EDUCATION POLITICS--California’s school districts expect to issue close to 1,750 teacher layoff notices despite a statewide teacher shortage.

Wednesday was the deadline for districts statewide to issue pink slips, or reduction in force notices, to teachers, counselors, administrators and other credentialed employees who could be laid off at the end of the school year because of potential budget shortfalls.

The 1750-layoff figure is an estimate issued by the California Teachers Association, the state’s largest teachers union, based on a survey of key districts.

Educators and union leaders estimate that few if any of the pink-slipped teachers come from the most in-demand jobs, including special education, math, science and bilingual education. (State law requires layoffs be based on seniority, but also allows for districts to protect teachers with limited experience if they’re credentialed in jobs that would be difficult to fill otherwise.)

The teacher layoffs are part of an annual ritual as districts “prepare for the worst” when they start crafting spending plans for next school year that are based on conservative early state budget estimates.

Typically, many of these notices are rescinded before the end of the school year as districts receive better funding estimates from lawmakers before the final budget is approved in June.

But these notices also come during a time when many education leaders, lawmakers, and researchers say California is experiencing the worst teacher shortage  in more than a decade. So it raises the question as to why these teachers face the threat of job loss when so many districts are desperate to hire and retain them.

The answer lies with the set of conflicting state laws for state budget projections and requirements for giving teachers advance warning regarding possible job loss.

By law, public school districts in California had until March 15 to send notices to teachers and other credentialed staff who might be laid off at the end of the school year. This amounts to about a 90-day notice.

Districts make these projections based on the governor’s preliminary budget proposal released two months prior, in January.

This year, Gov. Jerry Brown proposed a minimal 2.1 percent increase for K-12 education in January, which educators said would not be enough to cover districts’ increasing salaries, benefits and costs.

“It’s already a struggle to find qualified teachers, especially in hard to fill jobs,” said Eric Heins, president of the California Teachers Association. “Districts and the state should instead be working on finding better incentives to keep their teachers.”

The California Teachers Association says that has led to about three dozen districts sending a combined 1,750 pink slips. These figures represent a small fraction of the more than 325,000 teachers statewide. And the number of notices is far below the 25,000 that were sent out in the peak of the recession in 2010.

San Diego Unified, the state’s second-largest district, sent out 850 notices, the most of any district. Santa Ana Unified sent out 287 notices. Montebello Unified sent out 333 notices. About 30 other districts sent out 50 or fewer, according to the teachers union.

Los Angeles Unified, the state’s largest district, sent out 1,300 notices to administrators, but none to classroom teachers. So these figures were not included in the union estimate despite the fact that many of those administrators could bump back to a teaching position if they have a credential.

Los Angeles Unified spokeswoman Barbara Jones said the district hopes to rescind most, if not all of these notices. And even if some administrators return to the classroom, no current teachers would lose their job, she said.

Analysts and educators expect the governor’s updated version of the budget released in May to be more generous to K-12 education, especially as the state’s economy has continued to grow, meaning most of these jobs will be saved.

Teri Burns, legislative analyst for the California School Boards Association, said that even if most of the teachers receiving notices end up keeping their jobs, this yearly cycle exacerbates the state’s teacher shortage.

“These notices disrupt peoples’ lives unnecessarily,” she said. “If you’re a teacher and you receive one of these notices, then you start looking or another job, or even look to leave the profession.”

Burns said for students considering careers as teachers, reading reports of pink slips given each spring to teachers might signal that it’s a very volatile career.

The California School Boards Association has recommended that the state eliminate the March 15 warning deadline, and instead use the June 15 date for informing teachers that they’re actually being laid off.

Other groups have also proposed that move, but it’s been opposed by the California Teachers Association, with union leaders saying teachers need as much warning as possible to look for other jobs or make other preparations just in case they face unemployment.

Joshua Pechthalt, president of the California Federation of Teachers, the state’s second-largest teachers union, said the number of spring layoff notices is also not a valid measurement of how the state is being affected by the teacher shortage.

“You have to look at whether a district giving out layoff notices is experiencing declining enrollment, or if they have their own unique budget problems. Not every district is the same,” he said.

Districts facing the most severe teacher shortages are reporting no layoff notices including San Francisco Unified, San Jose Unified, Oakland Unified, and Fresno Unified.

This story originally appeared on EdSource

(Fermin Leal is EdSource’s career and college readiness reporter, based in Southern California. Fermin previously worked for 13 years as an education reporter at The Orange County Register. He covered k-12 education and the California State and University of California systems. This piece originated at EdSource and was posted most recently at Huff Post.) 

-cw

EDITING INFORMATION-Only a fool would accuse the mainstream LA press of dabbling in fake news. But what to call a political endorsement, then, that omits mention of a raging and worsening fiscal crisis caused in large part by the endorsee? 

