DRIP, DRIP, DRIP--LA City Planning this week released a backward-looking, slow-moving and poorly reasoned plan — more than a year in the making — that fails to reduce greed-driven evictions of residents, or to preserve thousands of low-rent units being eyed by land-flippers and speculators.

MCDONALD REPORT--After years of alarming studies and in-depth news coverage, the Los Angeles City Council and Mayor Eric Garcetti have yet to address the devastating health impacts to residents who live in freeway-adjacent housing, which LA politicians continue to approve. On Tuesday, at the Planning and Land Use Management Committee meeting, the Coalition to Preserve LA and other community groups urged council members to finally take substantive action. 

MUSING WITH MIRISCH-It is sometimes both sad and shocking how City Halls throughout the state, along with some of our elected officials, can be in such denial of reality, data and math.  

BELL VIEW-When it comes to elections, I obsess over one number: turnout. We have been told, for example, that turnout was through-the-roof for the special election in Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District, where Democrat Jon Ossoff narrowly lost to Republican Karen Handel. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution gushed: “In a district with about 526,000 registered voters in all, nearly half of them came out: unofficial turnout stood at about 49 percent in the race.” 

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-Before memory fades completely, this is the time to take stock of the Occupy mass movement of 2011. A few years into the Great Recession, it began with Occupy Wall Street, and then quickly spread to over 1000 encampments, including other countries, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Israel. 

RANTZ & RAVEZ-The Westfield “Village” at Victory and Topanga Canyon in the West San Fernando Valley has turned into a place to walk your dog and pay for parking (some validate) to do business with local vendors that remain open for business despite the poor foot traffic and slow sales in the area. More and more of the businesses in the “Village” are experiencing financial difficulties; sales have not been what was expected.