LOS ANGELES

EDUCATION POLITICS-Right up there with motherhood and apple pie is the notion of a vibrant, functional public education system in which everything is done to find and keep the best teachers. But nothing could be further from the truth in the current public education environment that, over the last 7 years, has been openly hostile to teachers -- especially the more expensive high seniority teachers.

Senate Bill 807, “The Recruitment and Retention Act of 2017,” proposed by Senators Henry Stern and Cathleen Galgiani as "a first step to support teachers in a meaningful way," seems to be living in a universe of alternative facts that bears no resemblance to present reality, namely that the public education system has been targeting high seniority teachers at the top of the salary scale for the sole "crime" of being too expensive.

"SB 807 would recruit novice teachers to the profession by providing a tax credit for graduate school and credentialing exam costs. Plus, it [purports to] honor experienced teachers in the classroom for more than five years by eliminating their state income taxes from 2017-2027 -- the equivalent of a 4-6 percent raise."

The question that suspiciously goes unaddressed is why is there a chronic shortage of public education teachers in the first place? To address this question one need only look at a school district like LAUSD or any one of the hundreds around the state and the country that have systematically targeted expensive high seniority teachers. This has caused these districts to hemorrhage thousands of teachers, creating the problem SB 807 now purports to deal with.

Looking carefully at the facts, one can see that the war on these teachers coincides with the hemorrhaging of students to equally abysmal charter schools, taking with them their state-funded Average Daily Attendance and other state and federal payments. This has put districts like LAUSD on the verge of bankruptcy. Their solution? Target and get rid of the best seasoned teachers to balance the budget and continue to collude with corporate charter operators. Remember, Betsy DeVos didn’t come from nowhere. 

SB 807 proposes a tax credit for all money spent toward acquiring a credential or certificate or for offering senior teachers with more than 5 years teaching experience exemption from state taxes. This is similar to treating the self-inflicted disease of public school privatization with charters, instead of addressing the underlying disease, which is charter schools that by every objective standard not only don't do better than traditional public schools, but more often than not do worse.  

The politicians dealing with SB 807 in Sacramento don't seem to have a clue about this reality. If you would like to take a more participatory role in our democracy, might I suggest you give them a call? 

State Senator Cathleen Calgiani (916) 651-4005 

State Senatior Henry Stern (916) 651-4027 

Mike McGuire (Chair) (D-Healdsburg) - Phone: (916) 651-4002 

Janet Nguyen (Vice Chair) (R-Garden Grove) - Phone: (916) 651-4034

Jim Beall (D-San Jose) - Phone: (916) 651-4015

Ed Hernandez (D-West Covina) - Phone: (916) 651-4022

Robert M. Hertzberg (D - Van Nuys) - Phone: (916) 651-4018

Ricardo Lara (D - Bell Gardens) - Phone: (916) 651-4033

John M. W. Moorlach (R - Costa Mesa) - Phone: (916) 651-4037 

If you are in California, please join us in Sacramento at the State Capitol on April 5 at 9:30 a.m. to attend the CA State Senate Governance and Finance committee hearing on SB 807.

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

RANTZ AND RAVEZ-There is so much to review with you that I don’t know where to begin. Should I start with the RaveZ or the RantZ? Remember that RaveZ are the good things while RantZ are the bad or not so good things I come across in my daily dealings as a life-long resident of Los Angeles. 

My connection with Los Angeles includes a 33-year career with the LAPD, an election to the Charter Reform Commission and twelve years as a Los Angeles City Councilman.    

Following the March 7 election, I reported on a number of RaveZ and congratulated the winners of the various offices. Some readers I have subsequently met in the community have reminded me that they truly enjoy my RantZ and the criticism of the out-of-touch politicians that blunder with their votes, squander tax dollars and forsake representation of you, the hard-working, frustrated taxpayers of this region of Southern California. With that in mind, here we go. 

On the state level, there is the Governor, State Senators and Assembly members. They are currently working on programs to increase the gas tax, adding to all the other taxes we all pay. Some are also working on establishing California as a Sanctuary State. 

Then there are the five members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors who have one public meeting a week. This is in comparison to the three public meetings the LA City Council has weekly. Not many people know exactly what the County Supervisors actually do since we seldom hear from them. It is like a secret operation of government. Think about it. What exactly do they do with the billions of dollars they collect in taxes? 

Last, but not least, we have the Mayor of Los Angeles and the 14 out of 15 Los Angeles City Council members. One council seat remains vacant due to the fact that one elected official left office for a lobbying opportunity in Sacramento. It must be a well-paying job up there, considering that LA City Councilmembers receive an annual salary of nearly $190,000 a year, plus a car and a pension and many other perks that come along with the job. No wonder so many former California state elected officials serving in Sacramento run for LA City Council seats. 

Let’s do the count of former Sacramento elected officials who are now Los Angeles City Councilmembers: Districts 1, 2, 3 ,5, 9 and 10. Hopefully they will get together and pave the streets, fix the broken sidewalks and use the money you voted for in recent elections to address the homeless crisis that has continued to grow by leaps and bounds throughout Los Angeles, negatively impacting the quality of life in nearly every neighborhood. This includes people living in freeway underpasses, local parks, on sidewalks and in motorhomes parked along so many local streets throughout Los Angeles. It is like a fire that continues to burn and grow with no end in sight. 

You have done your job by voting for more taxes to address the matter. We can only hope and pray that the elected powers-that-be can finally address and reduce or eliminate the situation in the City of the Angels.      

I told you so…and I was right in the end!            

While I was serving as the LA City Councilman for the 3rd Council District in the South West San Fernando Valley, I was approached by a developer who wanted to purchase an old abandoned school on Fallbrook south of Victory Blvd to build an elder care facility. Knowing the need for quality facilities for our aging population, I reviewed the proposal and gave my full and complete approval for the development. Knowing Fallbrook as a major roadway with a 45 mph speed limit with multiple lanes and a variety of businesses, both commercial and residential, I did not hesitate in my approval of the facility. 

Serving on the Board of the Jewish Home for the Aging “Executives” committee for over 20 years, I clearly know the need and concerns of our aging population. All was going well until some members of the community decided to file a lawsuit and forced the developer to modify the facility and put a fortune of money into an account to compensate those that joined the suit. This amount was over $400,000! After an agreement was made with the group, another group of residents decided to protest the facility and pressured the local city councilmen to pull his support for the facility. After all the dealings for a number of years and a court review, the matter was heard before the South Valley Los Angeles Area Planning Commission on March 23. The commission ruled in favor of the developer. 

Finally, after years of review and debate and argument and court cases, senior residents of our community will have another safe and comfortable place to reside in peace and happiness. I want to congratulate Councilman Bob Blumenfield for standing up for seniors and fighting the good fight against a few NIMBYs from the “Preserve Walnut Acres” group that went down in flames.

There you have it. Another edition of RantZ and RaveZ for your reading entertainment. I welcome your comments at [email protected].

(Dennis P. Zine is a 33-year member of the Los Angeles Police Department and former Vice-Chairman of the Elected Los Angeles City Charter Reform Commission, a 12-year member of the Los Angeles City Council and a current LAPD Reserve Officer who serves as a member of the Fugitive Warrant Detail assigned out of Gang and Narcotics Division. Zine was a candidate for City Controller last city election. He writes RantZ & RaveZ for CityWatch. You can contact him at [email protected]. Mr. Zine’s views are his own and do not reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EASTSIDER-We knew that after all the usual rascals were reelected (except for a runoff in CD 1,) the next step is for our City leaders to wrap up the short-term-rental Ordinance with Airbnb and their progeny. What we have not known about, is the mysterious contract that the City entered into with Airbnb to collect taxes, even though there is still no Ordinance. Just as a reminder, under current law, short-term rentals are illegal in LA City. 

So, a couple of weeks ago I fired up my trusty computer and sent a Public Records Act request to Council President Wesson’s office. In a pleasant surprise, they were very responsive, and it turns out that the keeper of these particular records lies within the purview of the Finance Records Center. They supplied me with the actual contract, and you can find it here. 

Remember, the directive to make a deal for the City to get Transient Occupant Tax (TOT) from Airbnb goes all the way back to May of 2015, when then CAO Miguel Santana was directed to negotiate such an agreement. You can find that document here.  

Most interesting to me in the paperwork was the bald assertion that “the City is legally entitled to collect TOT from short-term rental hosts, directly or via agreements with hosting platforms, while continuing to develop overall short-term rental policy.” Nowhere, of course, was there a shred of statutory authority cited for such a proposition. Thank you, City Attorney Feuer, for your due diligence. 

The Agreement 

The major elements of the contract are clear. First, the City and Airbnb agree that in its collection function, “Airbnb is not a party” to the transactions. To protect Airbnb in this legal fiction, they are awarded the special “get out of jail” status of becoming an independent contractor to the City. 

The way the deal works is that Airbnb agrees to collect the TOT dollars and report aggregate (as opposed to the individual transaction) information to the City along with the bucks. 

They munificently agree to “contractually assume liability” in their role of independent contractor, but the method of keeping track of the TOT fees is fixed so that no one will ever know if they are cheating or not. Here’s how. The City will only have access to “anonymous accounts” for audit purposes. 

Let’s parse this. As the document states, “Airbnb shall not be required to produce any personally identifiable information relating to any Host or Guest or relating to any Booking Transaction without binding legal process served by the Office of Finance on Airbnb with respect to such users.” 

In exchange for this deal, Airbnb is expressly granted immunity from just about anything. Period. Just to make sure, there is even a clause which basically says that if push comes to shove, the Guests and Hosts themselves are personally on the hook for any bad things that happen. 

And oh yes, it’s a three year deal. What a deal indeed. 

The Loot and the Kicker 

Between August 2016 and January 2017, Airbnb revenue under the agreement averaged between somewhere between $2.5 and $3 million dollars per month. Next fiscal year, the City is assuming about $36 million from the Airbnb agreement. For a City Council and a Mayor who can’t balance a budget, you and I know that this is mana from heaven. 

If we had any belief that the City would actually engage in a fair process to consider amendments to the draft Ordinance -- since the City is already getting the TOT money, and the Ordinance is still not a done deal -- is there anything in this contract to prevent LA City from amending it to provide better terms for you and I? You bet. 

Buried in the language is a kicker that states, “This agreement may be terminated by Airbnb or the Office of Finance for convenience on 30 days written notification to the other Party.” English translation -- if the City does anything regarding the final Ordinance that they don’t like, Airbnb can simply bail out of the TOT contract with 30 days notice. 

It seems to me that there is little likelihood the current draft Ordinance is going to get any better for us than it is right now. On that note, the most organized counter to the pro-Airbnb folks is the Keep Neighborhoods First group. You can find their website here, and it includes a copy of the current draft Ordinance. 

