to better understanding rider safety and harassment. Through breaking down SFMTA’s...

Professional Drivers: Automobile Debt and Financial Support During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Thu, 5 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This report synthesizes three primary data sources—credit data, unemployment claims data, and small business loan and grant data—to explore the financial conditions of those who drive for a living before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in California. Automobile debt was high among groups likely to contain professional drivers. The occupational categories in which many drivers fall had high absolute and relative levels of automobile debt compared to other workers. After the onset of the pandemic, unemployment rose dramatically in the transportation industry and in transportation occupations, peaking at rates higher than the national average. However, state unemployment claims data, among transportation employee claimants only, show less of a spike. Contractor drivers lived in areas with more Pandemic Unemployment Assistance claims, a special program for self-employed workers like gig drivers. Finally, contractor drivers received unprecedented but uneven federal small business...

Cracking The Code: Reclaiming Building Standards for Public Interest

Mon, 5 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Cracking The Code: Reclaiming Building Standards for Public Interest

A Path Forward for Transit Rider Experience and Safety: Lessons from the LA Metro Ambassador Pilot Program

Tue, 23 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A growing number of U.S. transit agencies are adding transit ambassadors to their systems to improve the customer service and safety experience for passengers. These personnel can play a variety of different roles, including providing wayfinding, system navigation, fare payment support, and other passenger support roles that enhance the customer experience. This research examines the Los Angeles Metro’s transit ambassador program, which began as a pilot in 2022 and is moving in-house in 2025 as a permanent program. Ambassadors provide key customer service functions that are not filled elsewhere. Ambassadors spend most of their time with vital, basic tasks of orienting and aiding riders; they also assist with the first level of homelessness response, with crisis de-escalation, and by administering Narcan to prevent overdoses. Broadly, they provide more eyes on the system and offer a highly visible presence to riders. Training during the pilot period was customer-service oriented...

The Equity and Policy Implications of Long-Distance Commuting in the Greater Los Angeles Region

Mon, 15 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The phenomenon of very long commutes, or “super-commutes,” has long interested the public, planners, elected officials, and researchers. US researchers define super-commuting as one-way commutes over 50 miles or 90 minutes. We draw on multiple data sources to examine the prevalence, characteristics, and location of super-commuters in the greater Los Angeles region. We then use individual and household data to examine super-commuting and housing and transportation (H+T) expenditure burdens in California. We find that super-commuters are a relatively small, albeit growing, share of workers in the greater Los Angeles region who are more likely to be higher-income than other workers. Low-income super-commuters are about six times as likely as higherincome super-commuters to travel by bus. Across all income groups, super-commuter households have slightly higher H+T burdens than non-super-commuter households. However, the contribution of super-commuting to the H+T expenditure burden...

The Impact of Residential Mobility on Segregation in California

Wed, 10 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this report, we assess whether and how residential mobility contributes to enduring patterns of residential segregation and unequal access to opportunity-rich neighborhoods. This analysis makes use of a new dataset to explore the relationship of moving patterns over time to segregation in a way that was not previously possible and concludes by discussing possible policy responses.

Building Renter Wealth: An Evaluation of Shared Prosperity Rental (SPR) Housing Program Design and Feasibility

Wed, 3 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This study set out to explore the potential feasibility of a novel housing model, one that we at the UCLA Lewis Center call shared prosperity rental (SPR) housing. The Lewis Center engaged real estate analytics firm MapCraft Inc. to build a real estate financial pro forma model that could represent the financial performance of various SPR approaches. This pro forma modeling exercise was intended to illustrate how an SPR housing program could be designed to build tenant wealth, and the results should be understood as highly speculative. This report presents the Lewis Center’s interpretation of this study’s results, which rest on the generous contributions of reviewers and MapCraft. The views and opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the contributors, who are in no way responsible for the final publication or any errors therein.

Social Housing in France: Lessons for California and Beyond

Wed, 29 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

One hundred years after its first boom, social housing is again capturing the attention of advocates and governments around the world. This report provides a detailed description of the French social housing system as a reference point for governments that seek to create their own, with a discussion of financing, landlord–developers, rent setting, residents, and recent reforms. About 600 social housing landlords, both public and nonprofit, have been building nearly one-third of the country’s housing in recent decades using long-term loans, their own equity, and local subsidies. The system’s main ingredients are the large public savings account that funds these loans, the cost-rental model, employer contributions, and direct rental assistance to support lowincome households. France is a useful global model for its successes — the system is both large and growing, proving resilient in a diverse and contentious political context — and its limitations — it has inefficiencies and a...

