Tag Archives: City Council

Speaking Out on the Housing Crisis

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Housing is the hottest issue in California right now. Here in LA housing costs continue to climb, the pace of evictions is quickening, and the number of homeless is increasing by leaps and bounds. The folks at City Hall talk a lot about taking action, but nothing they’ve done so far has had any significant impact. The situation just keeps getting worse.

So a group of housing advocates, homeless advocates, and renters’ rights advocates decided to stage a protest on Fairfax last Friday. They put up a line of tents along the curb to dramatize the plight of those who are currently homeless, and also the thousands more who will likely become homeless in the next few years.

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Protesters lined up on Fairfax.

The media showed up with their cameras to cover this tent city press conference. The organizers called on Mayor Garcetti and the City Council to develop a plan to create affordable housing, ensure responsible development, and expand rent control.

A number of people spoke about different aspects of the crisis. Victor García, a recent graduate of UCSB, talked about the invisible problem of student homelessness. He told the crowd about UCLA students living in their cars because they couldn’t afford student housing and apartments in Westwood were way beyond their reach. García would like to see an end to California’s Costa-Hawkins act, which the limits the expansion of rent control.

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Victor Garcia speaks about student homelessness.

Emily Martiniuk told her own story, a harrowing account of being evicted at age 59 and having nowhere to go. Contemplating suicide, she had the presence of mind to check herself into Olive View Medical Center, and eventually was able to move into a permanent supportive housing facility. She escaped long-term homelessness, but there are tens of thousands of people on the streets of LA right now who weren’t so lucky. Martiniuk has travelled the US in recent years, speaking about the importance of creating more permanent supportive housing.

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Emily Martiniuk is a vocal advocate for permanent supportive housing.

As cars drove by on Fairfax, protesters stood at the curb holding signs and chanting slogans. Just before I left I heard them shouting, “Tent city! Do something, Garcetti!” Hopefully somebody at City Hall is listening. It would be great if the Mayor and the City Council finally did decide to do something about this crisis.

HP Tents

Inept or Corrupt? Does It Matter?

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Construction on the Wilshire Grand in Downtown LA.

Construction on the Wilshire Grand in Downtown LA.

Last week City Controller Ron Galperin published an audit detailing the City’s record on collecting and spending development impact fees. As I read the press release, it’s hard to say whether I was more shocked or angry. The upshot is that the City of LA is failing to collect tens of millions of dollars in fees from developers, and it’s not even spending the money that has been collected. Here’s the lead from the press release.

City Controller Ron Galperin issued an audit that found the City of Los Angeles is failing to exercise its power to charge citywide development impact fees, which State law says can be collected from developers to mitigate their projects’ impacts on neighborhoods and defray the costs of public facilities and infrastructure, such as roads, bridges, libraries, parks and police stations.

I have to ask, What the hell is wrong with out elected officials?! Are they so inept they don’t realize that we can and should collect this money? Or have they gotten so much campaign cash from developers that they feel compelled to let them off the hook when it comes to charging legitimate fees? Either way, these revelations are shocking. This City’s infrastructure is crumbling, we’re seeing an avalanche of new development which is putting an even greater strain on roads, water and public services, and the people at City Hall aren’t even asking for money that we need to address these problems.

The whole thing is just mind-boggling. Here’s another paragraph from the press release.

In preparing their report, auditors in Galperin’s office compared Los Angeles with other western cities. In FY 2013-14, San Francisco had $3.6 billion in permitted construction and collected $96 million in impact fees. Portland had $1.5 billion in permitted construction and collected $31 million. Meanwhile, Los Angeles had $5.3 billion in permitted construction but collected less than $5 million in impact fees. Based on these numbers, auditors said Los Angeles had the potential to collect tens of millions of dollars more in fees.

So even though the value of permitted projects in LA was greater than San Francisco and Portland put together, our local government collected less than 5% of the total fees received by those two cities. Again, I’m shaking my head in disbelief.

Recently Mayor Garcetti made a show of announcing a program to collect linkage fees from developers to fund affordable housing. But in 2011 the City hired a consultant to produce a report which showed that LA could be collecting between $37 million and $112 million annually. Why have our elected officials taken so long to act? It’s going to take at least another year for the City Council to enact this program, and during that time we’ll lose out on many more millions.

Here’s a quote from the letter that Galperin sent to the Mayor with the audit.

The City of Los Angeles’ approach to collecting and spending impact fees to date has been haphazard and most often neighborhood-specific rather than Citywide, as is customary in some other localities, and sometimes, not sensible. No central entity has been responsible for monitoring the fees. And key officials from various City departments told auditors they did not know what other departments were charging.

This City has so many pressing needs, and we’re constantly told by our elected officials that we don’t have the money to address those needs. But according to Galperin’s office, we’ve had the ability to access a major revenue stream that City Hall has almost completely ignored. It’s insane.

If you want to look at the audit, here’s the link.

Audit of Development Impact Fees

And after reading the audit, you might want to call your City Council rep and ask why we didn’t start collecting these fees years ago.

No Need to Get the Public Involved

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Twin Towers Correctional Facility near Downtown LA

Twin Towers Correctional Facility near Downtown LA

Last week the LA County Board of Supervisors voted to approve the construction of two new jails, at a combined cost of more than $1 billion. By itself, this probably doesn’t seem too alarming, since the County has been facing severe criticism over the conditions in its jails for years. But in their rush to approve these projects, the Supervisors forgot one little detail. Somehow they neglected to let the public know that this item was coming up for a vote.