In their endorsements of Mayor Garcetti, every one of the mainstream news outlets, while chastising him for seemingly serious failings, omitted any mention of a fact which was well-known at the time --and in many cases even reported by those outlets on January 9, 2017 -- that since November 2016, the reserve fund has stood at about $295 million, a number the CAO reported was “only precariously above” the minimum amount required under city policy -- 5% of the General Fund budget. They also neglected to report that the LA City Council had just been forced to change the law in order to borrow up to $70 million through judgement obligation bonds, a form of borrowing not used since 2010.  

Why does this matter? Why omit a fact that readers would no doubt consider important in choosing how to vote, or just as important, in choosing whether to vote? 

Maybe readers wouldn’t have changed their vote. And it’s unlikely that the outcome would have been changed. But discussion of the issue might have produced pressure to expand coverage of the race, and in any case would have given the public a chance to ask tougher questions of the Mayor -- to make him earn his reelection – and to commit to meaningful reforms. Maybe even hold his feet to the fire.  

By offering seemingly “tough” criticisms of the Mayor yet excluding genuinely tough topics, the media misrepresents "by omission" and so denies readers their right to think for themselves.  

The motive for engaging in such whitewashing? You’ll have to ask the press outlets. Incumbents often set up “velvet rope” systems whereby reporters who criticize them too harshly are denied access. This can hurt business, and so they avoid stories that are too hard-hitting, especially in an election where the outcome seems certain. Why stick out their necks by reporting things unfavorable to the incumbent when they know it will be he who has the power after the election?  

The problem with this attitude is that it misleads the audience, and we believe it hurts the bottom line. Readers want hard-hitting truth. And incumbents respect organizations that don’t kowtow because they think they have to. The best way to deal with the velvet rope is to blow right past it.

(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.

CORRUPTION WATCH--People do not operate on the basis of reality. Rather, they function on their beliefs. If their beliefs are close to reality, then their actions are more likely to be beneficial to them. Thus, logic tells us that people want information which reflects reality as much as possible. Then, their actions would benefit them as much as possible. 

Logic is incorrect because the belief that people operate on logic is false. Experience shows that people accept as true information which pleases them. The more the news pleases them, the more likely that they will believe it. 

We should point out that many people love to feel outraged. People who feel cheated, want their abusers to be trounced. Some people love to feel angry and news which allows them to vent rage is a narcotic for them. 

When the Politics of Revenge hooked up with Alt-Right news, a powerful force was created. The Politics of Revenge, as the name implied, was not based on positive affirmations of becoming better in every way every day, but instead it zeroed in on making the SOBs pay. 

The path for Alt-Right news had been paved by the mainstream media which had perfected Alt-News to an art form. While some newspapers followed the Who, What, When, Where, Why, How format, many newspapers such as the Hearst Publications and Los Angeles Times did not. From its start, a main purpose of the LA Times was to promote the agenda of whoever was in power – be it the railroads, oil tycoons, or real estate developers. 

Objectivity did not rate high in the LA Times’ pantheon of values. Today’s historians know that during the so-called Zoot Suit Riots in 1943, the Mexican-American youth were primarily the target of the violence by the servicemen whose anger was fueled by LA Times Alt-News machine. 

“The mobs may have operated with the tacit support of local law enforcement, but they earned the explicit praise of the Los Angeles press. On June 7, the Los Angeles Times ran a story with a lead paragraph that read: "Those gamin dandies, the zoot suiters, having learned a great moral lesson from servicemen, mostly sailors, who took over their instruction three days ago, are staying home nights." August 29, 2012, KCET, Los Angeles' 1943 War on the Zoot Suit by Nathan Masters, http://bit.ly/2mK7sjI In reality, the Zoot Suiters were primarily the victims and not the perps, but that news would not make Anglos feel good. 

Because the LA Times is one of the Rembrandts of Alt-News, it realized that many stories had to be factual. Thus, any item which did not impact the financial interests of the rich and powerful could be faithfully reported. When time for dissembling arrives, the art of omission is employed. Since Garcetti’s election in 2001 as councilmember for Hollywood’s council district 13, the LA Times has accepted almost every piece of BS in support of his Manhattanization of Los Angeles. People are lead to believe that the increase in housing prices is due to a high demand for housing despite facts to the contrary. It was only in 2004-2007 that the LA Times attributed the nationwide increase in housing prices to high demand and ignored the trillion dollar mortgage frauds which were deceiving people into believing that there were millions of home buyers all across the nation. 

Since LA is owned by real estate developers, the LA Times comes out with the same Alt-News now that it pushed upon people before the Crash of 2008.   According to the LA Time’s Alt-Fact, LA’s housing problem is lack of supply. In a rather typical Alt-News article in July 2016, the LA Times wrote: 

“Yes. Like most things, it’s a supply/demand situation. The number of [housing] starts hasn’t been able to take care of that pent-up demand. The pricing has gone up accordingly, and that has been accommodated by low [mortgage] interest rates. Continued low interest rates have in essence subsidized a rapid ascent in pricing.” 