Their two main concerns are (1) reducing the number of hosting days allowed by the Ordinance from 180 to 90, and (2) preserving the Rent Stabilization Ordinance (RSO) exclusion. As discussed below, I think they have good reason to be concerned. 

The Takeaway 

First, in their January 25, 2017 cover letter to the PLUM Committee, the Planning Department proudly declaimed that “The amendment removed all references that permitted Home-Sharing in non-primary residences, and clarified that the prohibition on Home-Sharing in units subject to the Rent Stabilization Ordinance applies to all units, not just those that are renter-occupied.” 

As with the actual Airbnb contract, the statement is all well and good on its face, but my question is simple. If all the underlying data is anonymous -- like in a Swiss bank vault or a Cayman Island bank account -- how on earth are we ever going to know if any of these statements are true? The answer is, we are not. 

By the way, I’m not the only one to notice a pattern of secrecy in these municipal tax deals that Airbnb is negotiating. Fortune, in a recent article called “Airbnb Faces Scrutiny over Secret Tax Deals with Cities,” also reports this as an emerging pattern of Airbnb in their run up to an IPO. 

Let’s face it. Airbnb has learned from their expensive and contentious attempts to fight City Halls across the nation. It’s a lot cheaper to simply buy the elected officials off through local fees like LA City’s TOT. 

I have to admit, Airbnb has come a long way from a couple of guys renting an air mattress in their loft and providing breakfast to help them make ends meet. This is now a big business that recently did another $1 billion dollar offering, and is estimated at being worth around $31 billion if and when they do an IPO. 

Based on all the above, I’m doubting that the final version of the Ordinance will be improved over the draft, and it could get worse. At 180 days/year of rental, it is assured that the character of our neighborhoods will change, and I see no provision that will improve infrastructure to accommodate the increased load on our utilities, streets or sanitation. 

Of course, if you are a supporter of Airbnb, or thinking about it making some money for you, then you’re going to be able to rock ‘n roll with it…all the way to the bank!

(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

REMEMBERING MIKE GARCIA—One of labor’s great organizers has died. Mike Garcia. These words by SEIU/USWW Local 1877 president David Huerta speak for thousands.

It is with a sad heart today and with Gloria's blessing that I have to deliver the tragic news of the passing of my mentor, my friend, my leader Mike Garcia. After a long fight with diabetes and kidney
failure, Mike is finally at peace.

Mike, to the many he was able to touch through his leadership, was someone who could move mountains through his fight for working people. I will remember him for the lessons he taught me in humility and strength; the heart that it takes to lead and always the need to know what you don't know.

His love for our membership, his community and his family was a driving force in his ability to build one of the most powerful unions in labor. A union built from the blood sweat and tears of immigrant
workers, Black workers and the working poor.

It was his sense of family, community and justice that gave him the clarity by which to lead. There were no gray areas in Mike's fight for justice. His mission was to fight for the least amongst us.
And it was that compassion for working people that made him the man he was.

I will forever be in his debt for giving me the opportunity to be a leader. He opened doors for me and others that had once been closed to him and his generation.

On behalf of the men and women of SEIU/USWW, I want thank Mike Garcia and his family for all that he did and giving us the privilege of having him as our leader. God speed Mike, my brother, my mentor, my president, you will be missed. Be sure to organize a space for all of us in heaven when we get there.

Rest in peace,

Thank you.

Es con un corazón triste hoy y con la bendición de Gloria que tengo que dar la trágica noticia del fallecimiento de mi mentor, mi amigo, mi líder Mike García. Después de una larga lucha con diabetes e insuficiencia renal, Mike finalmente está en paz.

Mike, a los muchos que fue capaz de tocar a través de su liderazgo, era alguien que podía mover las montañas a través de su lucha por los trabajadores. Lo recordaré por las lecciones que me enseñó con humildad y fuerza; El corazón que sabe dirigir y siempre con la necesidad de saber lo que no sabes.

Su amor por nuestra membresía, su comunidad y su familia fue una fuerza impulsora en su capacidad para construir uno de los sindicatos más poderosos del trabajo. Un sindicato construido con el sudor, la sangre y las lágrimas de los trabajadores inmigrantes, los trabajadores de color y los trabajadores pobres.

Fue su sentido de la familia, la comunidad y la justicia lo que le dio la claridad para dirigir. No había áreas grises en la lucha de Mike por la justicia. Su misión era luchar por lo menos entre nosotros. Y fue esa compasión por la gente trabajadora lo que lo convirtió en el hombre que era.

Siempre estaré en deuda con él por darme la oportunidad de ser un líder. Él abrió las puertas para otros y para mí que una vez se habían cerrado a él ya su generación.

En nombre de los hombres y mujeres de SEIU USWW, quiero agradecer a Mike García y su familia por todo lo que hizo y darnos el privilegio de tenerlo como nuestro líder. Dios guardo a Mike, mi hermano, mi mentor, mi presidente, te vamos a extrañar. Asegúrese de organizar un espacio para todos nosotros en el cielo cuando lleguemos allí.

Que descansa en paz

Gracias”

+++

And from another long-time SEIU organizer and political strategist, James Johnson, now the California League of Conservation Voters’ Political Director:

I was so sad to hear of Mike Garcia’s passing.

I had the good fortune to meet this amazing leader 30 years ago when I was a young 22 year old organizer, just starting out on one of my first union assignments in San Diego. One of the first people I met in the labor movement, Garcia was working in San Diego to help organize janitors at the very beginning of the Justice for Janitor movement in California. San Diego in 1985 was a tough and far different place than it is now! Folks were downright anti-union. I was feeling a little homesick but not trying to let on and out of the blue Mike Garcia invited me -- a 22-year old African-American kid from South Los Angeles -- to join him and a couple of veteran organizers for a beer. That extending of a hand meant the world to me. It still does! That was Mike Garcia.

Fifteen years later, and after a number of efforts, Garcia’s union finally succeeded in organizing the janitors at USC where my dad worked for 34 years. My dad’s retired now, having served as a member of the union’s negotiating team. Due to the hard work of members, staff, and leadership of SEIU 1877 and USWW, my dad earned the dignity and respect on the job that our family cherishes.

Mike Garcia was a smart and humble person. I sometimes wished he would run for elective office, but he was first and foremost a union organizer. Like so many of his members I’ve had the honor to work with over the years, he was somebody who thought and spoke passionately about how we make LA work for all of us. I wish everyone had the opportunity to have met Mike Garcia. I know that their lives would have been forever changed. I will miss him.

+++

Finally, a video about Brother Garcia. 

(Julie Butcher writes for CityWatch and is a retired union leader now enjoying her new La Crescenta home and her first grandchild. She can be reached at [email protected] or on her new blog ‘The Butcher Shop - No Bones about It.’)

-cw

CONNECTING CALIFORNIA--Is California to blame for Donald Trump?

That may seem a preposterous question to ask of a state that voted so decisively against the new American president that it was responsible, all by itself, for his loss of the popular vote. It seems even stranger given California’s near-total resistance to Trump’s presidency, and the way our state embodies so many of the good things—diversity, immigration, international cooperation, and science-based policy—that Trump and his acolytes rage against.

GELFAND’S WORLD--There will be a March for Science  on Saturday, April 22. What's it about? In my view, this event is meant to caution people that we should not get dragged into a modern day Dark Ages. The organizers are using different words, but that's the gist of it. 

Bringing back a real version of Medieval Times does not imply that we will all go back to trudging behind a plow pulled by an ox. It does refer to the danger of becoming a culture in which leaders demand of us that we follow dogma rather t han think things through based on observed facts and logic. When the dogma is wrong in fact and theory and when it controls the actions of government agencies, we've got a problem. 

If we are willing to be blunt, we can simply refer to the President's Cabinet. We've got global warming deniers, environmental protection enemies, and those who would deny a large fraction of the people the benefits of modern medicine. The president's proposed budget slashes funding for scientific research, even as the official agencies of the United States are being cautioned against telling the truth. 

And that refusal by the new administration to admit to the truth, whether it be the facts of climate change or the size of the inaugural crowd, is a truly scary thing. The argument over the size of the inaugural crowd is merely a clue as to the personality of the chief executive, but the refusal to admit to global warming could potentially lead to catastrophe. 

There are of course other catastrophes to consider. Some of them are less dire than the return of the glaciers, but slow death due to lung disease is a catastrophe at the personal level. 

There is more than just global extinction and ill health to think about. When the government lies to us habitually, it has a mass-cultural effect. We're not talking about the petty sins of the ruling class -- the fund raising game and the pocketing of small bribes -- we're talking about a real life version of a George Orwell fiction. Being bombarded with big lies about serious issues has an effect on thinking patterns and on the psyche. 

What we're talking about is an attempt to prevent this from happening. 

It's really an attempt on the part of alarmed people to preserve civilization. The organizers might have called it the March for Civilization and stated the case just as well, but the March for Science is catchy and will draw attention. Let's hope that this isn't confined to big cities on the coasts, and that small town sites of land grant colleges all over the country draw their own crowds. 

So join the concerned people of Los Angeles three weeks from now and make a statement that we need to respect the truth. You will be merging your voices with people at lots of gatherings all over the country. 

The one here in Los Angeles begins at Pershing Square Saturday, April 22 at 9 am and goes on for the rest of the day. 

Allison Schroeder, the screenwriter for Hidden Figures, will be one of the speakers along with scientists, business leaders, and at least one congressman. Under other circumstances this would look like a celebration of American accomplishment. But as you have already figured out, that's not what it's about.

(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected]) 

-cw

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-A hint: it is not to bestow financial gifts to major real estate investors and contractors, even if they pay-to-play and expect General Plan updates to be their Rx for even fatter profits. 

Here are some real reasons why LA urgently needs to properly update its entire General Plan: 

First, the City has a legal obligation to comply with the State of California’s laws and regulations regarding planning. The Governor’s Office of Planning and Research now offers a major draft update to its General Plan guidelines. They not only carefully lay out these legal requirements, but also offer extraordinary online resources to cities and the public, especially regarding infrastructure and climate change. 

Second, the basic approach of most existing General Plan elements is sound, especially its central document, the General Plan Framework Element. It calls for planned growth, sometimes called controlled growth, in Los Angeles. In fact, this has been the City’s basic approach to city planning for nearly 50 years. The era of deliberate suburbanization and urban sprawl is long over. But, this carefully crafted plan for controlled growth has unfortunately been sabotaged by the City Council in many different ways, all of which need to be offset by a properly updated General Plan. 

• During this entire period, from 1970 to date, the City Council has consistently departed from its own adopted General Plan elements and their implementing zoning through spot-zoning and spot-General Plan ordinances for major donors. 

• Claiming a staff shortage, the City Planning units charged with maintaining and updating the General Plan have been on a starvation diet. 