Fire Resilient LA: Solano Canyon

Fri, 24 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Fire Resilient LA: Solano Canyon

The Consequences of Measure ULA: Some Clarifications

Tue, 19 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This report responds to criticisms of two earlier UCLA Lewis Center reports, both of which evaluated the effects of Measure ULA, a real estate transfer tax implemented in the City of Los Angeles in April 2023. We show that these criticisms are misguided. No social science research is perfect, but there is no reason to think our earlier reports are fundamentally flawed. We also examine a key claim made by the critics, which is that Measure ULA has already created 10,000 union construction jobs. We show that this claim is almost certainly untrue.

Taxing Tomorrow: Measure ULA's Impact on Multifamily Housing Production and Potential Reforms

Fri, 11 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Measure ULA is a ballot initiative that increases real estate transfer taxes on sales of high-value properties in the City of Los Angeles. Revenues are dedicated to subsidized housing development and preservation, rent assistance, and similar efforts. Permitting for new multifamily housing has fallen sharply since Measure ULA went into effect in April 2023. Many blame the tax for this decline, but it could be caused by other changes to the housing market and macroeconomic conditions over the past two years. In this report we establish a robust causal linkage between Measure ULA and housing development, providing empirical evidence that the transfer tax is reducing multifamily production in Los Angeles.

The Unintended Consequences of Measure ULA

Tue, 1 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We present evidence suggesting that Measure ULA has reduced higher-end real estate transactions in Los Angeles. Since Measure ULA was enacted, the odds of a Los Angeles property selling at a price above its tax threshold have fallen by as much as 50%. In raw terms, this sharp decline occurred across all types of properties, but our strongest evidence suggests it was particularly pronounced for non-single family transactions, which fell by 30-50%. Together the evidence suggests that Measure ULA is neither a true “Mansion Tax,” nor a tax that falls solely on unearned property wealth. The tax does fall on mansions, but it also impedes the trade in commercial, industrial and multifamily property. In doing so it jeopardizes L.A.’s ability to build new housing, revitalize struggling commercial and industrial properties, and raise property tax revenue. All these processes rely on property turnover, and in particular the turnover of higher-priced, non-single family parcels. A tax...

CHIPing In: Evaluating the effect's of LA's Citywide Housing Incentive Program on neighborhood development potential

Fri, 15 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

CHIPing In: Evaluating the effect's of LA's Citywide Housing Incentive Program on neighborhood development potential

The Fair Housing Land Use Score in California: An Evaluation of 199 Municipal Plans

Wed, 13 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Most local governments in California have finalized their 2021–2029/2022–2030 housing plans. These plans must identify parcels with capacity to add new housing, and unlike previous plans, state law now mandates that they affirmatively further fair housing. State guidelines suggest that local governments identify or create capacity for new housing, especially for low-income households, in high-opportunity neighborhoods. In this report, we assess whether local governments followed these guidelines by analyzing the site inventories adopted by 199 California cities before April 2024. We do this using the Fair Housing Land Use Score (FHLUS), which measures the distribution of housing sites by neighborhood opportunity, using metrics such as household incomes and environmental quality. We can thereby answer the question, are cities meeting their fair housing obligations? The answer is no. Most cities (roughly 80%) disproportionately plan for new housing in their least affluent neighborhoods...

Lessons from California's Homekey Program: Adding Affordable Housing by Buying Market-Rate Apartment Buildings

Fri, 1 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Lessons from California's Homekey Program: Adding Affordable Housing by Buying Market-Rate Apartment Buildings

Bicycle and Pedestrian Counts in Cudahy: Results from Automated Counts in 2013-2014

Tue, 6 Dec 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Bicycle and Pedestrian Counts in Cudahy: Results from Automated Counts in 2013-2014

Understanding Transportation Programs and Services at California Community Colleges

Fri, 18 Nov 2022 00:00:00 +0000

High transportation costs and access barriers can make it difficult for community college students to manage employment, household responsibilities, and education, negatively affecting their academic success. Understanding the state of existing transportation services and programs at California community colleges is a first step to addressing these barriers. We inventoried the transportation services, programs, and costs at 115 of the 116 California community colleges as advertised on each campus’ website. We found that most community colleges offer some form of parking or public transit student subsidies but little else. Due to the state education code, parking costs were similar across campuses. In contrast, transit pass costs varied from $0 to more than $100 per semester. On average, students paid more for transit passes than for parking permits. Throughout the search process, information on the campus’ transportation programs and services was difficult to locate since each...