In reality, the cause of Los Angeles’ escalating housing prices is not supply and demand. As the LA Times knew or certainly should have known, LA had glut of higher end apartments constructed in the last decade. 

Here’s an HCIDLA Report from Nov, 2015: “The average rent in Los Angeles is $2,031 while new apartments built in the preceding ten years rent for $2,609 and have a 12 percent vacancy rate; a 5 percent vacancy rate indicates that supply and demand are in balance. At these rental rates, families must earn $81,240 to afford the average rent and $104,360 to afford a newly built apartment. In reality, the Los Angeles median income is only $50,543 and the current living wage of $15 per hour translates to $26,254 in annual wages; both wages leave a tremendous wage gap for workers seeking to rent in Los Angeles. The high vacancy rate for newer, more expensive housing exemplifies the disparity in the type of housing being built demonstrating that new, higher cost housing, is out of reach for many Angelenos.” 

Thus, the LA Times would appear to have been intentionally publishing Alt-Facts that there was a shortage of housing and that shortage was pushing up housing prices. Omitted from the LA Times article was the fact that the City had demolished over 21,000 rent controlled houses since 2001 and that in 2013, the City was constructing only 37% of the housing needed for low income people. Those figures were verboten because people would be able to see that the only housing shortage was for the very poor and that was due to the City’s destroying their homes: 

Then, we see the entrance of Donald Trump, who is his own 24 hr Alt-News Service via Twitter. I suspect that during his stay in LA as editor of Breitbart, Steve Bannon saw the extreme gullibility of readers of the LA Times. Although I’ve never spoken with Bannon, I fantasize that he was green with envy that the LA Times could publish Alt-Facts with impunity. 

Under Trump-Bannon, however, Alt-News is no longer like your Grandfather’s Buick. His variant of Alt-News is more aggressive -- like a souped up Dodger Challenger without a muffler. His Alt-News is obviously fake. Maybe it was part the Revenge of the Nerds Syndrome. Sick and tired of the Alt-News of BS publications like the LA Times, he was going to use Right Wing Alt-News to destroy “News” itself. 

This is a dramatic change. Bannon is not old man Hannity ranting stuff like the senile uncle one has to invite to Thanksgiving. Trump is not only Twittering Alt-Facts at us, but Bannon even has Missy Kellyanne Conway tell the entire world that they are Alternative Facts. Then, he sends out Herman Goebbles look-a-like Herr Stephen Miller commanding us not to question. Did Herr Miller start with “Actung, ich befehle Sie” or is that just my imagination? 

Bannon has launched a war on Americans’ consensus of reality. Building upon over a 100 years of sophisticated Alt-News distorting reality so that the public would vote for it own demise, Bannon-Trump have made America unsafe for reality. Herr Miller is correct – Truth is what Trump says it is – do not question. 

In what may be the most brilliant display of the destruction of reality came with Rachel Maddow’s March 14, 2017 release of Donald Trump’s 2005 Tax Returns. Had Maddow adhered to Honest Journalism 101, she would never have mentioned these phony documents. When one thinks of Ben Bradley, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and their extreme efforts for confirmation, the rash stupidity with which Maddow hyped her having “Trump’s Tax Returns,” one feels sick. One never brings forth a document unless one has proof that the document is what it purports to be? There are accepted modes of confirmation. Step number one is to read, step number two is think. Standing alone, these two pages reeked of “set up.” 

To aggravate this deplorable breach in journalism, David Cay Johnson tells Rachel that he has no way to authentic the documents since they “came over the transom.” In journalism, that ends the matter. Woodward and Bernstein did not print what Deep Throat said without confirmation. 

One needs to emphasize the enormity of Maddow’s malfeasance. Even if it should later turn out that these two pages are genuine, that is not the real point which is: Maddow did not abide by the tiniest bit of journalistic ethics before standing before the entire world proclaiming these two pages to be genuine copies of Trump’s 2005 federal income taxes. In light of the favorable light in which the 2005 tax returns cast Trump, they are more likely Alt-Tax Return leaked by Donald Trump.   

This sad episode shows how little regard people have for truth. We live in a world of Alt-Facts where honesty plays no significant role. 

The use of Alt-Facts is ingrained in American life. The Trump-Bannon regime is forcing us to confront reality by its incessant and unrepentant use of falsehoods.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch)

PERSPECTIVE-Deportations of illegal immigrants has been in the news quite a bit since Donald Trump took office. Possession of stolen Social Security numbers by those detained or deported have played a role in some of the cases. A recent, well-publicized, deportation involved Guadalupe Garcia de Rayos. She was arrested in Arizona and returned to Mexico for a 2009 felony conviction stemming from a stolen SSA number she used. Her case was reviewed by ICE seven times after the conviction. A removal order was issued in 2013. 