• In a daring effort, after 22 years of false starts, the Planning Department prepared -- and the City Council unanimously adopted -- a deficient update to the Hollywood Community Plan. This developer-driven update used inflated population figures from SCAG, while neglecting to calculate the zoning build-out potential of private parcels in Hollywood. Instead, the completed plan up-zoned and up-planned whole corridors and entire Hollywood neighborhoods without a convincing rationale. 

Of course, the real agenda was to turn the update process into a speculators’ dream palace. Not long afterward, in response to three totally predictable lawsuits, Superior Court Judge Alan Goodman rescinded the policy sections of the plan, the update’s Environmental Impact Report, and most importantly, its voluminous appended ordinances to up-zone and up-plan Hollywood. 

• The planning Department has also failed to properly monitor the General Plan, even though the Framework required this in exacting detail through a special Monitoring Unit. Not only has the City failed to adequately monitor any of the General Plan’s elements, but it has also never properly re-calculated LA’s zoning buildout potential in light of SB 1818, the affordable housing density bonus. Similarly, it has not monitored user demand and projected capacity for the City’s infrastructure and public services.  

• Likewise, City Hall has never managed to update any General Plan elements – with the possible exception of Mobility and Health – to reflect accurate population and employment changes, as well as startling new data on increased earthquake, freeway, and climate dangers. 

Third, if/when City Planning fully undertakes the update of the General Plan, it must carefully repair this sabotage and implement obvious conclusions from the following information. 

• The latest data on climate change in Los Angeles, especially several recent UCLA studies that forecast neighborhood-level changes in temperature, precipitation, sea-level rises, and water supplies. 

• The latest data on Los Angeles’ earthquake dangers especially from the Inglewood and San Andreas faults.  

• The latest data on the City’s infrastructure, especially long term maintenance compared to the destruction and devastation resulting from a major earthquake. 

• The latest and best data on population trends, disaggregated into small sub-areas, to determine which neighborhoods have grown, are in population equilibrium, and which, like Hollywood, are experiencing population decline. 

• The latest data of the health hazards of living near freeways. 

• The latest data on the residential zoning build out potential of local areas, such as the 35 Community Plans. The City’s existing data is about 25 years old, and City Hall urgently needs to update it to reflect zoning laws that allow by-right apartment houses on all commercial and M-1 industrial lots. Furthermore, this zoning build out potential should be expanded by up to 35 percent through the City’s density bonus ordinance, implementing the State of California’s Senate Bill 1818. 

Fourth, if the City properly updates the General Plan, I expect City Hall will reach an uncomfortable conclusion, at least for the pols and their patrons. Despite their frequent claims, there is no demonstrable need to up-zone and up-plan Los Angeles. In fact, in light of the data I have outlined above, they should conclude that many neighborhoods warrant down-zoning because of climate change adaptation and mitigation, earthquake dangers, freeway proximity, inadequate infrastructure, scarce resources, and insufficient public services. 

This is exactly what future fights over the General Pan will turn on. Will City Hall accede to big real estate developers and rampantly up-zone and up-plan for them, like they attempted in Hollywood? Or will they follow the data, as well as community input over these issues, and make sure that public infrastructure and public services – not real estate speculation -- are their first priority? And, will they make sure no area of the city will be over-developed where there is not sufficient infrastructure, sufficient public services, or where the dangers of climate change, earthquakes, and freeway proximity warrant careful regulation of real estate projects?

(Dick Platkin is a former LA City Planner who reports on local planning issues for CityWatch LA. Please send any comments or corrections to [email protected].) Graphic credit: LA Daily News. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

BELL VIEW-Last week I wrote an article about what gets lost when a city changes. My comment about “the kids these days” drew a flood of attacks from a couple of anonymous trolls. They called me a loser, a cranky old man, a selfish piece of sh*t, an emotional child, and a bad lawyer. 

And worse, they called me a “Boomer.” And that ain’t right. I belong to the Blank Generation. I can take it or leave it each time. 

One of these trolls, I suspect, is a lawyer for developers. Or maybe the Koch Brothers or the Keystone XL Pipeline. The other I’m pretty sure is a “realtor,” who thinks the homeless should be hosed off the streets of downtown LA. I don’t know for sure, though, because these guys prefer to attack people’s character from under a sheet. It’s an honorable tradition that goes back to the KKK.

But mostly, they called me a NIMBY – that all-purpose insult of today’s young urbanist. 

Most of my political battles in this town started during my time in East Hollywood. Every time I pushed back against some developer’s stucco-encrusted knock-off dormitory, some hack would call me a NIMBY. It’s an easy attack whenever anyone opposes our society’s collective drive to make the rich richer. But after a while I started to think: “Damn – for a NIMBY, I sure do have a lot going on in my backyard!” Up-zoning along freeways, homeless housing, Ellis Act evictions, small-lot subdivisions – you name it. Just about every battleground issue playing itself out in Los Angeles was taking place fairly regularly on the streets of East Hollywood. 

Then I moved a little uphill and started getting involved in some community Facebook groups and blogs for Los Feliz and Silver Lake and … what do you know … these fairly static upscale communities are just chock full of “urbanists.” An urbanist, apparently, is someone who never met a development she couldn’t get behind.

In contrast to the hated NIMBY, these urban elites like to think of themselves as “YIMBYs” – or “Yes in my backyard!” (Exclamation point mandatory.) “Yes,” they cheer, “yes – in my backyard – build that skyscraper, eviscerate the old Los Angeles, bring us more steel and glass, up-zone next to freeways, create more spaces for people and fewer spaces for cars, and for chrissake bring us a Target store already …. And do it now!” The YIMBY cares not for planning, and generally believes zoning codes are racist, twentieth-century holdovers like blue laws or the Taft Hartley Act. They just get in the way of the marketplace working its magic to bring us all together.

But a lot of what these YIMBYs are screaming for doesn’t really happen in their backyards. Sure, Silver Lake and Echo Park are looking at a few massive developments – but nothing compared to Hollywood, East Hollywood, or Boyle Heights. Low wage and immigrant families can feel themselves being pushed out of their neighborhoods to make room for “affordable housing.” But while Los Feliz and Echo Park might get more crowded in the years to come, no one’s looking to push the well-heeled residents of these communities out of the way of progress. “We want cheaper rents!” they say. 

They point to Denver, where the gods of supply and demand brought the average rental price down from $1,367 to $1,347 – or, as I like to call it, “The Denver Miracle.” But pushing rents down from $1,950 to $1,925 isn’t going to do much for the thousands of our neighbors losing their rent-controlled homes to make way for new development. 

Most of the YIMBYs I know don’t have to worry about that kind of thing happening to them. In fact, some of my favorite YIMBYs actually live in the hills – where nothing will ever get in the way of their quiet enjoyment of the life they’ve become accustomed to. No – whenever a YIMBY starts screaming about “Yes in my backyard!” – more often than not he means, “Yes in their backyard!” Because nothing really Earth-shattering is likely to happen where they live.

So I propose a new acronym: the “YITBY” – “Yes in their backyard!” – for the urbanist who’s got nothing to lose. And I mean that: nothing.

(David Bell is a writer, attorney, former president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and writes for CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EDUCATION POLITICS--Dr. Chris Emdin, associate professor at Columbia University's Teachers College in his new book "For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood...and the Rest of Y'all Too," completely misunderstands why poor minority students continue to fail in public school and in the process he comes up with bogus "white hero teacher" alternative facts to explain why these poor minority children continue to fail. 

Somehow Professor Emdin ignores the predictable negative educational deficiencies in our still segregated, racist public schools even though 63 years ago Brown vs. Board of Education declared, "Separate but equal...is inherently unequal." But what else should we expect when that is still the reality for the vast majority of minority children who attend inner-city schools? 

There is complicity among not only White but minority administrators when they continue to enforce failed education policies like social promotion in which students are promoted year after year, whether or not they have mastered prior grade-level standards. This has created a massive population of Black and poor minority students that never had a chance from “Jump Street” in the segregated system that they -- and probably their parents -- have been subjected to unnecessarily. 

It is patently offensive and self-deceiving to falsely romanticize minority student failure (failure that would occur within any ethnicity under in the same failing circumstances) as proof that Black children “learn differently.” They just may learn differently -- or not at all -- not because of their ethnicity, but because of what they have endured in a public education system that "graduates" them -- one way or another -- without the basic literacy and skills they need to develop a profound understanding of their own and other cultures. 

When Professor Emdin seeks to "value the unique realities of minority children, incorporating their culture into classroom instruction," he and others presuppose a level of literacy that is for the most part nonexistent. Why? Because it has never been taught in a public education system that is still purposefully failing these students, families, communities and cultures. 

Education administration, being one of the few upwardly mobile professions open to people of color, finds minority leaders enforcing archaic, racist inner city public school policies that are continuing to assure the ultimate failure of the vast majority of their students. There is a certain sick irony of this negation of racism; when push comes to shove, a public school administrator of whatever ethnicity will turn momma's picture to the wall, protected his or her ability to collect a six-figure salary, no matter what the cost to the kids. 

Don't expect things to change in the near future if educators keep citing the failure to respect Black culture as the alternative fact for why Black students aren't learning. This ignores the real reason for student failure which is a clearly racist public education system that does not implement a timely, age sensitive, subjective student level education.

There is literally no attempt to educate predominantly poor students of color in any manner that remotely resembles the way White students who attend private schools are educated. So expect the prison population to rise in the future, above its present obscene level of 2.3 million. 

"Black culture" has nothing to do with a system of rote public education where the Socratic Method and critical thinking are nowhere to be found in any form. To sanctify this patently inferior and generationally perpetuated system of non-education as a failure because it didn't respect "black culture" ignores the glaring reality that all other non-colored cultures in America have somehow gotten educated without losing their culture of origin. 

All Americans of any ethnicity can hardly deny the significance Black culture has had on our collective national identity. But explaining the premeditated failure of Black and other poor children of color in public schools by saying that their culture is not respected in public schools is patently ludicrous. Having more than a 500 word vocabulary and knowing your times tables is a better measure of whether you will maintain your culture of origin. And throwing in some real estate finance or credit card literacy into the mix might be more likely to promote my kind of Black culture without exploitation. 

The generational failure and objective inferiority created by what remains a segregated public education system is and remains a burden -- not a culture -- that could have been and can still be avoided. One merely needs to recognize that inner city "public education" as presently constituted is no place for students of any ethnicity to recognize their potential. 

It’s wrong to justify this failure with falsehoods like ‘Black students learn differently’ or that it's the fault of White teachers -- themselves many times the victims of the system since they are stymied at every turn and often fired if they embarrass the power structure by actually trying against all odds to educate Black and other children of color to their potential. The excellent public education of our past is the best antidote to racism…but only if, once and for all, it is offered to all our people.

