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New Report: COVID-19 Job Losses Will Worsen L.A. Homelessness by 2023

COVID-driven loss of jobs and employment income will cause the number of homeless workers to increase each year through 2023. Without large-scale, government employment programs the Pandemic Recession is projected to cause twice as much homelessness as the 2008 Great Recession.

In a new report with the Economic Roundtable, titled Locked Out – Unemployment and Homelessness in the Covid Economy, we use data from the 2008 Great Recession to estimate the linkage between job loss and homelessness. The amount and type of pandemic-driven homelessness in Los Angeles, California, and the United States will significantly increase, driven by large-scale job losses during the Pandemic Recession. Continue reading “New Report: COVID-19 Job Losses Will Worsen L.A. Homelessness by 2023”

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Small Cities vs. Large Cities: An Interview with WalletHub

For high wage earners, the advantage of being at a more productive job usually outweighs the added cost of living. For residents further down the income distribution, the large cities are becoming increasingly unaffordable. As a result, Americans have been increasingly segregating by income, with the high wage earners moving to the large cities and the low wage earners moving to the small cities. This is not good for society, and it’s not sustainable in the long run.

That’s a snippet of my new interview with WalletHub, where they ask me five questions about small cities in America. Click on the link to hear more about their pros, their cons, and their future.

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When Disaster Strikes: How COVID-19 Broke the Economy and How the Next Generation Can Fix It

This week, I presented an update on the ongoing recession to students at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, as part of the University Library’s lecture series. It draws parallels from the Great Recession to the COVID-19 recession and provides tangible, evidence-based recommendations to improve the economy now and in the future for recessions to come. Click below to watch for yourself.

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What the Pandemic Taught Us About the Homeless — and What We Shouldn’t Forget

The streets of our cities have been too empty and too full.

Emptied of cars and pedestrians, the streets of the pandemic became eerie still frames of an economy on pause. And yet, as we venture back to our sidewalks and storefronts, we are reminded that our streets also are a home, an imperfect and unsustainable haven for the transient masses we call “the homeless.” Never has it been starker than in the vacuum of social distancing that they are there, the only people who remained when all others retreated to the safety of their homes.

Thus begins my latest op-ed, co-authored with Thomas Hugh Byrne from Boston University and Benjamin F. Henwood from the University of Southern California, originally published in The Hill.

To read the full op-ed, click here.