Popular posts from this blog
Updated analysis of Senator Scott Wiener's SB 827 Real Estate Deregulation Bill
The “Build More Market Housing” Quack Miracle Cure for Los Angeles By Dick Platkin* (Updated from CityWatchLA , Jan. 11, 2018, original) http://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/los-angeles-for-rss/14670-the-build-more-market-housing-quack-miracle-cure-for-los-angeles Platkin on Planning : Los Angeles is heading toward a perfect storm of gentrification, well camouflaged behind spurious claims of boosting transit ridership and addressing LA’s housing crisis through planning, zoning, and environmental deregulation. This perfect storm is propelled by huge tail winds from the State Legislature in Sacramento, with big city Democrats fronting for the real estate interests that fund and mentor them. San Francisco State Senator Scott Wiener and Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti are their current favorites, but many more are lining up at the trough. To begin, there is a treasure trove of successful programs that they could turn to if they trul...
Why is homelessness still growing in the U.S., including in Los Angeles?
By Dick Platkin*, CityWatchLA, October 10, 2023 Planning Watch: Despite a friendly press, LA’s Mayor Karen Bass, like her mayoral predecessors and public officials in other cities, offers homeless programs that cannot hold back the continued growth of the unhoused, overcrowded, and rent-gouged. For some this growth of homelessness is an opportunity to politically blame the crisis on X, Y, or Z. For still others it is a golden opportunity to profit from speculative real estate investments. But these opportunist responses make the underlying causes of the housing crisis worse. Local officials, like Mayor Karen Bass, as well as her counterparts in other cities, have been dealt an extremely bad hand. But they then play this bad hand very poorly. Mayor Bass and the Los Angeles City Council are members of a large club whose nostrums, especially upzoning, make the housing crisis worse, not better. While the underlying causes, especially the lack of low-priced housing and gro...
Comments