(Leonard Isenberg is a Los Angeles observer and a contributor to CityWatch. He was a second generation teacher at LAUSD and blogs at perdaily.com. Leonard can be reached at [email protected]) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

@THE GUSS REPORT-The Los Angeles Times reported last week that the LA District Attorney’s office is investigating whether LA City Councilmember Curren D. Price Jr. is simultaneously married to two women, a story I broke on CityWatch on February 27, with follow-ups on March 2 and March 6.  

The DA’s office subsequently confirmed for me they are also investigating allegations of other misconduct by Price, some of which were outlined in my March 6 article. A forensic dig may reveal a lot.

To review: 

The last time Price attempted to divorce his first wife, Lynn Suzette Green-Price, was 2012. But news sources indicate that he was already remarried at that time to his second (and current) wife, Del Richardson-Price.

At that time, Price and his divorce attorney Albert Robles claimed in a misdated document that they could not locate Lynn Price for the purpose of serving her with divorce papers. They asked that the court instead allow them to serve notice by buying a public notice ad in a local newspaper. 

Price and Robles claimed that Lynn Price’s most recent address was 4519 Don Arturo Place in Los Angeles. But according to Price’s 2013 financial disclosure forms, the occupant of that address was not Lynn Price, but a Dr. and Mr. Earl Jones. Price knew who the tenant was because – bizarre as it sounds – the property belongs to his second wife, Del Richardson-Price, who has owned it since June 21, 2001 to the present. 

If Lynn Price had lived there, as Price and Robles claimed, the address to which they mailed her refunded security deposit would be a more logical address at which to serve her. 

At any rate, locating Lynn Price would not have been a difficult task had Price and Robles endeavored to actually find her. Her address is listed on the website of her law firm in Trenton, New Jersey, as well as on the California and New Jersey Bar Association websites. 

Accordingly, the court rejected Price’s and Robles’ request to publish a divorce announcement in the newspaper and, instead, directed them to ascertain Lynn Price’s address via the forwarding address at the local post office. While it is unclear whether Price and Robles did that, the case has been dormant ever since.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Marc D. Gross, who would oversee the case were it re-opened, is aware of the Price divorce controversy, but has yet to schedule a hearing for an Order to Show Cause (OSC), which is the legal equivalent of asking WTH is going on here? 

Subsequent to my breaking this story a month ago, Robles declared in one interview, “Curren Price is divorced. End of story.”

But since there is zero public evidence that Price and his first wife are divorced, the California Bar Association may take note of the discrepancy and determine why, since Robles insists that they are divorced, there is no record of division of shared assets or spousal support, the basic elements of divorce law, let alone a final determination. 

So back in 2012, Councilmember Price knew he was still married to Green because he was still trying to divorce her. Yet simultaneously, he failed to list her assets and income on his 2012 California Fair Political Practices Commission financial disclosure forms, also known as Form 700. It requires that candidates, officeholders and their spouse (or spouses in Price’s case) list their income and assets. 

But let’s give Councilmember Price the full benefit of the doubt and assume that his failure to disclose Lynn Price’s assets and income was either an honest error, or he was too embarrassed to disclose his divorce chaos. Both would be understandable, although not excusable, since the disclosures are signed under penalty of perjury. 

So why, then, did Price (according to Los Angeles City Ethics Commission records) in 2012 also fail to disclose any of the assets and income of his second wife, Del Richardson-Price? 

It is implausible that Price didn’t know this was required because he previously held elected offices on the Inglewood City Council, California State Assembly, California State Senate (holding various leadership roles while there) before being elected to the LA City Council. 

Real estate holdings Price failed to disclose include:

4519 Don Arturo Place

4171, 4171 ½, 4173, 4173 ½ Brighton

372, 374, 376 W. 12^th Street

506 – 510 S. La Brea Avenue 

Since some of Price’s properties are located in the City of Los Angeles, he was supposed to disclose ownership in the event they were impacted by City Council votes on issues such as sidewalk repair, street lighting, street furniture, advertising and redistricting, among others. 

Price also failed to disclose the businesses owned by second wife Del Richardson-Price including DRA Associates, Just Work Inc. and Cuba Travel Service. If they, or their affiliates, applied for contracts from the LA City Council, Price would have had to recuse himself from those discussions and votes. 

Councilmember Price also neglected in 2012 to list any of Del Richardson-Price’s clients who paid her more than $10,000 each. A year later, in 2013, at least 20 businesses and government agencies fit that description:

LACMTA, City of LA HCID, Retirement Housing Foundation, Reiner Comm, HCHC, Harris & Associates, Inc., Turner Construction Company, Beacon Integrated Professional Resources, City of Hawthorne, City of LA Department of Public Works, Deep Gree (sic), Hollywood Park Tomorrow, LADWP, Mark Thomas & Company, Old Timer Foundation, OPC-Westside, Serrano, Vistas, West Hollywood Manzanita, West Valley. 

Councilmember Price either failed to detail his wife’s client-based income in 2012, or she went from zero-to-20 clients as soon as he was elected to LA City Council.

A comparison of Mr. Price’s participation in LA City Council discussions and votes to Del Richardson-Price’s client list will show that he at times failed to recuse himself on issues that benefitted his wife, her clients and, therefore, himself. 

With a Rose Mary Woods twist … 

Mr. Price has refused multiple requests to field live questions. At a time when truth from politicians is in such short supply, you would think Councilman Price would be looking for any opportunity to set the record straight. 

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a member of the Los Angeles Press Club, and has contributed to CityWatch, KFI AM-640, Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, Movieline Magazine, Emmy Magazine, Los Angeles Business Journal and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

PLATKIN ON PLANNING--From the days of Not Yet New York in the 1980s to the present, some Angelenos consider New York City to be the opposite of their vision for Los Angeles. This is understandable because New York City, especially Manhattan, has much higher density (people) and intensity (buildings) than Los Angeles. 

New York City: But, appearances can be deceiving because New York City has the lowest per capita carbon footprint of any major city in the United States. The reasons are no mystery since most people in NYC use mass transit and live in apartments, not houses. But, there is more, and this is the real lesson for Los Angeles, a city whose residents generate nearly twice the amount of Green House Gases per capita as New Yorkers.   

As carefully explained by David Owen in Green Metropolis, New York City combines high residential density with high-density commercial, public transit, and other categories of public infrastructure and services, such as parks, schools, and libraries. Unlike Los Angeles, NYC clearly demonstrates how density can (but not necessarily will) address the Green House Gases responsible for global warming and climate change. In contrast, LA's approach: frequent City Council approvals of large and tall buildings where they can only be built through pay-to-play spot zones, is hardly the same. 

Even though LA has no shortage of apologists and boosters for poorly located but highly profitable high-rise buildings, such as 8150 Sunset, there is nothing sustainable about this land use decision-making model. In fact, the City Council’s approvals actually make the environment worse. If we look closely at these special ordinances and approvals, they should be accompanied by a sound track of ringing cash registers and wheezing Angelinos. This is because the Council’s spot-zones and spot-plan ordinances are worth many millions to developers, despite the ensuing air pollution. 

To truly address climate change, Los Angeles needs to make sure that its updated General Plan stipulates dense public services and infrastructure for all areas where greater density is planned. Furthermore, these dense public services and infrastructure components must be available when new projects are completed. After completion, the projects must then be carefully monitored to confirm that that their Green House Gas mitigation programs actually work.  If not, then the City Council ought to lower the boom on them. 

This is why the Los Angeles City Hall status quo model, still soundly championed by many commentators, is and will remain a list of empty environmental promises. All the ballyhoo about randomly located, un-planned high-rise buildings wondrously transforming Los Angeles into a more urban, sustainable, and environmentally friendly city remains hot air. Just as a poorly planned city like Los Angeles spawns dangerous urban heat islands, the hot air from the mega-structures’ boosters and apologists will compound the projects’ adverse environmental impacts. 

CEQA: Luckily, we now have the tools and the hard science to confirm these claims. It is the updated California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Senate Bill 97 now requires Environmental Impact Reports (EIRs) to measure Green House Gases (largely CO2, water vapor, and methane) in their air quality section. Big surprise, so far the EIRs for LA’s illegal mega-projects, as well as for official plans to facilitate these mega-structures, like the overruled Hollywood Community Plan Update, confirm the obvious. Unlike NYC, LA’s mega-projects will generate unmitigatable levels of Green House Gases. That’s right, the claims that these projects promote a sustainable Los Angeles are demonstrably false. 

This is why the Los Angeles City Council always adopts a Statement of Overriding Considerations for these cases. The Council sweeps the projects’ toxic environmentally impacts under a bureaucratic carpet. Then, to make sure the carpet stays put, the Council never requires any subsequent monitoring of individual projects, community plan areas, or the entire city. 

If they did proceed with this monitoring, which the General Plan Framework specifies in exacting detail, the thin justifications for their approvals of these otherwise illegal mega-projects would quickly waft into LA’s polluted air. 

This monitoring would also blow the cover story from both the Council’s Statements of Overriding Considerations and the endless hot air spewing from tail pipes, 24/7 HVAC, developers, and the mega-project groupies. 

This, among many reasons, is why Los Angeles urgently needs to properly update its General Plan, then implement and carefully monitor it. 

(Dick Platkin is a former LA city planner who reports on local planning issues in Los Angeles for CityWatch LA. Please send your comments and corrections to [email protected].)

-cw

GUEST COMMENTARY--“Welcome to the Hollywood Ivar Gardens Hotel. We don’t like gays and lesbians or same-sex couples. We oppose a women’s right to choose. We think transgender people are dangerous.” 

Any hotel that posted a sign like that outside its entrance, especially in Los Angeles, might have a hard time filling its rooms or attracting customers to its restaurant. No hotel would risk undermining its business with such bigoted marketing. But a proposed hotel project in Hollywood, currently awaiting approval from the Los Angeles City Council, is led by a company whose president is closely tied to one of the nation’s most extremist anti-gay and anti-choice advocacy groups. 

TIPPING THE ODDS FOR LA--Remember the fiscal crisis which caused the City Council to change the law so that it could issue a kind of judgement obligation bond not used since 2010? Recently we were headed toward violating the 5% Reserve Fund and instituting a plan to issue Judgment Obligation Bonds; this would have cost city taxpayers $20 million in interest over the next 10 years. 

Well, good news. We’re in the clear. At least that’s what our Controller Ron Galperin said in a recent letter to the City Council. The only proviso is that all the city departments must have extra funds on hand at the end of the year, that no need arises for the reserve fund, and also, that we're ok with a 0.66% margin of error. 

What’s baffling is that his rosy prediction isn’t coupled with hard and fast demands for immediate cost cutting. Why not tip the odds a little more in our favor and make some immediate cuts? Here are a few suggestions: 

• Have a contract panel rate for outside law firms, as the County does. 

• Rethink the $22,500,000 redo of the Channel 35 studio. 

• Reign in the chief of police and thereby stop the hemorrhaging of liability payments. 

