Why do we choose to pay so much for medical care? The US spends about a trillion dollars a year on medical care with no medical benefit. Why? There are many reasons, but at least $105 billion of them involve prices that are too high. With that much money at stake it’s worth asking what […]
Monthly Archives: March 2016
Restrictive zoning rules that allow for racially and economically homogenous neighborhoods are ruining the American dream for everyone. The number of neighborhoods with mixed class and cultural backgrounds are shrinking. Los Angeles is the most segregated city in America for white and Hispanic populations. African-American and white residential segregation has somewhat improved, but as […]
In 2005 Stephanie and Chris Chambers, an African-American couple in their 50s, finally achieved their long-cherished dream of buying a home. But because the home they could afford was miles from any job that would pay well, they found themselves commuting 4-6 hours a day—each. After three years of waking their 3 kids at O-Dark-Thirty for […]
Ron Finley has been busy digging up a new future for LA. His urban guerilla gardening, featured in a TED talk, encourages kids in South Central LA to help him produce beautiful vegetables from unused bits of land around LA, proving that you can make silk from a sow’s ear after all. Ron, who initially […]
It’s easy to assume that homeless people need a house—but sometimes they need a lawyer even more. Many people associate homelessness with mental health or drug abuse problems. However, there is a large number of families – most with children – who become homeless not because of their health, but because of illegal and […]
Lately I’ve been thinking about how LA has been bad with job creation, and I wonder if there’s a connection to housing. The above graph is from an UCLA Andersen Forecast that is a few years old. More recent data put LA in the middle of the pack, but still not great. What’s worse is […]
To promote the conditions of health, we have to tackle housing. A recent report from the California Legislative Analyst’s Office, takes note of the housing shortage in California and finds, among other things, that: Between 1980 and 2010 construction of new housing units in LA and San Francisco grew by only 20%, compared to the […]
We hear it all the time. If we eat our fruits and vegetables it will help decrease our waistline and increase our overall health. However, many low-income and middle-income populations cannot afford these healthy foods, instead opting for packaged, processed foods that aren’t so good for their health. But what would happen to their health […]