One source reported the actual owner of the number was a young man in Tucson. While I cannot confirm that, even if Garcia de Rayos had created one from randomly selected digits there would have been at least a 50% chance of it belonging to a citizen, living or deceased. As of 2014, approximately 450 million numbers had been issued out of one billion possible numeric combinations. 

The remaining 50% will be issued over the next several decades. The current rate is 5.5 million per year (there are blocks of numbers which are unavailable.) Eventually, all illicitly used random numbers will, in effect, be stolen. 

That begs the question: if you are aware that an action you have taken has a 50% chance of amounting to theft, are you guilty of a felony? There is no easy answer, but it at least can be considered some form of fraud or misrepresentation. It would be enough for me to lose my CPA license (or worse) if I filed a tax return for a client who I knew was using a W2 with an unauthorized SSA number. 

SSA numbers are stolen for two purposes: financial gain, as in taking out a fraudulent loan in the name of the person to whom it is legally assigned, or for purposes of obtaining employment. The former can create significant harm to a person’s credit and reputation; the latter can create other problems, such as impeding a background check or delaying the payment of a federal entitlement. The most vulnerable victims in either case are children. Until they are old enough to enter the job market or apply for certain federal benefits, they will not be aware of the theft. 

Thefts for financial gains will always be a problem. Nothing short of persistent, proactive measures by the government and other institutions who possess SSA numbers will make a dent in this form of criminal activity. Even then, sophisticated hacking will occasionally breach any firewall. It is ultimately up to individuals to prevent or limit damage by practicing relentless vigilance. Take any seemingly legitimate communication you receive from a financial institution with a grain of salt. Carefully scrutinize all requests for information appearing to originate from a government body. 

Preventing the use of SSA numbers for employment purposes is difficult to stop, too, maybe even more so because theft can be accomplished using low tech resources. Illegal immigrants normally use their own names for the stolen numbers. Creating authentic-looking documents is fairly easy. However, they will not accrue benefits if the number is fictitious or has already been assigned. The Social Security Administration screens employer W2 filings for mismatches or no evidence of issuance. Employee contributions will be held in the Earnings Suspense File.  

In 2010, it was estimated that these suspense dollars provided around $12 billion to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.  While that is a windfall, it is a pittance compared to the funding needs of the two programs. The contributions are likely more than offset by the uncompensated services provided by emergency rooms across the nation to those who are not authorized to be here. That’s according to the American College of Emergency Physicians.   

I would not rule out future benefit claims against previously unmatched contributions by those who may one day attain legal status, or through a class action. If that occurs, the windfall effect could be greatly diminished. The United States could be facing a growing contingent liability that could bite a large chunk from the Retirement and Medicare trust funds when we least expect it, and when less prepared to deal with the fallout. The Suspense File has accumulated $1.2 trillion through 2012 from 333 million unmatched W2s. Claims against a fraction of that could easily exceed $100 Billion. 

Except through a small pilot program, neither the IRS nor SSA will notify you if your Social Security number pops up as a mismatch. It is important for you to compare your earnings against those shown on your annual Social Security Statement. Do not depend on the SSA to catch all fraudulent W2s and assign them to the Suspense File. 

The most sensible line of defense against illicit use of SSA numbers for employment purposes would be to increase the use of the E-Verify system. There must be penalties for employers who do not perform reasonable due diligence in screening hires.

There are concerns about mandatory use and the cost of the system to businesses. My suggestion would be to use it as an audit tool – not everyone would be required to use it. Employers submitting too many W2s with mismatched SSA numbers would have to as long as the problem persists…and suffer consequences for their carelessness if it did not cease. In time, it may be practical to require widespread use as efficiency is improved through experience. 

Ultimately, we need to come to grips with the primary cause of employment-purposed SSA number theft. There are some jobs Americans will not do at current levels of compensation, in some cases kept artificially low by the availability of cheap labor. Rooting out unauthorized SSA number use could open up some labor segments to American citizens. Then there are those jobs most citizens will shun at almost any rate of pay. Do not expect to find more than a few Americans picking crops or working in a poultry processing plant. That was not the case in days gone by, but that train left the station many decades ago, and it is not returning. 

There should be regulated guest worker programs, subject to the protection of labor laws, for certain industries and jobs when needs are proven. Employees will not get rich, but could earn a path to citizenship and all the opportunities that has to offer. Costs of certain products would rise, but the use of unauthorized SSA numbers could significantly diminish. 

If the integrity of the SSA database is compromised by a steady inflow of bogus information, the ramifications will be painful to the economy and greatly diminish trust in the institutions responsible for our financial and physical well being. That pain will be far worse than what would be felt by taking steps to deal with the problem now.

