PLANNING WATCH / PLAN-IT LOS ANGELES

Supply-Siders Chase their Last Mirage: Developers Making a Bundle On Middle Class Housing  Dick Platkin, CityWatchLA, August 27, 2020 PLANNING WATCH -If you ever feel like the fictional newscaster Howard Beale in Network, who screamed at his television audience, “I just can’t take it anymore,” I have a simple remedy for you.   Spend some time with supply-side dead-enders, and you will be good for another 15 rounds. As I recently discovered, they are chasing a mirage, an illusory formula of zoning deregulation that allows real estate speculators to get rich by building middle class housing. Their belief in the power of market forces is astonishing, especially because they ignore contrary evidence sitting in plain view on nearly every Los Angeles street. In their inverse universe, long gone public housing programs and socia...

City Hall Opposes Real Estate Scams in Sacramento, but Welcomes Similar Proposals in its own Backyard By Dick Platkin, CityWatchLA, August 20, 2020 PLANNING WATCH -In Los Angeles City Councilmembers Herb Wesson and Paul Koretz have taken a forceful stand against State Senator Scott Wiener’s nine piecemealed housing bills, especially Senate Bill 1120 . They replace Wiener’s defeated Senate Bill 50, but their impact will be the same: rampant up-zoning of privately owned parcels justified by the specious claim that up-zoning solves California’s house crisis. We just need to “unleash the private sector” by scaling back zoning and environmental laws because they are a drag on developer profits. Then, private real estate investors/speculators will do the rest. Once they can make even money, these scammers will build...

  From the White House, to the State House, to City Hall, Real Estate Hustlers are Still Hyping the Same Awful Projects Dick Platkin, CityWatchLA, August 23, 2020 From the White House, to the State House, to City Hall, real estate hustlers are still hyping their same awful projects.   By Dick Platkin*     Planning Watch:   The corporate media portrays this country’s two dominant political parties, the Republicans, now tied to Donald Trump, and the Democrats, now in the Joe Biden - Kamala Harris camp, as bitter enemies.   But they are really frenemies , teams who compete in the same league, like the Dodgers and the Giants.   One of their common denominators is the real estate hustlers in each party’s upper echelons.   In the...

During the Pandemic, manzionization has dragged Angelinos down into two more circles of Hell . By Dick Platkin* https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/los-angeles/20214-during-the-pandemic-mansionization-has-dragged-angelenos-down-into-two-more-circles-of-hell Planning Watch : According to the medieval Italian poet, Dante Alighieri , Hell has nine levels.   If you live in Los Angeles neighborhoods, like Beverly Grove, you already know what McMansion Hell is like .   But, during the Covid-19 pandemic mansionization has reached new depths , dragging local residents down further, to the levels of fraud and greed. CityWatchLA readers have already read the case against McMansions and City Hall’s futile steps to regulate them.   McMansions are those infill, boxy, over-sized houses in many Los Angeles neighborhoods.   Limited Liability Corporations (LLC’s) quickly and cheaply build them to wrack-up highly profitable sales to peopl...

‘History Repeats Itself, First as Tragedy, Second as Farce’ . . . The Case of the Purple Line Transit Plan Dick Platkin, CityWatchLA, Juley 30, 2020 PLANNING WATCH -In a recent 2019 CityWatchLA column and in previous 2016 columns I carefully debunked City Hall’s Purple Line Extension Transit Neighborhood Plan (TNP ). I explained how this proposal was a real estate scam masquerading as an essential mass transit component. But, in Los Angeles, even with cascading FBI investigations, United States Attorney indictments, guilty pleas, and prison terms for City Hall officials pitching illicit real estate proposals, Purple Line TNP real estate boondoggles are still rolling out from the trickle down dead-enders .   The latest proposal comes from an anonymous and misnamed Facebook group, Fri...