• Ask Xerox to lower their special collection parking ticket fee from $35 down to $24. 

• Ask for 5% back from developers who’ve received tax breaks.  

• Avoid future liability by ditching the all-overtime LAPD Metro security contract. 

• Curb even just 5% of the Pay-to-Play that’s going on.  

• Last but certainly not least, why not have the City Council and the Mayor take 10 percent haircuts, since collectively they’re the highest paid in the country?   

And if Ron Galperin is up for a little self-sacrifice … he's welcome to chip in too.

(Eric Preven and Joshua Preven are public advocates for better transparency in local government. Eric is a Studio City based writer-producer and Joshua is a teacher.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams. 

TRUTHDIG--As the Trump police state tightens its anti-immigrant grip on urban America, resistance is forming in city halls and in police departments charged with enforcing the law.

There is, of course, resistance on other issues, such as President Trump’s senseless proposed budget cuts and his determination to all but wipe out health care assistance for the poor, middle class and elderly. (Photo above: Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and LAPD Chief Charlie Beck.)

But it is immigration—the lifeblood of the United States—that most clearly reveals the essential cruelty of the Trump regime and its eagerness to embrace the practices and philosophy of a police state, an attitude shaped by the president’s hostility toward Latino and Muslim immigrants.

Attorneys and prosecutors in California, Arizona, Texas and Colorado have reported that teams of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have swept into courtrooms or are waiting outside to arrest undocumented immigrants, according to the Los Angeles Times. Tani Cantil-Sakauye, chief justice of California’s Supreme Court, asked Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly to stop immigration agents from “stalking” the state’s courthouses to make arrests. “Courthouses should not be used as bait in the necessary enforcement of our country’s immigration laws,” Cantil-Sakauye wrote in a letter.

There are reports of great fear in mosques and throughout the Muslim community. Parents have painful talks with children on what to do if mom or dad is picked up by the immigration cops. They also must explain why grandparents or other relatives can’t join them in the United States.

Fear is taking hold of immigrant communities as they face immigration officers now freed from even the small limitations of the Obama administration. These immigration cops feel empowered, as if their time arrived with Trump’s election.

But there is powerful resistance from mayors—often tough, canny politicians—usually ignored by the national media.

Last week, mayors from New York to Los Angeles joined in a Day of Immigration Action to protest ICE enforcement of immigration laws. 

Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, grandson of immigrants, said, “We have grown into the most diverse city on the face of the earth—a city that champions inclusiveness and tolerance, and welcomes everyone who seeks to realize their dreams and build their families here regardless of national origin or immigration status.

“Today, more than 1.5 million residents of our city are foreign born, and nearly two of every three Angelenos are either immigrants or children of immigrants. Our immigrants are the engine of the Los Angeles economy. … Even more so, our immigrants have woven the social, cultural, and civic fabric of Los Angeles, from our educational institutions to our artistic stages, from the halls of government to community activism, from our vibrant culinary scene to our fields of play.”

The depth of feeling on the issue—and evidence of how it cuts across immigrants’ ethnic lines—was apparent at the nation’s major airports on the last weekend in January, when thousands gathered to protest Trump’s ban on refugees from the Muslim-majority countries of Syria, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, Libya, Somalia and Sudan. Demonstrators showed up to protest in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., Dallas, New York, Raleigh, N.C., Houston, Seattle and other cities. 

Other demonstrations have been smaller. I watched a relatively small group gather in downtown Los Angeles on a weekday afternoon to protest the arrest of Romulo Avelica-Gonzalez, an undocumented worker. The protesters met in a corner of Pershing Square and then walked across the street to the high-rise building that houses the federal immigration courts.

Beyond aiming for Avelica-Gonzalez’s release, the rally’s sponsor—the National Day Laborer Organizing Network —is trying to build support for Senate Bill 54, introduced by California Senate President Pro Tempore Kevin de León and now pending in the Legislature. The bill would sharply limit the amount of information jailers can give to ICE agents when undocumented immigrants are released from jail. It would require counties around the state to become sanctuaries, where undocumented immigrants would be given much more protection from ICE.

De León’s bill gets to the heart of one of the many things Trump hates—the “sanctuary city” movement.

Trump issued an executive order threatening local governments with reduction in federal funding if they embrace sanctuary city status and don’t support federal immigration enforcement, refusing to hand over prisoners to ICE. His Department of Homeland Security recently began posting weekly online reports identifying local law enforcement agencies that won’t hold undocumented immigrants in jail until federal officers can pick them up.

The way it works in most cases is that local jailers flag the undocumented when they are freed, permitting immigration agents to seize them and begin deportation proceedings. That’s permitted in Los Angeles County and other counties where the sheriff’s department run the jails. De León’s bill would sharply limit sheriff’s officers’ cooperation with ICE.

It’s different with police in Los Angeles under Garcetti. There, police cooperation with ICE is limited. Officers don’t approach people solely to inquire about their immigration status. LAPD Chief Charlie Beck, like his predecessors, says that turning Los Angeles cops into immigration agents will make it difficult to learn about crimes and recruit informants. Police say that undocumented immigrants already hesitate to report domestic abuse for fear of being deported.

Rather than knuckle under to Trump, Garcetti has intensified his opposition to the administration’s anti-immigrant moves.

Garcetti told the police department to continue to refuse to question people about their immigration status. He told the fire chief, the chiefs of the airport and harbor police and other department heads to do the same. He said they must tell his office or Chief Beck if federal immigration cops ask them to help enforce federal immigration laws. The city, the mayor said, must “ensure equal access to facilities, services and programs without regard to any person’s citizenship or immigration status to the maximum extent that the law permits.”

Los Angeles, Garcetti said, must “foster a welcoming atmosphere for all regardless of immigration status.”

As should the United States.

(Bill Boyarsky is a columnist for Truthdig, the Jewish Journal, and LA Observed. This piece was posted first at Truthdig.com.)

-cw

During this month’s meeting of the Metro Board of Directors, there was a protracted discussion about how Measure M’s local return fund would be apportioned to the 88 cities and unincorporated Los Angeles County.

While in the past return dollars have been doled out on a strictly per capita basis, the new sales tax might work a little differently. The local return working group for Measure M (h/t Henry Fung) came up with a plan that would set an annual minimum amount that all jurisdictions would be guaranteed regardless of their population. The money to push these very small cities up to the floor amount would be carved out of the overall local return pot for the year, the remainder of which would then be distributed to the larger cities.

The idea of the floor is to protect very small cities, according to the directors who spoke on its behalf, since these cities are unlikely to benefit in meaningful ways from the megaprojects that will be funded in the coming decades. Due to their size, some of these cities are so small that they will receive on the order of $10,000 annually in return funding, which is not enough to make headway in local transportation spending, the argument continues.

Metro’s board instructed staff to look at the impacts of a floor on local return allotment, but we don’t need to wait for their report to get a sense of what this policy would do. In its first year, Metro’s new sales tax is projected to draw $860 million in new revenue. The local return funding, 16% of the total, will therefore start at $137.6 million annually. With the county’s population over 10 million, each jurisdiction will get approximately $13.44 per resident this year, with future amounts subject to change based on relative population and overall economic activity.

Metro CEO Phil Washington stressed during the board meeting that there has been no decision yet on the exact level that a floor might be set at, but $100,000 was mentioned as potentially acceptable level. Which cities, based on their population, would receive less than $100,000 in local return funding? The list is short. Avalon, Bradbury, Hidden Hills, Industry, Irwindale, La Habra Heights, Rolling Hills, and Vernon are the only eight cities below that mark.

With 16,000 residents combined, the cities have some notable similarities. They belong to one of two groups: wealthy residential communities, and industrial tax havens. Each has a reason for artificially keeping its residential population low. More residents would cut into the geographic remove of the former’s palatial estates, and, for the latter, residents are also a nuisance. After all, they demand tax-funded services and diverse land uses that might not be compatible with concrete plants, Sriracha factories, superfunds, and so forth. Of the eight cities, only one (Irwindale) even voted to pass Measure M.

This group makes a questionable set of targets for a handout like this. The poor cities in Los Angeles County are characterized by their density and crowding. Even small poor cities have far too many residents to hope to benefit from this proposed policy. And, though, as Director Garcia pointed out, $100,000 might not buy a single curb cut, it strikes me that the county has greater equity issues than Hidden Hills having to pick between a curb cut for Drake and one for Kanye. There are undoubtedly real ADA concerns that could be addressed in any of these cities, but, nonetheless, it is difficult to stomach compounding a regressive sales tax with an active redistribution from poorer cities to wealthier ones.

The carve-outs required to fund the local return floor vary in size depending on how many cities receive the subsidy, and the size of the subsidy. As the floor rises, the per capita amount available for the unsubsidized cities falls.

In the scenarios shown above, using a minimum annual allocation for local return funding can play a few different ways. With the $100,000 floor, a small amount of overall funding is redirected, so this scenario is minimally disruptive to the county’s more populous jurisdictions. 

On the other hand, what have we accomplished here? The eight cities subsidized here are not just below the floor, they’re far below it, requiring an average subsidy of 73% to reach the minimum. That minimum, as indicated by the comments of several directors, is seen as insufficient to accomplish the road paving and sidewalk maintenance for which it’s needed. In this scenario, we’re moving money around aimlessly, but without major consequences.

If a $250,000 annual minimum were selected, we would add to the ranks of the aggrieved the likes of Malibu, Westlake Village, and San Marino, where commercial zoning is intentionally suppressed and multi-family housing is forbidden outright. The $500,000 annual minimum level, which seems just comically high, would siphon 7% of the total local return pot.

Even though we are by now capturing nearly half of the jurisdictions in the county, we are still only giving benefits to 7% of county residents, effectively doubling their share of local return funding per capita. In this scenario, these small cities would certainly be able to afford more than a curb cut, but the largest part (about 38%) of the redistributions from the local return floor would go to those original 8 cities with the county’s lowest populations. If these cities lack the necessary funds to pave their roads, or paint bike lanes, it is wholly a concern of their internal political priorities. The higher the floor is set, the more spurious claims to equity appear.

These cities have tailored the public goods they provide so as to ingratiate themselves to wealthy residents or wealthy business interests in a form of aggressive Tiebout sorting, a process in which fragmented municipalities operate as a “market” for public goods that allows citizens to determine the optimal level of local taxation. In reality, the purported positive effects of such sorting are all but negated by, just for example, the use of exclusionary zoning in San Marino to preempt migration into the city, or the rampant externalities of a Vernon, which has repeatedly poisoned the poor residential communities that surround it. 

If cities such as these are failing to generate the necessary taxes to provide services to their few residents, the reason is that their model is failing. Solutions could be to diversify their land use, expand their tax base, and increase their population. However, the solution should not be for large and small poor cities to donate their tax dollars to small, wealthy cities to bail out a system that, it could be argued, plays an outsize role in stabilizing intraregional inequality. Metro should reject the proposal of a floor amount for local return, and continue to issue funding on a per capita basis.