(Paul Hatfield is a CPA and serves as President of the Valley Village Homeowners Association. He blogs at Village to Village and contributes to CityWatch. The views presented are those of Mr. Hatfield and his alone and do not represent the opinions of Valley Village Homeowners Association or CityWatch. He can be reached at: [email protected].) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

MY TURN--I really thought this time would be different.   Especially after all the toxic political atmosphere had spurred thousands into marches; phone calls to numerous members of Congress; noisy town halls; increased sales in tranquilizers; campaign events; lots of the "sky is falling" on social media; and huge viewership increases in cable news shows; the Los Angeles voting electorate didn't manage to reach even a 12% turnout.   Our previous election turnout in 2013 was 21% and that was nothing to brag about. 

The largest turnout for a Mayoral election was when Tom Bradley challenged Sam Yorty for Mayor. Yorty won that election with a 76% turnout. There is no doubt that racial prejudice played a big part in his victory.   Tom Bradley won the next election against Yorty with a 64 % turnout. Richard Riordan received the biggest turnout for Mayor in recent years at 45%. That was after the riots and Rodney King. 

Does this mean we must have a crisis in order to go to the polls? Maybe our Federal crisis has taken so much energy that Angelenos don't realize the local elections affect their everyday lives. Since we will not garner a lot of sympathy or care from President Trump (after all he lost by double digits in CA) it is even more important to have strong, smart, ethical, elected leaders to make sure we can survive whatever comes our way from Washington DC. 

The Pat Brown Institute for Public Affairs at Cal State University did a study on "Who Votes in Los Angeles Local Elections". They analyzed the 2013 election at that time was one of the lowest turnouts. They found that in reality the voter turnout was not a very good representation of the City's population. Voters were predominately white, older home owners. The lowest turnout group was Latinos, which is unfortunate, since statistics point out that 90% of Latinos reaching the voting age of 18 were born in the U.S. 

The report is really interesting. It concludes with both structural and civic reform. The structural reform suggestion to move the elections to even years has already been voted on and passed.   

The other structural change was to increase the City Council currently covering two million registered voters to twenty one.   There are currently five LA County Supervisors for more than five million registered voters. Both legislative branches should increase their elected representatives. Having smaller geographic areas would allow the City Council Member to be closer to his/her constituents thereby being more inclusive. It is even more relevant for the County. 

District 5, as an example, has both parts of the City and the Valley. Some of the other districts have different ethnic, economic and social challenges within the district. It makes more sense for each District to be more homogeneous. 

The last time enlarging the City Council was on the ballot was 1999 and there have been huge demographic changes since then. 

Maybe someone should take the bull by the horns and start a petition to have an increase in both areas. It is almost impossible to do a good job with so many constituents. Since CALEXIT is such a slight possibility; having smaller geographic areas would give the City and County electorate a much better look at local government and what their "electeds" are doing ... or NOT doing. 

The PBI Report also had suggestions for Civic Reform commenting that local issues for working class people, young people and minorities do not have as much interest in local as they do in federal elections. In addition, people who are active and knowledgeable about City and County challenges ... vote. Those who are not knowledgeable don't vote because of either lack of interest or lack of knowledge.   The candidates also can and should do more to show their prospective voters why the issues are relevant to them. 

So what else can we add to Civic Reform? 

Better and more civic involvement for High School students. Get them excited about the possibilities of making a difference. When I went to High school in Los Angeles we had something called a "student congress" at City Hall. Civics’ classes would discuss the challenges of the day. Kids can get their parents motivated to vote. Elected and appointed officials can have Department speaker bureaus, where they send an enthusiastic and knowledgeable people to talk about what they are doing and how it affects each student’s life. 

Adapt the target marketing, instead of sending out thousands of the same expensive print pieces. After the initial mailer, most people I know sent the mailers straight into the recycle bin. Utilize Social Media. Do the research showing what each group of constituents really wants or fears. Internet messaging has brought down costs in printing and postage but one size does not fit all groups.  

Neighborhood Councils (NC's) attract only 15% participation of our City's populace. Some have seen the light and are having youth projects and activities. Most Boards of Directors are made up of older adults, set in their ways and who want the status quo. There were quite a few younger generation attendees at the last Neighborhood Congress but as far as I know, nothing has been done to follow up. Yes, there is a so called leadership program, but again theory instead of practical and no follow up. 

Perhaps DONE should hire a young millennial to do nothing but motivate and organize an effective program to distribute to the various neighborhood councils. Why not ask each Board member to bring a new person to each Board meeting? 

Local NC Boards should be able to send out to the High School s in their area energetic and interesting speakers to talk about involvement and WHY it is important. 

