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THE VIEW FROM HERE - The time is well past due for us Angelenos to come to our senses and realize that each and every mayoral candidate is incompetent and some are also vicious snakes in the grass.
Step One in Establishing a Treatment Plan for Los Angeles
Unless one diagnosis the cause of the problem, one cannot provide a treatment plan. None of the candidates has provided an accurate analysis how LA got in this mess, and thus, no voter should have any faith that the candidates know how to fix Los Angeles. Rather than add to the news clutter about Mayor Bass and DSA’s favorite child Nithya Raman, let’s look at Adam Miller. (We’ll expose Spencer Pratt later.)
Adam Miller is Clueless
Adam Miller may be a nice guy with good intentions but he is clueless about the causes of LA’s woes. His diagnosis is a long-term decline evidenced by a reduction in jobs and opportunities, decreased public safety, rising homelessness, and a severe lack of affordable housing. Right off the bat, Miller does not distinguish between symptoms and the cause of the symptoms. Basically, Miller says LA is a mess because LA is a mess. We know that! What caused our illness? Miller is clueless.
What Does Miller Offer
Adam Miller made the rookie mistake of hiring incompetents to advise him. His main campaign coordinator appears to be Jaime Sarachit, who has zero experience in political campaigns. When a person launches his candidacy with his long time cohort who comes from the same non-political background as Miller’s corporate experience, it is not surprising neither knows what they are doing. Previously, Sarachit held a high-level communications role at Miller’s former company, Cornerstone OnDemand.
Miller’s and Sarachit’s Fundamental Error
Neither distinguishes between running a gigantic city with a history stretching back to 1781 and working for a start-up tech company. Marketing a product or service to other businesses only requires that the product-service function and make money for the buyers. It does not matter whether the CEO is a troll or a prince. Politics is more emotion than logic. Both Miller and Sarachit have completely ignored presenting Miller as a human being.
Karen Bass’s prevailed over Rick Caruso for more than one reason, but people tend to underestimate her imitation of Queen Elizabeth. Karen Bass was a genius at smiling and waving while repeating bland platitudes. Also, Bass had great depth in politics which gave people confidence that Bass knew what she was doing, while Caruso was merely a developer out to make more money for developers. Also, Caruso’s history of being a Garcetti supporter was a serious demerit.
Back to Miller and Sarachit – What Caused LA’s Decline
In 2001, when Garcetti was elected councilmember for Hollywood’s CD 13, Los Angeles turned a corner into decline. Garcetti’s sole goal was the extreme densification of Hollywood and Los Angeles. As far back as 1915, the results of construction densification, i.e. Garcetti’s Manhattanization, were known – wealth flowing to the top 1% while everyone else became poorer. See 1915 Study of City of Los Angeles see also Can LA Be Saved
Densification increases the value of land as more square footage can be constructed which not only makes money for the developer but more importantly, a lot more money for Wall Street which finances the projects. The more a building is worth the higher the mortgage which generates income for Wall Street for at least 30 years. Densification such as DTLA with Bunker Hill attracts thousands more people than can reasonably access DTLA. Commuters were relegated to live in the Valleys and then each traveled each morning and evening taking as much as 45 minutes each way. Then, Wall Street, which had created the horrible traffic congestion, proposed mass transit so that people could take the subway from Van Nuys to DTLA. Of course, such projects require hundreds of billions of dollars, all of which Wall Street finances. The solution to densification and traffic congestion was known back in 1915 – do not densify DTLA or Century City or any other place. Instead, spread out offices towards the periphery near where people live. Smaller garden type, low rise office buildings throughout the entire LA Metro areas would make certain there were no central cores attracting tens of thousands of workers.
De-centralization and De-densification would have been terrible for Wall Street which made billions of dollars financing30 story high rises and mass transit. When construction was spread out through all of LA, property owners all over the city would make money – certainly not the huge fortunes Wall Street developers made from the Manhattanization of LA, but a reasonable return on investment. Without densification caused massive traffic congestion, there would be no need to squander hundreds of billions of dollars on subways.
Densification also created Homelessness because developers concentrated on buying Rent Controlled Units in order to construct new luxury complexes. Wall Street loved this since it was stuck with many older buildings where landlords had paid off their mortgages, but new construction requires new higher mortgages for the next 30 years. Because Wall Street houses avaricious scoundrels who do not give a damn about quality of life of regular people, Wall Street destroyed RSO projects, knowing that would result in massive homelessness. When a poor person’s home is torn down, where do they live? Under LA’s rent control ordinance, there was never a rent control unit on the market. Every new tenant in a “RSO” project pays the higher market rate and only as the years pass, do they gain the benefit of lower rent increases.
Thus, Wall Street, the developers, and all the city council members knew that densification would result in massive homelessness, but their goal was to keep funds flowing upwards to Wall Street. Wall Street also fraudulently inflated the values of single-family homes – again the higher the supposed values, the greater the mortgages.
All of this has been explained in CityWatch for the last 15 to 20 years, but voters prefer the lie that the lack of construction caused the homeless crisis. Rather it was destruction of poor people’s homes that forced the poor onto the streets. LA has enough vacant high rent units to house every homeless person five times over. See The Lie LA Needs More Housing
What Is Miller’s Solution?
Miller and Sarachit propose to accelerate the rate of densification! Their idea is: if a little arsenic is poison, consume more arsenic faster and that will cure the problem.
(Richard Lee Abrams is a former Los Angeles-based attorney, an author, and political commentator. A long-time contributor to CityWatchLA, he is known for his incisive critiques of City Hall and judicial corruption, as well as his analysis of political and constitutional issues. Abrams blends legal insight with historical and philosophical depth to challenge conventional narratives. A passionate defender of civic integrity and transparency, he aims to expose misuse of power and advocate for systemic reform in local government. You may email him at [email protected])