(Scott Frazier is a graduate student at Cal State University Los Angeles in Public Administration.  This analysis was posted originally at urbanize.la) 

-cw

NEW GEOGRAPHY--Generation X, the group between the boomers and the millennials, has been largely cast aside in the media and marketing world, victims of their generation’s small size and lack of identity. In contrast to the much-discussed boomers and millennials, few have recognized the critical importance of this group to the future of politics, economics, technology and business.

Gen Xers — defined as aged between 35 and 49 in 2015 — matter because they will be the generation that will run our companies and governments as the boomers, albeit slowly, fade from their long-standing dominance. As millennials struggle to “launch,” the Xers are the group that will be critical to local housing markets, tech development and, perhaps most important, the creation of the next generation of children.

Far more entrepreneurial than their millennial successors, they also will have the money to shape the economy. An analysis by the Deloitte Center for Financial Services finds that they hold 14 percent of the nation’s wealth, compared to just 4 percent for millennials and 50 percent for the boomers. But by 2030, as the boomers finally start to fade from the picture, Xers increasingly will vie with boomers, accounting for 31 percent of the nation’s wealth, twice the percentage for the millennials.

Southern California’s Xer challenge

Southern California needs to focus more on Xers. Unlike the millennials, whose share has been dropping below national norms, our region still retains a higher percentage of Xers than the rest of the country. Yet, their population is being eroded by factors such as high housing prices and weak high-end job creation.

As housing prices move to ever more unsustainable levels, the Xers now are leaving California at a rate faster than any generation, according to the most recent Internal Revenue Service numbers. After all, with households having children and buying houses later, many Xers may be going to more kid-friendly areas with yards like they grew up in. Losing Xers, at least in the short run, may be more dangerous to the state and regional trajectory than millennial migration.

In their preferences, Xers nationally tend to be somewhat like their boomer forebears. An analysis of Xer residences in major metropolitan areas showed that more than 85 percent live in suburban and exurban areas, no doubt driven by such concerns as prices, house size, yards for the kids and recreation, safety and schools. This aspiration does not match with ultrahigh housing prices.

Indeed, in a recent analysis we did for Forbes.com, using U.S. Census Bureau age data of 35-49 as our measurement, Xer shares grew most dramatically in more affordable Sun Belt cities like Austin, Texas; Raleigh, N.C.; Charlotte, N.C.; Las Vegas; Phoenix; Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth, which have enjoyed the widest growth in Xer share in the country. Since 2010, emerging tech hubs, notably Denver and Portland, Ore., also did well. In contrast, the Bay Area, despite its torrid economy, has seen its Xer share stagnate, while Los Angeles’ share actually dropped.

Gov. Brown’s war on Xer expectations

Over the past decade, California regulators — citing climate change concerns — have waged a war on the state’s “sprawl,” including recent moves to all but eliminate greenfield development. This policy hits Xers the hardest since they are demonstrably less attracted to living in dense, inner-core neighborhoods and far more likely to prefer suburban locations.

Here in Southern California, Los Angeles, Orange and Ventura counties all suffered losses in their Xer population share, while the more suburban — and affordable — Inland Empire expanded its proportion significantly, with Riverside up by over 30 percent and San Bernardino up by over 10 percent. Communities that have become more Xer-oriented since 2000 include places like Perris, Indio, Murrieta, Hemet, Victorville, Temecula, Corona and Moreno Valley. The only coastal community to rank among the top 10 for Xer growth was Irvine, with Lake Forest ranked 11th.

In contrast, most coastal cities — from Ventura down to Santa Monica to Newport Beach and San Clemente — did poorly. Similarly, many of the more affluent, high-cost cities in the region also saw large drops in their Xer shares, including Yorba Linda, Alhambra, Mission Viejo and Thousand Oaks.

California’s increasingly rigid approach to peripheral development seems destined to not only reduce the Xer footprint in the region, but also to contribute to an already rapid decrease in the number of children. For example, since 2010, Los Angeles has suffered one of the largest declines in the percentage of people aged 5 to 14 — ranking 45th out of 52 major metropolitan areas, ahead of only five Rust Belt cities, Chicago and Hartford, Conn.

What is happening with Xers could soon also occur among millennials as they enter their 30s. As the growth among twentysomethings slows precipitously, and then starts to decline by 2020, the market for the high-density urban lifestyle so beloved by our planning overloads, already a smallish minority among millennials, seems destined to decline.

Rather than shut off the prospects of young people, sparking continued outmigration and a diminution of our middle-class workforce, California needs to reconsider its current housing and land-use policies. The green-speculator-regulator triad may celebrate the end of “sprawl,” but in doing so they are creating a California that, from a societal perspective, will be fundamentally unsustainable.

Joel Kotkin is the editor of New Geography … where this piece was most recently posted … and is R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism. Wendell Cox is principal of Demographia, a St. Louis-based public policy firm, and was appointed to three terms on the Los Angeles County Transportation Commission.)

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ANALYSIS--Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch emerged confirmation hearings by the Senate Judiciary Committee relatively unbloodied by relentless grilling from Democrats attempting to probe what they consider his extremist judicial philosophy.

The nominee came to the hearings with an ideological judicial rating well to the right of Antonin Scalia, the late conservative justice whose seat he would be filling, as well as with the blessings of the Heritage Foundation and the Federalist Society. Both organizations have been key in the efforts by libertarian Republican mega-donors such as hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer and the Koch Brothers to politically reshape the country along more corporate-friendly, neoliberal and socially conservative lines.

Republicans are determined to seat Gorsuch by April 16, in time to hear arguments during the Supreme Court’s final session of the current term. For their part, Democrats remain outraged over last year’s unprecedented, 10-month refusal by the Senate to grant the same hearings to Obama nominee Merrick Garland, while progressives continue to express alarm over Gorsuch’s 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals track record.

Time and again the nominee has sided with large corporations at the expense of individual rights. Cases have included his concurrence on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores — later affirmed by the Supreme Court — in which he found that businesses could deny their employees contraceptive coverage that conflicts with the owner’s religious beliefs. And in the midst of Wednesday’s hearings, Gorsuch’s ruling in a case involving the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act, in which he sided against a public school student with autism, was overturned by the Supreme Court 8-0.

If confirmed, Gorsuch is widely expected to deliver the coup de grace to the high court’s 1977 Abood v. Detroit Board of Education decision, and the right of public-sector unions to collect fair-share agency fees. That landmark labor law narrowly survived last year’s Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association case when the court deadlocked following Scalia’s death in February of 2016.

To understand Gorsuch’s potential impact on California, Capital & Main spoke by phone to constitutional law professor Melissa Murray. She is Interim Dean at the University of California, Berkeley School of Law and the Alexander F. and May T. Morrison Professor of Law Faculty Director at the Center on Reproductive Rights and Justice.

The Golden State, Murray said, should above all be worried by what she and other legal scholars believe is Gorsuch’s most radical and far-reaching judicial prejudice — his extreme skepticism and hostility to the agency authority enshrined in a doctrine called “Chevron deference,” after the 1984 Supreme Court case Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council.

Agency deference is the foundation of the modern administrative state, she explained. It grants policymaking flexibility to agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Federal Communication Commission by giving them the flexibility to adapt often vague and obsolete laws to the changes of a rapidly evolving, technology-based economy. But it has also provided regulatory sinew to fundamental worker protections offered by laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act, the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act.

“That’s a big deal, that’s huge” Murray emphasized. “Honestly, if there was anything that I would be most concerned about, it would be deference, because administrative agencies touch every aspect of everyone’s life.”

Though Gorsuch has been tight-lipped during his confirmations hearings, Murray outlined what Californians can expect from the nominee in different areas of the law based on his opinions and other writings.

Labor:

“Everything we’ve heard on the campaign trail would suggest that this administration is more hostile to labor and, as some of Judge Gorsuch’s critics have noted, he has often been more amenable to corporate interests as opposed to the interests of individuals.

Reproductive Rights:

In his book on euthanasia [The Future of Assisted Suicide], he expressed incredible admiration for what he might call a “culture of life.” And his discussion of euthanasia and assisted suicide would lead many to believe that he would be hostile to the idea of abortion rights or he would actually be quite favorable of broad attempts by the state to regulate access to abortion.

Civil Rights:

I don’t know that [he has] a deep hostility to civil rights; rather, it’s perhaps a broader deference to legislative and executive attempts to curtail [civil rights]. Or, as Chief Justice Roberts said in the voting rights case Shelby County v. Holder, maybe we are past the point where we need the kinds of interventions that the Voting Rights Act provided. I think it’s probably more likely that Gorsuch is one of these people who seems to think that we’re in a kind of post-racial society and these kinds of interventions are no longer needed.

Education:

The [neoliberal] rhetoric of school choice has . . . had very deleterious effects on public schools. By the same token, the idea of choice in other contexts — reproductive rights, contraception apropos abortion — has been pretty much overlooked, and there’s a kind of unevenness in that. So while I could certainly see a Judge Gorsuch being quite favorable in his approach to school vouchers as an expression of personal choice, … I imagine that the same kinds of neoliberal principles would not extend [by Gorsuch] to the right to choose in some other expression of individual liberty.

Immigration/Muslim Travel Ban:

He has made some statements in his confirmation hearings about being independent and the importance of an independent judiciary, especially in standing up to the executive, and I think those are exactly the right things to say in a moment like this one. But he has a very long record of being a government lawyer, and he was a high-ranking official in the Department of Justice under George W. Bush. In that capacity he had a very deferential posture to exercises of executive authority, and I can’t imagine that philosophy will be jettisoned now.

The Environment:

Deference is a big one. The idea that Judge Gorsuch has expressed is that agencies are not equipped to interpret the laws that govern their particular doctrinal areas. He would not be in favor of allowing the EPA to administer and to interpret the Clean Air Act. Instead he would say that was a legislative decision, or rather an executive function.

Gun Control:

He is a purported originalist, so I think he would be very protective of Second Amendment rights.

Should Democrats Filibuster Gorsuch’s Nomination?

Elections have consequences, and one is that the President has the authority to nominate someone to the Supreme Court, and the Senate has the duty to, through their advise and consent function, to appoint that person to the court. Judge Gorsuch is eminently qualified and is, I think, quite an appropriate pick for a more conservative-leaning president. That said, I would have to say that in March, 2016 when Merrick Garland’s name was put before the Senate, President Obama was the president, and it was his right to nominate someone and it was the Senate’s right to use their advise and consent function to give Judge Garland a hearing, and because Judge Garland was an unobjectionable candidate, he should have been appointed.