Most of the Neighborhood Council Board meetings are as exciting as watching paint dry! Perhaps DONE could come up with program ideas. I don't recommend the Board of Neighborhood Commissioners (BONC) be asked to do anything since they are not effective. In fact, in my opinion the entire Neighborhood Council System needs an upgrade. For something that has so much promise to bring people together and participate in making this City better ... they (again in my opinion,) get a ‘C-' in performance, vision and creativity. and an ‘A’ in bureaucratic gobbledygook. 

As always comments are welcome as well as suggestions or ideas to make our City better.

(Denyse Selesnick is a CityWatch columnist. She is a former publisher/journalist/international event organizer. Denyse can be reached at: [email protected])

-cw

WEST COAST CITY OF LIGHTS-Imagine stepping into a time machine and traveling 100 years into the future. You find out that the city of Fargo, North Dakota, once barely a speck on the map, has become the country’s second-largest metropolis and the place to be for cosmopolitans and immigrants of every stripe – an internationally renowned commercial and cultural hub. 

That’s exactly what Los Angeles is today. Over a century, the city has risen meteorically from a sleepy farming town in the middle of nowhere to a world-famous center of entertainment, business and pretty much anything else you can name. As of 2015, the Greater Los Angeles area was home to over 15 million people, making it the second largest urban area in the country and 19th largest in the world. Los Angeles’ gross domestic product is closing in on $1 trillion, placing it in the top tier of urban economies globally. 

But for all its people and businesses, the city faces equally legendary problems: Its housing shortages, traffic jams, homelessness, inequality and issues of racial injustice have all become as well known as any movie studio in this city. And with it, the city is going through a bit of an identity crisis. 

Make no mistake, Los Angeles’ era as a boomtown is over. The city – built on natural assets and sustained by the offer of a unique lifestyle centered around the automobile – now needs to reinvent itself as a true urban center if it wants to remain important in the coming years. 

City leaders are emphasizing density, transit and social justice more than ever. But in order to find a way forward, the city must establish its civic identity once and for all – in other words, what it means to be an Angeleno in the 21st Century. 

The Western frontier 

Americans didn’t really pay attention to Los Angeles for most of its early history. 

When Felipe De Neve – then-governor of the Spanish province of Alta California and namesake of our beloved dorms and dining hall – commissioned the establishment of El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora de los Angeles de Porciuncula in the Los Angeles Basin in 1777, the site was a chaparral-covered prairie home to dozens of native Tongva tribes. 

A hundred years later, the pueblo had become a ranching community of about 6,000 people built on the backs of native laborers. Spanish and Mexican rule, the California Gold Rush and the cattle rancheros had come and gone, but Los Angeles was still just a Wild West town – rowdy and lawless, with most of the violence squared on its Mexican population. 

All that quickly changed when the railroads came to town. In the process, Los Angeles found a civic identity as a booming farm town on the western frontier supported by good weather, cheap land and wealth eventually provided by the oil and movie industries. 

When the Southern Pacific Railroad was completed in 1881, it provided Southern California’s first direct link to the eastern United States. That same year, the California State Normal School opened a southern branch – one that would eventually become UCLA. Los Angeles was clearly moving up in the world. 

Local farmers soon found that the area’s temperate Mediterranean climate was perfect for growing big, juicy oranges. With the advent of refrigerated boxcars, agriculture replaced cattle ranching as a mainstay of the Southern California economy. The orange industry left an impression on the growing town that can still be felt to this day. 

By 1890, over 50,000 people called Los Angeles home. 

It’s tough to pin down a single explanation for the city’s sudden explosive growth. In an 1890 edition of the “Historical Society of Southern California,” historian J.M. Guinn laid out various reasons for the city’s stunning success. First, railroads from the U.S.’s eastern population centers eliminated the six-month transcontinental trek to even reach the place. Second was the orange business, which attracted thousands of migrants looking for work. Third, the area’s world-famous sunny and warm climate proved an obvious draw for frostbitten easterners. 

There were other factors too: easily available land through the Homestead Act of 1862 promised newcomers a healthy chunk of Southern California real estate, and the discovery of oil in 1892 attracted speculators – and their money – in droves. 

Looking back, it’s easy to see similar factors and growth patterns in other Sunbelt cities like Houston, San Diego and later Phoenix. But Los Angeles was the only city with a potent enough combination of cheap and open land, a strong economy and good weather in the prime time of Western settlement to sustain a population boom that lasted decades. 

Land was cheap when Los Angeles was still booming. This advertisement for lots at Pacific Palisades ran in a February 1929 issue of the Daily Bruin. (Daily Bruin archives)

If Los Angeles’ early growth was fueled by its natural assets, it was quickly becoming a major city in its own right – complete with electric trolleys, the newly opened University of Southern California and a 280-mile aqueduct carrying water from the Owens River in the Sierra Nevada area to the Southland. The city even had its first skyscraper, the Braly Block, open in 1904. 

The population would continue to boom over the next 20 years as the petroleum and silent film industry attracted more residents and business to the Southland. 

