California Policy Lab November 2025 Newsletter

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Prop 36 prison admissions: new monthly update

Voters passed Prop 36 in 2024, and it created two new crimes. CPL began publishing a new monthly analysis that shows how many people are admitted to prison each month for these offenses. October Data Point: Prop 36

Hosted research: Utility bills + delinquencies increasing, and reducing SNAP administrative barriers improves financial health

Beyond our own research, CPL also facilitates access to our data infrastructure for other researchers.

1. Average monthly energy costs increased 35% (nearly 3 times overall inflation) from March 2022 to June 2025, while the average overdue balance on utility bills increased 32% since 2022. Morgan, Pierce, Nilaj.

2. Lower SNAP administrative burdens (e.g., flexible interviews and earlier recertification appointments) led to improvements in financial health. Homonoff, Lee, Meckel.

KQED Forum: Is the student loan safety net unraveling?

Evan White, executive director of CPL’s UC Berkeley site, spoke about CPL’s recent research on student loan delinquencies surging while other financial health indictors also worsened. White was joined by Julie Margetta Morgan from The Century Foundation and Mike Pierce from Protect Borrowers. Full broadcast

Panel discussion: bridging the divide between researchers and policymakers

Evan White spoke on this panel at the Science for Health Policy Summit. White and other panelists discussed strategies for researchers informing policymaking through research. Recordings of panels

Economic data that wasn’t collected during shutdown

Jesse Rothstein, faculty director of CPL’s UC Berkeley site, and former Chief Economist at the Dept. of Labor, was interviewed about the implications of key economic data not being collected during the government shutdown.

How Sacramento State is mobilizing to address college student hunger

This article provides an in-depth look at Sacramento State’s new Basic Needs Center that opened two weeks before the government shutdown, and how campus leaders pivoted to support students amid the shutdown. Both this article and an accompanying one (Food aid is back but SNAP shutdown scare weighs on California college students) cite CPL estimates.

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