These projects have been under consideration for a while, and the need to fix this problem is very real. But the agenda posted before the meeting says absolutely nothing about taking action on this issue. The agenda did mention that a proposal to transfer mentally ill prisoners to a different facility was going to be discussed, and they’re claiming that the vote to approve the jails was related business. What a joke. The public was completely bypassed. There was no serious debate. The three alternatives considered were not properly analyzed. This is a travesty. And aside from being a travesty, it’s totally illegal. The Brown Act requires elected representatives to give adequate notice for any item they plan to take action on.

The Board has had transparency problems before. Back in 2011 it held a secret meeting with Gov. Jerry Brown to discuss the transfer of mentally ill prisoners, which triggered a lawsuit by Californians Aware. Last year the Board refused to turn over records detailing payments to private lawyers who had defended the Sheriff’s Department in excessive force cases.

But the County isn’t alone in its efforts to shut the public out. The sad fact is, this kind of thing is common practice for our elected officials and government agencies. The City of LA has a less than stellar record when it comes to public participation. City agencies hold public meetings, declaring that they want to hear from the citizens, but often these meetings are so poorly publicized that nobody knows about them. They scheduled a series of five open forums on re:code LA, a massive overhaul of the City’s zoning code. I did receive notice of the meetings. Unfortunately it didn’t arrive until the first three had already taken place. I wasn’t able to attend the last two. I still remember the meeting held by the Housing and Community Investment Department a while ago in Pacoima. The purpose of the meeting was supposedly to get input from the community on how to use millions of dollars in federal funding. Only about 20 people showed up, and they were all either city employees or reps for non-profits. Why were there no citizens from the communities that might benefit from the funding? It came out during the meeting that the HCID had neglected to contact local groups within these communities in order to help publicize the event. They hadn’t even distributed flyers within the areas under discussion.

It happens at the regional level, too. Earlier this year the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) announced a series of open houses to get comment on their Regional Transportation Plan/Sustainable Communities Strategy (RTP/SCS). I bet a lot of people would’ve liked to attend. Unfortunately, all but one of the meetings were scheduled during working hours, meaning anybody with a job would have to take time off to be there. On top of that, of the six open houses planned, none of them were located in the City of LA. In other words, there wasn’t going to be a single meeting within the boundaries of the largest city that SCAG serves. SCAG took some heat for this, and they did end up scheduling three more meetings. But why do we have to put the screws on just to have our voices heard?

This is really maddening. These people are supposed to be serving us. Instead, they’re routinely shutting the public out of discussion on important issues. And with the Board of Supervisors voting to spend $1 billion without even putting the item on the agenda, we seem to be hitting a new low.

If you want to contact your Supervisor to let them know how you feel about this, here’s the link.

Board of Supervisors

Criminalizing Homelessness

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Once again our elected officials have shown us how little they really care about improving the quality of life in LA. On Tuesday the City Council passed two ordinances to make it easier to get rid of homeless encampments. Gil Cedillo cast the only dissenting vote. All the others fell right in line.

I totally understand that there are serious health and safety issues with the homeless camps that have been springing up all over LA. I know we have to deal with this. But as usual, the City Council has chosen to attack the symptoms rather than try to address the cause.

The reason people are living in tents is because we have an appalling shortage of affordable housing. The Mayor and the City Council continue to back to developers that want to build pricy condos and high-end apartments, but they seem to have no interest in providing homes for anyone besides the rich. Their meager efforts to build affordable housing are pathetic. LA real estate is being sucked up by developers with deep pockets who only care about maximizing their profits. In the past few years they’ve created thousands of new units that go from $2,000 a month on up into the stratosphere. And these same developers have taken thousands of rent-controlled units off the market as they demolish or refurbish older buildings.

According to the LA Times, the City’s homeless population currently stands at 26,000, a 12% increase over the past two years. This problem is not going away. It’s getting worse. Councilmember Cedillo makes the point that the vast majority of the funds the City spends on homelessness go toward law enforcement. This is crazy. The police can’t solve this problem.

Now you may be asking, can anyone solve this problem? The answer is yes. Follow the link below to an article from the LA Times about how Utah is dealing with chronic homelessness. They’ve made huge progress, and the state is actually saving money by providing housing for people who’ve been living on the streets.

Utah Is Winning the War on Chronic Homelessness

Of course, LA is not Utah. And I don’t mean to imply that there is a simple solution. But we could do a hell of a lot more than we’re doing now. And we need to start by making a serious effort to provide affordable housing.

For more info on the ordinances passed by the City Council, here’s a link to the story in the Times.

Vote Makes It Easier to Clear Homeless Camps

Furious

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I can’t describe how angry I am over the LA City Council’s vote to approve the Millennium Hollywood project. After Caltrans contacted the city to ask why none of its concerns over traffic were addressed in the Final EIR. After the California Geological Survey wrote to say they believe an active fault line runs beneath the project area. After months of pleas from angry residents who do not want these towers. The City Council and the Mayor choose to ignore all of that and forge ahead.

It’s obvious they don’t care about the safety of Hollywood’s residents. It’s obvious they don’t care how much time LA’s citizens spend sitting in traffic. And it’s obvious they don’t care that state agencies have expressed serious reservations about this project. But their lack of concern shouldn’t surprise us, since they’ve demonstrated over and over again that their primary concern is representing the interests of developers and unions.

I think it’s time we asked the state to step in. Caltrans has said the project will seriously impact the Hollywood Freeway, making a bad situation even worse. The California Geological Survey has expressed concern about an active fault line. I think we need to contact our representatives on the State Legislature and ask them to get involved. The city has shown a total disregard for the state’s input on this project. We need to ask the State of California to take action.