But this was just LA’s warmup. A particular invention that was becoming popular at the time would cement the city’s place as the boomtown of the 20th century: the automobile. 

Eventually, the orange groves would give way to palm trees and housing subdivisions as Los Angeles discovered its next identity. 

Paradise on the freeway 

Fun fact: Only one species of palm tree is actually native to Southern California. Of the countless different types of palms throughout LA, every one that isn’t the tall Washingtonia filifera – better known as the California fan palm – came from elsewhere. 

Yet palms of every shape and size have come to define the city’s urban landscape, and they provide an important clue to discerning why Los Angeles continued to grow and thrive while other cities across the country lost population and relevance. 

Los Angeles’ second identity was, simply put, a 20th-century paradise. It promised its citizens what its eastern counterparts could not: a mild climate, affordable housing and – most importantly – an entire city built around the allure of a freewheeling auto-centered lifestyle. 

And it delivered – at least for a while. 

The city had plenty of room to grow into this model from its perch in 1920: its population of almost 600,000 was largely confined to the city center and got around with one of the most extensive streetcar systems in the country. Most of the surrounding land was still farmland or wilderness – including a pocket of land out west where a new UCLA campus opened in 1929. Los Angeles also began aggressively annexing surrounding communities. City Hall opened in 1928 as a towering celebration of the city’s newfound prominence. The 408-foot structure would remain the tallest building in the city for 40 years. 

By 1930, the population of Los Angeles had ballooned to over a million people, cementing its place as one of America’s great cities. No one was ignoring LA anymore. 

The population only continued to grow during the Great Depression and World War II, when the Southland set itself up as the West Coast’s economic center and primary magnet for wartime manufacturing.

All those people had to live somewhere, so housing tracts began to spread in all directions from the city center, aided by a growing street grid and an intricate Red Car streetcar system – the largest in the world at its peak. 

And traffic isn’t just a modern LA gripe: riders often complained of slow streetcar speeds along its busiest lines, prompting civic leaders to look into an alternative route of transportation. They found it in the freeway. When the national freeway frenzy began in earnest during the 1950s, the megaroads were considered saviors that would be cheaper, faster and more versatile than the streetcars. The Red Car system began dismantling at the same time.

By the 1950s, LA’s trajectory was clear. The city was still growing at a breakneck pace in every direction. Every direction, that is, except up. The city passed an ordinance way back in 1911 restricting the height of any new building to 150 feet, with the sole exception of City Hall.

But that played perfectly into LA’s allure. People – wealthy white people, to be specific – were fleeing America’s crowded, polluted and oftentimes snowy inner cities en masse for suburbs in the phenomenon known as “white flight.” And LA marketed itself as one giant suburb. 

Even the buildings were built around the car. The line of skyscrapers down Wilshire Boulevard’s “Miracle Mile” were envisioned as the nation’s first “linear downtown,” where every building was easily accessible just by driving down the street. 

A large, single-family home on a generous lot, with a lawn artificially irrigated by water from the Colorado and Owens rivers – the American dream offered itself in full gear. And lest residents ever feel that they weren’t living in paradise, the palm trees were always there to emphasize the tropical vibe. 

Los Angeles and the California lifestyle made its mark on the national psyche through pop culture: James Dean raced cars in “Rebel Without a Cause” and The Mamas and The Papas had some “California Dreamin’,” singing “I’d be safe and warm, if I was in LA.”

Which was all well and good – if you were white. But discriminatory housing covenants meant that the Angeleno take on the American dream was virtually off-limits to the city’s sizeable Latino and black populations. The covenants were banned by the Rumford Fair Housing Act of 1963 but reinstated when California voters approved Proposition 14, which nullified the Rumford Act, in 1964. The California Supreme Court declared the proposition unconstitutional in 1966, but racial minorities were still forced into the eastern and southern parts of the city. These neighborhoods suffered from decades of divestment and neglect, which can still be felt to this day. 

Los Angeles continued to grow throughout the postwar era – in sharp contrast to its already-developed counterparts in the East and Midwest, which saw their populations decimated in a one-two punch from economic malaise caused by deindustrialization and suburbanization at the expense of the inner city. Notably, of the U.S.’s 10 largest cities in 1950, only New York and Los Angeles have a larger population today.

 But all this growth led to a whole host of new problems, forcing the city to question its comfortable suburban identity and once again transform – this time into the densifying urban colossus we see today.

City of lights 

The year was 1984, and cheers flooded the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Athletes from around the world gathered to show their physical prowess in the XXIII Summer Olympics. And Los Angeles was the center of the world’s attention. 

A mere 100 years after it was a rough-and-tumble farm town newly connected to the outside world, Los Angeles had become a behemoth megapolis that was hosting the Olympics for the second time and had just overtaken Chicago to become the second-largest city in the country. The age of modern LA was just beginning. 

