Institute on Inequality and Democracy

Well before the COVID-19 pandemic, Los Angeles was a hotspot of growing homelessness and severe housing insecurity for renter households. A stark manifestation of race and class inequality, this crisis is now set to get much worse. This UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy report, UD Day: Impending Evictions and Homelessness in Los Angeles, authored by Gary Blasi, Professor Emeritus at UCLA Law, projects a surge in evictions and homelessness that will follow the lifting of COVID-19 emergency orders. As argued in the report, and as repeatedly noted by community organizations and legal and policy advocates, such devastation could have been avoided through robust tenant protections, rent relief, and eviction moratoria at local, state, and federal levels of government. The first publication in our Housing Justice in the Time of COVID-19 series, the report foregrounds the urgency of organizing and pressing public officials at all levels of government to plan and prepare for a potential humanitarian disaster of hunger and homelessness on a scale not seen in any urban area of any industrialized country in the past 90 years.