How Will the Measure ULA Transfer Tax Initiative Impact Housing Production in Los Angeles?

Fri, 14 Oct 2022 00:00:00 +0000

How Will the Measure ULA Transfer Tax Initiative Impact Housing Production in Los Angeles?

Housing And Community Development In California: An In-Depth Analysis of the Facts, Origins and Trends of Housing and Community Development in California

Tue, 6 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

California’s housing crisis is not just one thing. There are myriad crises, and they are interconnected: housing cost burdens, household instability and homelessness, racial segregation, economic inequality, health disparities, and climate change are all exacerbated by California’s inability to build sufficient housing (especially for lower-income households) and ensure that new supply is fairly distributed across communities and in ways that reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Every day, there’s a news story of people leaving the state for cheaper places, of a renter doing their best to stave off an eviction, or of a community struggling with gentrification and displacement. The politics of housing in the state also sometimes feel intractable: cities continue to rely on exclusionary zoning tactics to thwart new supply, while developers, labor unions, NIMBYs, YIMBYs, and tenant advocates all stake out opposing views of what is needed to solve the crisis. All of this contributes to...

The Future of Housing and Community Development: A California 100 Report on Policies and Future Scenarios

Tue, 6 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A Primer on California's "Builder's Remedy" for Housing-Element Noncompliance

Thu, 28 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

A Primer on California's "Builder's Remedy" for Housing-Element Noncompliance

Green Open Space and Physical Activity for Seniors: A Post-Occupancy Evaluation of Golden Age Park

Thu, 7 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Green Open Space and Physical Activity for Seniors: A Post-Occupancy Evaluation of Golden Age Park

Improving Access to Outdoor Dining Opportunities: Analyzing the Constraints of LA Al Fresco

Wed, 16 Mar 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Improving Access to Outdoor Dining Opportunities: Analyzing the Constraints of LA Al Fresco

Building Up the "Zoning Buffer": Using Broad Upzones to Increase Housing Capacity Without Increasing Land Values

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

U.S. cities spent much of the middle and late 20th century reducing capacity for new housing through extensive downzoning, leading to a shortage of homes and rising prices in high-demand locations. To combat this, many cities and states are now reversing course and upzoning to allow higher-density housing, usually in targeted locations such as individual neighborhoods or corridors. While these targeted upzones have increased housing production in some cases, they have also led to higher land prices that erode the affordability of new homes. In this paper I introduce the concept of the “zoning buffer” — the gap between the existing housing stock and the maximum number of homes allowed by current zoning — and describe how it affects land values and ultimately the production and affordability of housing. When upzoning produces a large zoning buffer, land values should not increase substantially because land with redevelopment potential is no longer scarce; property owners lack the...

Creating Common Ground: Opportunities for Intergenerational Use of Public Spaces in Disinvested Communities

Wed, 17 Nov 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Creating Common Ground: Opportunities for Intergenerational Use of Public Spaces in Disinvested Communities

What Gets Built on Sites That Cities "Make Available" for Housing?

Thu, 26 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

What Gets Built on Sites That Cities "Make Available" for Housing?

Value Capture Reconsidered: What if L.A. was Actually Building Too Little?

Thu, 17 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Should cities only allow new housing on the condition that the developers of that housing deliver public benefits in return? This idea is often called “value capture”, and is used to justify — among other things — various forms of inclusionary zoning. I argue in this essay that value capture is conceptually and logically flawed. It rests on the idea that new housing is not by itself a public benefit, and on the assumption that not building housing is socially harmless. Most of all, it inverts one of the most important insights in urban economics and urban public finance: that value rests primarily in land, and that development is an important way to share and redistribute land value. Value capture mechanisms that are triggered by development tacitly punish landowners who share land value, and tacitly reward owners who withhold it. The fair and efficient approach to value capture involves taxing land, not development, and encouraging rather than discouraging the production of new...