But as the saying goes, not everything that glitters in this city of lights is gold. The modern city is defined by dichotomy: old and new, rich and poor, low and high-rise. Many of the current issues Los Angeles faces like homelessness, traffic, pollution and housing shortages stem from its status as a boomtown metropolis for most of the 20th century. 

In 1957, city voters repealed the ordinance restricting building heights. The Union Bank Plaza opened downtown 11 years later as LA’s first modern skyscraper and part of a controversial redevelopment of the Bunker Hill neighborhood. The neighborhood’s stately old Victorian homes were quickly razed and replaced by gleaming glass and steel skyscrapers. 

Some people liked those Victorians, though. There has always been a tension between pro- and anti-development visions for the city, reflected in the fact that control over development has been the one of the most contentious issues in local politics as of late – the high rise-restricting Measure S on this year’s ballot is just the most recent example. 

This tension underscores yet another one of Los Angeles’ civic identities. But this time, the city is torn between visions of its suburban, exclusionary past and diverse urban future, and Angelenos are living in a moment of civic rediscovery. 

The facade of a car-based utopia was already beginning to crack by the 1970s, as it turned out that building an entire city around the automobile had some unintended consequences. Jammed freeways and an internationally notorious smog problem prompted swift and aggressive action by the city. Now, most of Los Angeles’ transportation initiatives are aimed at getting people out of their cars – not into them. 

Moreover, the still-rising population introduced a problem new to Angelenos: Housing was becoming too expensive. Some people couldn’t even pay their property taxes anymore. In the “taxpayer revolt” of 1978, California voters passed Proposition 13, which caps property taxes and provided respite from crushing tax burdens – at the expense of state coffers. 

A bigger backlash to the city’s rapid development took place in 1986, when city voters passed Proposition U. The measure imposed significant reductions on the size and height of buildings in many areas of the city. 

And the suburban legacy of racial injustice has continued into the 21st century. Today’s majority-minority neighborhoods are still struggling with basic environmental justice issues like having enough grocery stores and handling toxic waste. The issue has slipped under the city’s radar for years, but thanks to increased activism and focus on social justice, it may finally be getting the attention it deserves. 

It hasn’t been all doom and gloom for Los Angeles, though. The city is still growing, albeit not as quickly as before. It’s made significant investments in mass transit, most recently via Measure M, a sales tax passed last November that will finance major expansions in the city’s transportation infrastructure. And in the era of President Donald Trump, Los Angeles’ leaders have positioned themselves as advocates of social justice – how well they can carry out that promise and address the city’s infamous inequality and racial tensions remains to be seen. 

The legacies of the city’s previous identities have manifested in the attractions and problems of the LA we see today. But housing tracts are a lot harder to bulldoze than orange groves, and unlike before, Los Angeles isn’t going to be able to organically grow its way out of its problems. 

The decisions city leaders make over the next few years can determine whether LA sinks or swims – if it becomes a thriving metropolis influenced by its suburban roots, or just another overcrowded city that can’t meet its residents’ needs.

Changing tides

Every now and then, when I get a break from my responsibilities at the Daily Bruin, I take the Expo rail line downtown. It helps me escape the Westwood bubble for a bit, and I like watching the city whiz by as the train barrels down the tracks – or crawls, as it gets closer to downtown. 

From my window, there’s a pretty stark difference in the layout and development between Westwood and Palms – and Crenshaw, and West Adams, and Exposition Park and Downtown, for that matter. 

But there’s one thing all these places, along with the countless other neighborhoods throughout the city, have in common: They’re developed, yet still growing. 

Los Angeles is a megapolis. The chaparral-covered wilderness and orange groves are long gone, replaced by houses, apartments, skyscrapers and strip malls. The City of Angels’ days as a frontier boomtown and America’s suburb are over. 

And yes, the city faces challenges of Angeleno proportions: homelessness, crime, inequality, fights over development, gridlock and gentrification. Unaddressed, these issues threaten to buckle the city under the weight of its own problems. 

But tackling these issues can put Los Angeles on the brink of a major urban transformation. Like it has in the past, it will grow and change yet again. It must adapt to changing cultural and demographic tides to cultivate a bustling but sustainable and livable environment for all its citizens.

If it’s done right, the city can find a new identity as true urban center. The assets are there: an economic, entertainment and cultural hub of international prestige, a wide array of lifestyle options and one of the most diverse places in the world to boot. 

Now, it needs to do what it hasn’t before and provide the Angeleno dream to all its citizens. It’s a future the city must embrace – after all, it’s already grown out. Both literally and metaphorically, the only way to go now is up.

(Chris Campbell is the current Daily Bruin Opinion editor. He previously served as Radio Director and as a Radio contributor. He writes about everything, but focuses on Westwood and city issues. This column appeared originally in the Daily Bruin.)  Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.