PLANNING WATCH / PLAN-IT LOS ANGELES

--> By Dick Platkin, City Watch LA, January 18, 2018 http://citywatchla.com/index.php/los-angeles-for-rss/14718-pushing-back-against-city-hall-cheaters Platkin on Planning :   City Planning has developed a host of ways to assist real estate developers building for the high end of the real estate market.   Their helping hand, though, is based on cheating, and it also hides behind several totally spurious claims.   While they don’t yet concede their bait-and-switch approach, their friends, like Senator Scott Wiener , unabashedly support real estate speculators with many outlandish predictions.   According to Wiener and friends, the new market housing will boost transit ridership, reduce residential segregation, slow down gentrification, and meet the housing needs of the homeless, the overcrowded, and the rent-stressed.   Since I debunked most of these claims in last week’s CityWatchLA column , this week I will zero in on the cheating...

DICK PLATKIN     30 NOVEMBER 2017 LOS ANGELES PREVIOUS ARTICLE Affordable Housing Meets Free-Market Fantasy NEXT ARTICLE What’s Wrong with This Picture? UC’s Napolitano Gets Scolded, but Keeps Her Job! TOOLS  PRINT   EMAIL PLATKIN ON PLANNING-On Saturday, December 2,  City Watch  readers are invited to attend the  Resist Gentrification Action Summit . The conference, sponsored by  Housing is a Human Right.org ,  takes place at Audubon Junior High School, 4120-11 th  Avenue, Los Angeles, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.  Facebook   Twitter   Google+   Share According to Damien Goodman, the conference organizer, the gentrifiers have a three-word mantra for every problem facing Los Angeles, “Build more housing!” For those who listen carefully, their hymn has a second verse. It calls for rolling back zoning and environmental regulations on high-end real estate projects. This  not affordable hous...

DICK PLATKIN     14 DECEMBER 2017 LOS ANGELES PREVIOUS ARTICLE Loser Trump: Uniquely Awful and at the Tipping Point NEXT ARTICLE First-Person Report: Cancer-Causing Chemicals Endanger SoCal Kids TOOLS  PRINT   EMAIL PLATKIN ON PLANNING-In the fanciful world of high school and college “civics” and political science classes, government is portrayed as a neutral force blindly balancing many competing interest groups. While a few gullible students might fall for this claim, a quick look at the City of Los Angeles puts this notion to rest.  Facebook   Twitter   Google+   Share When it comes to land use decisions, City Hall places a very heavy thumb on the scale in numerous ways to help real estate developers, while simultaneously placing a host of barriers in the way of community and neighborhood groups. Let us, therefore, take a closer look to see how this game is fixed from the start.  How City departments...