(Bill Raden is a freelance Los Angeles writer. This analysis was posted first at Capital and Main)

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EMOTION PICTURE CAPITAL--Pema Gyaltsen, a 24-year-old Tibetan man, reportedly set himself alight late last week — one of many such protests in recent years against what rights activists call brutal and repressive policies in China’s far West. Gyaltsen, who lived through his self-immolation, was promptly arrested by authorities; his whereabouts remain unknown.

The international advocacy group Free Tibet first reported Gyaltsen’s self-immolation Sunday on its website, basing the news on information obtained by research partners in northern India, says John Jones, an organizer with Free Tibet.

“The reasons for the self-immolation protests are the occupation and the accompanying human rights abuses,” Jones says. “Tibetans often leave notes or shout slogans during their self-immolation protests, calling for Tibet to be free, for an end to China’s repressive policies, for an end to the attacks on their culture and religion.” The incident was not widely reported in most Western outlets.

Meanwhile, on Monday, Chinese officials expressed outrage to their counterparts in India, after the current Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso — the Tibetan religious leader living in exile in Dharamsala, India — participated in an Indian state-sponsored Buddhism conference there.

New Delhi typically refrains from indicating any official support for the Dalai Lama, whom Beijing accuses of inciting Tibetan separatism from China. But it appeared this week the Dalai Lama was becoming involved in a long-standing deadlock between the two competing regional and world superpowers, entrenched in territorial disputes more than a half-century after the Sino-Indian War. Like Gyaltsen’s self-immolation, the news development received little attention in the Western media.

This trend is nothing new: With the exception of United States government-funded outlet Voice of America — which routinely reports on human rights violations in hard-to-reach parts of China and other deeply censored media environments — Americans and the international community have largely turned their attention away from Tibet. 

And that worries some ethnic Tibetans.

“Not only does the New York Times mention Tibet less, and not only does the American public … not talk about the issue, and not only is it Hollywood sidestepping this issue,” says a Tibetan activist who asked not to be named out of fear of reprisal from authorities. “The whole world is doing this. It’s because the Chinese government’s influence is growing.”

“But I also believe that as in everything in this life, there is karma,” the activist adds. “So I don’t believe that the Chinese government can always have good luck.”

It wasn’t always this way. In the 1990s, Tibet was Hollywood’s cause célèbre. As a result, for about a decade, Americans often heard of human rights violations in Tibet.

“Tibet has to compete for news coverage with the frequently shocking news from Syria, Ukraine, Sub-Saharan Africa, and other areas where there are wars and natural disasters.”

In 1993, the Academy Awards imposed a ban on actor Richard Gere (he’s since been rehabilitated) in response to a speech he gave advocating for Tibetan rights while presenting the Oscar for Art Direction. In his speech, Gere expressed his wishes that “we could all kind of send love and truth and a kind of sanity to Deng Xiaoping right now in Beijing, that he will take his troops and take the Chinese away from Tibet and allow people to live as free independent people again.”

Four years after Gere’s controversy, two big-budget films set in Tibet were released: In October, there was Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt, and, in December, there was Martin Scorsese’s Kundun. Both films featured appearances by the Dalai Lama. One year later, the Dalai Lama himself released his book of philosophy, The Art of Happiness. A favorite at the time, it has sold well over a million copies.

Taking Hollywood’s lead, Free Tibet student groups proliferated in high schools and colleges across the nation.

But these days, the website for the Gere Foundation, dedicated to Tibet and the fight against HIV/AIDS, appears not to have been updated in years. An attempt to reach the organization was not successful, and Gere’s agent did not respond to a request for comment on his recent work for Tibetan rights. 

Gere is, however, still sticking up for Tibetans, even if his activism isn’t as loud or widely publicized as it once was. In February, he met with German Chancellor Angela Merkel amid the Berlin release of his forthcoming film The Dinner. At the meeting, the two reportedly discussed Tibet, among other international affairs. 

“For several years recently [Gere] was more engaged with his work on HIV/AIDS than on Tibet, so his return to the Tibet issue, let alone as a strategic player, is a new development,” says Robert Barnett, a Columbia University professor and preeminent scholar on Tibet. “Perhaps media coverage has finally become seen as of secondary importance?”

“As for the Dalai Lama’s popularity, there is a slight shift in his role in the West from being an advocate on the Tibet-China issues to being a leading figure on ethics and religious tolerance in general,” Barnett adds. “The latter position continues to give him a huge audience in universities and other sectors around the world. That’s a shift in the type of media focus he’s interested in, rather than a decline in his profile.”

“It is up to Tibet groups and Tibet’s supporters, both celebrities and regular people, to keep reporting on Tibet.”

Some activists for the Tibetan cause blame a more turbulent world for the decline in international awareness of Tibetan affairs.

“There are many conflicts taking place around the world and Tibet has to compete for news coverage with the frequently shocking news from Syria, Ukraine, Sub-Saharan Africa, and other areas where there are wars and natural disasters,” Jones says. “Tibet retains many of its supporters from the 1990s, but, given the suffocating level of control that China is imposing, it is hard for news to get out of Tibet and for people around the world to get a true sense of how repressive China’s rule there is.”

Many advocates for human rights in China have observed that, with the country’s rise in political and economic power, Washington has been less willing to comment on Beijing’s repression of civil liberties.

Moving forward, Jones says, “it is up to Tibetan groups and Tibet’s supporters, both celebrities and regular people, to keep reporting on Tibet, so that it remains in the public consciousness.”

As for China’s comments to India: Last week, the Dalai Lama was present at an Indian-government sponsored Buddhism conference in India’s eastern district of Nalanda.

“It does look as if Delhi is signaling a somewhat tougher stance to Beijing for the moment, and that’s something the Dalai Lama has long called for,” says Barnett, the Columbia professor.

But don’t expect to find the Dalai Lama at the center of any major conflagrations between New Delhi and Beijing in the near future, Barnett predicts. “Neither [the Dalai Lama] nor Delhi will want to push this too aggressively,” he says. “For both of them, it is an element within their larger negotiating strategies rather than a prelude to confrontation.”

(Massoud Hayoun is an multilingual, investigative, award-winning journalist currently based in Los Angeles. He was most recently a reporter and part-time editor for Al Jazeera America’s website. This perspective was posted originally at Pacific Standard Magazine.) 

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BELL VIEW--I moved to Los Angeles from Chicago in the late-90s. Chicago – or most of it – is much more traditionally “urban” than LA. In fact, when I first came here, LA’s tree-lined streets and single family homes so confused me that I decided to move downtown. At least that part of town felt like a “city.” And I’ve always been a city kid.

At the time, about the only places to walk to in my new neighborhood were Bloom’s General Store and Al’s Bar. Bloom’s sold cigarettes and cereal – pretty much my steady diet at the time – and Al’s was a crazy cave covered in graffiti where you could grab a beer, shoot a game of pool, and maybe watch The Imperial Butt Wizards set fire to the place.

Al’s is gone, and Bloom’s is now a gourmet pie place where a slice of rhubarb and arugula crumble will set you back seven bucks. Clean, bright, happy-looking, beautiful, young urban elites now stroll the same streets where the homeless once pushed shopping carts and urban tumble weeds once rolled. Hipsters nibble on rattlesnake sausages and browse numbingly-precious displays of Japanese origami greeting cards. 

Is it better than it was? Sure. I suppose. Don’t get me wrong, I like line-caught yellowfin tuna carpaccio with locally-harvested micro greens and lemon sea foam as much as the next guy. But Al’s is gone. Gone forever. And with it a little bit of what made LA different from anyplace else in the world. 

After a year downtown, I dumped my lease and moved to a one bedroom apartment in Los Feliz. Rent set me back $630 a month – which sometimes I could barely scrape out of the couch cushions – and it was in this place I first fell in love with Los Angeles. 

And I think I need to make something clear at this point: I don’t love LA; I’m in love with LA. There’s a difference. I love New Orleans, New York City, and the Hollywood Bowl. Whenever I go to these places, I have a swell time. I don’t have any issues, no complaints. But LA drives me crazy most of the time. LA’s like a bi-polar girlfriend with a gambling problem. You never know whether she’s going to scare the crap out of you or take your breath away; and she’ll push your mother down the stairs for a dollar. But don’t anybody else talk smack about her, and don’t tell me she’s not the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen. That’s what being in love feels like. 

When I moved to Los Feliz for the first time, the people in the neighborhood used to think of the place as a “village,” and it fit the bill. The heart of Los Feliz Village in the late 90s was the Onyx Café, where they dealt in bitter coffee, stale muffins, surly cashiers, and real conversation. They stayed open as long as people wanted to keep talking, and they didn’t care if you ever actually bought a cup of coffee. The homeless sat across from film students and talked about Kurosawa. Artists, actors, busboys, novelists, and nurses sat alone or in groups, talked to each other, met each other, had coffee, listened to music, and wandered home together or alone in the blue LA night. 

It was a beautiful, real place – a place like no other anywhere – and it’s gone. Gone forever.

Oh the kids these days! They don’t know what they missed. Los Feliz doesn’t feel so much like a village any more. The Onyx is a snooty French café and down the street, ex-frat boys from Michigan with their hats turned backwards chug expensive beer and scream at big-screen TVs. The kids today want housing. In particular, they want density in close proximity to transit. It’s practically a mantra. There’s no denying the law of supply and demand will have a downward pressure on sky-high rents – but will the addition of new housing bring back the days of the $630 one bedroom apartment in Los Feliz? 

No. Those deals are as dead and gone as the Hollywood Star Lanes, where the Coen Brothers shot the Big Lebowski, and which was torn down in 2002 to make way for an elementary school.

Is there room in this new Los Angeles for the likes of Al’s Bar, the Onyx, or the Hollywood Star Lanes? Nah. The new LA is slick, and shiny, and looks a lot like a corporate office park without the parking. The old LA – at least this is what we always told ourselves – was arguably the most diverse city in the world. Will the new LA be as diverse? Don’t count on it. The immigrant families who’ve managed to educate their children in rent-controlled apartments in neighborhoods like Echo Park and East Hollywood know the “affordable housing” coming to their neighborhoods has no room for them. Generational stakeholders in Boyle Heights are fighting against the intrusion of art galleries – which they rightly see as the thin edge of the wedge of gentrification. Wait till they get a load of what CIM Group has in store for them. 

It’s odd to watch the very young stand up for the rights of billionaires and bankers in their own backyards. I never thought I’d say this, but what is wrong with the kids these days?

(David Bell is a writer, attorney, former president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and writes for CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

CULTURAL DISCONNECT?--No industry is more identified with Southern California than entertainment. Yet, in the past, the industry’s appeal has lain in identifying with the always-changing values and mythos of American society. But, today, that connection is being undermined, not just by technology, but also by a seemingly self-conscious decision to sever the industry’s links with roughly half of the population. 

This was painfully obvious during the Oscars — the penultimate event of the seemingly endless award season — when speaker after speaker decided to spend their moments of fame denouncing President Donald Trump. For all his personal failings, and often misguided policies, most Republicans and independents disapprove of the relentless Trump bashing in the media. 