Access to Child Care in Los Angeles County: Recent Trends and COVID-19 Implications

Tue, 8 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Access to Child Care in Los Angeles County: Recent Trends and COVID-19 Implications

Mapping Yesterday's Police Activity at UCLA

Tue, 4 May 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Mapping Yesterday's Police Activity at UCLA

Housing Demolition and Redevelopment in Los Angeles

Tue, 30 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Housing Demolition and Redevelopment in Los Angeles

Research Roundup: The Effect of Market-Rate Development on Neighborhood Rents

Thu, 18 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Research Roundup: The Effect of Market-Rate Development on Neighborhood Rents

Regional Housing Need in California: The San Francisco Bay Area

Mon, 1 Feb 2021 00:00:00 +0000

This report evaluates California’s official housing target for the San Francisco Bay Area. While the Bay Area received a substantially larger target for the upcoming planning cycle than it had in the previous cycle, the relative increase in the Bay Area target was a lot smaller than that for the state’s other major metropolitan region, Los Angeles, which forms part of the Southern California Association of Governments. We argue that the Bay Area’s lower target reflects, in part, the state’s failure to account for the fact that the Bay Area leads the nation in supercommuters, many of whom work in the Bay Area but have been driven by the region’s housing shortage to live outside of it. State law requires an adjustment for regional “jobs-housing imbalance,” yet none was made. The Bay Area target was also deflated by the Association of Bay Area Governments’ choice of “comparator regions,” a choice which presupposed that the Bay Area should be benchmarked against similarly housing-supply-constrained...

Access to Opportunities Primer

Wed, 27 Jan 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Access to Opportunities Primer

“I Would, If Only I Could” How Cities Can Use California’s Housing Element to Overcome Neighborhood Resistance to New Housing

Mon, 14 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

City councils are on the front lines of California’s housing crisis. But local lawmakers who understand that California needs to accommodate a lot more housing are stuck in a political bind. Wherever they might put new housing, neighborhood groups spring up and oppose it. The same groups will have money to spend or voters to turn out at the next election. What’s a well-meaning city councilperson to do? Our answer: California’s “housing element” process provides a way forward. California requires cities to periodically adopt a state-approved plan, called a housing element, which accommodates the city’s share of regional housing need. These plans are reviewed and certified for compliance by the state Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD). Cities across the state will adopt new housing elements between 2020 and 2022, guiding development for the next eight years. This process hasn’t always worked well in the past, but the legislature and HCD have recently strengthened...

COVID-19 and Renter Distress: Evidence from Los Angeles

Mon, 31 Aug 2020 00:00:00 +0000

COVID-19 and Renter Distress: Evidence from Los Angeles

A Call For Real Estate Transfer Tax Reform

Wed, 22 Jul 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Municipal revenues have been hit hard by the COVID-19-driven economic slowdown, forcing governments to identify new sources of funding or enact steep service cuts. Cuts of approximately $1 billion for Los Angeles County and up to $600 million for the city of Los Angeles are anticipated, with further reductions possible as the economic fallout comes into sharper focus. Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, California local governments have been restricted in their options for raising revenue. This has led to an overreliance on regressive sales taxes and an inequitable distribution of property tax burden, among other challenges. Reforms to the real estate transfer tax, which is assessed when properties are sold or otherwise change ownership, are an effective and equitable solution to immediate budget needs, while also supporting important long-term priorities including affordable housing and tenant assistance.

Transit Blues in the Golden State: Analyzing Recent California Ridership Trends

Mon, 29 Jun 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Transit patronage plunged staggeringly, from 50 to as much as 94 percent, during the first half of 2020 amidst the worst global pandemic in a century. But transit’s troubles in California date much earlier. From 2014 to 2018, California lost over 165 million annual boardings, a drop of over 11 percent. This report examines public transit in California in the 2010s and the factors behind its falling ridership. We find that ridership gains and losses have been asymmetric with respect to location, operators, modes, and transit users. Transit ridership has been on a longer-term decline in regions like Greater Los Angeles and on buses, while ridership losses in the Bay Area are more recent. While overall transit boardings across the state are down since 2014, worrisome underlying trends date back earlier as patronage failed to keep up with population growth. But reduced transit service is not responsible for ridership losses, as falling transit ridership occurred at the same time as...

Parks for Seniors: Identifying Opportunity Sites in Los Angeles