Hollywood’s decision to make itself part of the anti-Trump resistance would make for wonderful satire, if you could get it on film. Imagine feminist icon Emma Watson fighting for “women’s empowerment” while baring her breasts in Vanity Fair. Or a host of social justice warriors, like Meryl Streep, demanding justice for the dispossessed, then returning to their estates where these victims of Trumpism are not likely to be found outside the servants’ quarters. 

The results also have a hard side: dismal ratings, down from a traditional viewership of 40 million to a mere 32 million, following a pattern that has seen it slide badly the last three years. Most Trump voters turned off the political speeches, notes one survey. But the Academy had other ways to show its contempt for its customers: None of the 10 largest grossing movies, notes USA Today’s Mitch Albom, got nominated for best picture, best actor or actress, or for supporting roles. 

The everyman era 

The preference of sophisticated opinion may be quintessential to Europe’s boutique film industry, but the blending of popular tastes with art has long propelled Hollywood’s historical success. This separation between audience and the Academy was not always the case. Films like “Gone with the Wind” (1939), “Around the World in 80 Days” (1956), “Ben-Hur” (1959), “The Sound of Music” (1965), “The Godfather” (1972), “Forest Gump” (1994) and “Titanic” (1997) all managed to be both blockbusters and best picture winners. 

Hollywood, wrote author Leo Rosten in 1940, was “the very embodiment” of “magic success,” allowing a truck driver to dream of being a hero, or a small-town waitress “to compare herself to a movie queen.” Hollywood was Middle American to the core, which appealed not just to our own audiences, but also to those around the world. 

In a political sense, Hollywood connected with Americans across the ideological spectrum. During the contentious 1930s, Hollywood could accommodate both the conservative myth of the loner — Gary Cooper and John Wayne — and also produce powerful dramas that touched on issues of class and inequality, such as “Our Daily Bread” (1934), “How Green Was My Valley” (1941) and “The Grapes of Wrath” (1940). 

Some progressive-leaning films were written by people who were later “blacklisted” during the McCarthy era, a tragedy that deprived the industry of some of its greatest talents. The industry instead favored biblical epochs like “Quo Vadis” (1951) as well as innocuous comedies starring the likes of Doris Day. 

“It was boy meets girl, lives happily ever after,” recalled former Los Angeles and Orange County Republican Congressman Bob Dornan, who grew up during this time. “There were clear-cut heroes and villains. Nazis torturing little old ladies, John Wayne landing on the beaches. … America was the bearer, the hope of the world.” 

New closets and old 

In the early 1980s, when Dornan was wistfully reminiscing, things were already changing. As his uncle, Jack Haley Sr., best known for playing the Tin Man in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939), grumbled, “The gays have come out of the closet and the conservatives have gotten in.” 

Like the blacklist, the closeting of gays was shameful. But now, particularly after Trump’s election, there’s a new kind of exclusion that marginalizes all but progressive thinking, with conservatives, as one put it, threatened with being “excommunicated from the church of tolerance.” 

Few, even most conservatives, don’t want a return to the self-censorship of the 1950s. It’s simply time to call a moratorium on ceaseless hectoring. Shows with edgy themes packaged in comedy and irony, like “Modern Family,” can still do well with a mass market, but there’s a limited audience for openly activist-driven programs like ABC’s miniseries “When We Rise.” 

A critical economic issue 

This is occurring as overall ticket sales are down to a century low and employment is, for the most part, stagnant. The television industry has also declined in the face of internet-based services, cord-cutting millennials and social media. There is also more competition, both from abroad and within the United States. In 1980, Hollywood employed three-quarters of all movie personnel. Now, as much as 80 percent of film starts take place elsewhere, taking many jobs along with them. 

How the creative industries — responsible for upwards of 700,000 jobs statewide, most of them in Southern California — addresses these issues is critical at a time when we have lost ground to other areas in fields from high-tech to manufacturing and business services. But, to revive fully, the Southern California cultural industry needs to once again speak to the aspirations of most Americans, not just the enlightened sophistos on the coasts. To leave people in Middle America, particularly in their 50s and above, watching reruns of old programs is not exactly a great business strategy for future growth.

Joel Kotkin is the R.C. Hobbs Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange and executive director of the Houston-based Center for Opportunity Urbanism (www.opportunityurbanism.org). Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

ECONOMIES OF PLACE-This time of year, the swallows return to Capistrano, and I return to my birthplace, San Francisco, for the city’s annual pre-budget finance conference. For the last few years I have kicked things off with an economic outlook for the coming year, replete with a discussion of risks. This being San Francisco, naturally, I had to talk about the high costs of housing as one of the risks to continued economic growth. 

On my way home, I thought of an SAT exam-like question. One of these things is not like the others: San Francisco, Cleveland, Hong Kong, Sydney, and Vancouver. I am going to take a wild guess and say that you, the reader, have chosen Cleveland. 

You are right. But why? After all, Cleveland rocks, but just not in the same way as the other cities. One of the many ways it is different is in the cost of living. Demographia’s just-released 2017 affordability study has Cleveland as one of the most affordable cities for housing, and each of the other cities in my SAT question as among the least affordable. 

This suggests something important about the affordability crisis that has not, but really should, enter the discussion of housing affordability: The cities that we find most attractive are cities where housing is “unaffordable.” In other words, the affordable housing crisis is not just about a lack of housing supply. 

In my current city, Los Angeles, one hears over and over again that everyone is leaving because no one can afford to live here. This talk reminds me of the Yogi Berra homily, “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.” Of course, exactly the opposite is true, and that truth is what should guide us in our housing policy. 

The oft-made mistake is to suggest that housing is expensive because, as Demographia incorrectly puts it in their report, “Studies do not leave the slightest doubt that unaffordable housing is almost everywhere and every time caused by the same factor: housing supply restrictions.” Well, these “studies,” some of which are by very thoughtful people, leave plenty of doubt, and some of their authors ought to go back to Econ 101. Prices are not just a supply phenomenon but are rather an interaction between supply, what is available for sale, and demand, what people want to buy. 

Clearly the people who live in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and other cities on Demographia’s list of cities with an affordability crisis could afford to live there. They just paid a larger portion of their income to do so. They could have moved to a more affordable place to live -- Cleveland, for example. So those who say that housing prices are unaffordable are saying that, at lower prices, there would be more demand than supply. Let’s explore the implications of this. 

Cleveland is so affordable because many people find it less desirable (think “lake effect” blizzards.) Indeed, half the population of Cleveland left over the past 50 years. The housing stock is more than ample for the people who want to live there. Which reminds me of the time I interviewed for a job in Buffalo, New York, right after graduation. Part of the pitch was, “Buffalo is a great place. It is so depressed that you can afford a really good house.” Somehow this did not seem like an endorsement of a community I wanted to move to. 

In my current city, Los Angeles, one hears over and over again that everyone is leaving because no one can afford to live here. This talk reminds me of the Yogi Berra homily, “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”  Of course, exactly the opposite is true … 

The reason San Francisco is different is that it is a wonderful place to live. The scenery is spectacular, the climate mild, cultural amenities are abundant, and in a very short time one can be in the Sierra for some incredible winter sports or at Mavericks for world-class surfing. 

Edward Glaeser, in his towering work on urban economies, The Triumph of the City, said “vitality makes people willing to pay for space.” Glaeser, like many other urban economists, argues for more building, but the point repeatedly made by those who study urban migration is that exciting innovation (documented by UC Berkeley economist Enrico Moretti), natural amenities such as beaches, mountains, and lakes (documented in the “superstar cities” study of Goyurko, Sinai, Mayer), and cultural amenities (as oft described by economist Richard Florida) attract people from declining to successful cities. 

To be sure, San Francisco is not to everyone’s taste; some prefer the charm of a Louisiana bayou, and others the silence of a Minnesota winter. But given the housing stock, many more people want to live in San Francisco than can. An estimate in a 2015 paper by Moretti and the University of Chicago’s Chang-Tai Hsieh found that more affordable housing could increase San Francisco’s population by 100 percent or more. So there exists significant demand for San Francisco housing that a moderate change in zoning and building standards will not correct. 

The population growth Hsieh and Moretti found means that today’s locals in places where people want to live are going to have to write a check for the infrastructure to support them. This is an old story in a place like California. In 1967, one of Ronald Reagan’s first acts as governor was to increase taxes dramatically, giving us Californians the highly progressive income tax system we enjoy today, and that Republicans everywhere rail against. The reason? Large-scale migration to the state had caused his predecessor, Pat Brown, to build infrastructure to support a burgeoning population, and as a result the state was running a structural deficit. 

So what’s happening in San Francisco -- or Seattle or Austin, or any number of popular places where the cost of living is rising -- is the market system doing its thing. The market increases prices to ration the available land through the cost of housing. And people economize on their consumption of housing by living in smaller quarters, sharing with roommates, or stacking up generations. And for some, the price is not worth the value they would receive, and they leave. That is how any market rationalizes differences between supply and demand. 

What about those who are squeezed out of California (such as my kids, who moved to Colorado)? The Dad in me says, “That’s horrible, I want them down the block from me.” But the economist in me says, “They do not value what Los Angeles has, relative to their life in a small town in Colorado, enough to sacrifice other things for it.” Resources, when scarce, are appropriately allocated according to their value to those consuming them. 

And what about our schoolteachers, firemen, police, and city officials who struggle to live in the high-priced cities where they work? Here is the rub. When a place is really attractive and therefore really expensive -- take Santa Barbara -- many who perform valuable services live elsewhere, like in Ventura, 90 minutes away during rush hour. 

Instead of wringing our hands about affordability in high-demand places, and trying to build enough to meet a worldwide demand that is difficult to satiate, we should be saying, “Great, we have a really successful city, but we also want to have a city with certain professional, service, and demographic characteristics,” and design housing policy targeted to that. For example, Santa Clara County built high-quality affordable housing that it rents to schoolteachers. It is a small program, but it is a good start. What doesn’t work are overly broad measures, such as directing developers to make 20 percent of their units affordable in exchange for building permits. Such policies generate homes for only a very few San Franciscans (while attracting ever-more newcomers who want to live there.) 

That is not to say we should ignore affordability. We definitely must pay attention to affordability, as we plan the cities we want to live in. But in doing so, we must pay attention not only to whether we have enough housing supply but also to the nature of the demand in places where people want to live. If we ignore demand, we risk creating urban nightmares -- of crowding, traffic, long commutes, and ill health -- in pursuit of a successful and affordable city.

(Jerry Nickelsburg, an economist at UCLA Anderson School of Management, writes the Pacific Economist column. He would love to hear from you at [email protected] or via Twitter @jnickelsburg. This piece originally appeared in Zocalo Public Square.) prepped for City Watch by Linda Abrams.