GUEST COMMENTARY--The state cannot continue to ignore the fact that homelessness in Los Angeles has reached critical mass. 

Growing public attention to the issue has prompted city leaders to ramp up efforts to address it; but without immediate support, homeless Angelenos are unlikely to experience much-needed relief. The state government, however, has been reluctant to dole out the money needed to kickstart substantive efforts for short-term housing and assistance despite repeated overtures from city and county leaders. 

The most recent count of Los Angeles’ homeless population in May found almost 47,000 people in the county without permanent residence, an 11 percent increase since 2015. Of those counted, 74 percent were unsheltered. The situation is so severe that the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors urged Gov. Jerry Brown in June to declare homelessness a statewide emergency – the Los Angeles City Council did the same last month.  

Brown’s declaration would unlock up to $500 million in emergency funds, but the governor’s office has insisted that homelessness is a local problem for local government to address. 

While local government should be responsible for implementing long-term solutions, such as permanent supportive housing, the state must use its emergency monies to address the current, real crisis. 

[Related: LA should fulfill its budget proposal to fight homelessness]  

So far, city leaders have been doing their part by approving Proposition H, a $1.2 billion bond measure designed to spur construction of housing for homeless Angelenos, to appear in the ballot this November. If passed, the bond would focus on permanent housing and in-house social services. 

But the cost of homelessness in the interim is high. The hospitalization, police intervention or incarceration of each homeless person can cost taxpayers tens of thousands of dollars per year. 

Meanwhile, homeless people still struggle to find short-term housing and, for those who have simply fallen on hard times, assistance to help them get back on their feet. The Los Angeles Times noted that transitional housing establishments have seen their funding cut as the focus shifts toward permanent solutions, leaving their clients with nowhere to go. This not only prevents the unemployed or economically pressed from having the time or resources to hold them over, but it denies those with substance abuse issues or mental illness much-needed treatment, and instead, leaves them on the street. 

It’s clear the state must declare a homelessness emergency. Local officials have extended their resources toward developing longer-term solutions, but the state needs to help address the current emergency and help cover the costs for shorter-term efforts to keep homeless people off the streets and get them the help they need while permanent housing and services are developed.

(This editorial appeared in UCLA’s Daily Bruin.)   Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

COUNCIL POWER CREEP-Notwithstanding Herb Wesson’s pledge to keep a watchful eye over District 7’s “purse strings” and his claim to “love the Valley too much to let its residents go without representation,” the LA City Council President’s recent self-appointment to the Council seat just vacated by Felipe Fuentes violates both the spirit and the letter of the LA City Charter.  

LATINO PERSPECTIVE--Should we have a Latino Smithsonian museum? Some think so some others don’t. Congressman Xavier Becerra from Los Angeles said last week that American Latinos aren't reflected in the country's most well known museums. He wants a museum. 

Becerra (D-Los Angeles), joined by Rep. Ileana Ros-Leighten (R-Fla.), reintroduced a bill Tuesday — they've now sponsored it three times — to create a National Museum of the American Latino on the National Mall. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) sponsored the Senate version. 

"It's bad enough that we're missing from television, we're missing from the books that we read in school, that in so many ways we're missing from the things that people in America see day to day," Becerra said. "The more that we give people a chance to see the full depth and dimension of what it means to be an American, I think the better off we all are." 

The proposed museum would be inside the Smithsonian Arts and Industries Building, which reopened as a special events space this year after extensive renovation. 

The bill would start the planning process. But that doesn't mean the museum would open quickly: The African American museum was approved in 2003 and opens next week. It would be built with a combination of federal and private funds, as other museums and memorials on the Mall have been. 

But others don’t think we need a museum. Mike Gonzalez is a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation said that it’s an idea that sounds good — until you think about it for about three seconds. 

He argues that this is not just because museums are for dead things (“The Louvre is a morgue; you go there to identify your friends,” the French artist Jean Cocteau famously complained), but because it would breathe life into concepts from which we need to move away. 

Becerra told the Post that “It provides inspiration, and it really does give you locomotion to try to move this forward. So many [of the African American Museum’s supporters] have come to me and said, ‘You’re next.’ It pumps you up.” 

Gonzalez asks if that is really the only reason for a Latin Museum. If so, the idea is in trouble. We can start, Gonzalez thinks, with the fact that the experiences of African Americans cannot be compared to those of any other group — especially immigrants and their descendants. 

That would include the vast majority of the 56 million people the Census Bureau instructs to identify themselves as “Hispanic” — who can’t all be descended from the estimated 100,000 people who chose to remain in the Southwest at the conclusion of the Mexican War in 1848. 

The notion that they constitute an ethno-racial pentagon along with African Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans and non-Latino whites is a dubious social construct of very recent pedigree. That a museum would help perpetuate this division — literally cement it — is a second reason to oppose it. 

Gonzalez continues, “dividing the country along these cleavages — an official policy that began only in the late 1970s and quickly migrated to the academy, the labor market and the culture — has contributed to a degree of social fragmentation that is only now becoming apparent.” 

As a Latino-American, agree with Gonzalez assessment. There is no need for a museum for an ethnicity created by 1970s federal bureaucrats. Defenders of immigration make the case that today’s immigrants will assimilate as members of previous surges did — which is what undoubtedly will happen, but only if they are treated as those earlier arrivals were. 

That is, as immigrants on their way to being Americans, not as members of a permanent national minority. We don’t need a museum. 

What do you all think?

(Fred Mariscal came to Los Angeles from Mexico City in 1992 to study at the University of Southern California and has been in LA ever since. He is a community leader and was a candidate for Los Angeles City Council in District 4. Fred writes Latino Perspective for CityWatch and can be reached at: [email protected].)

-cw

DEEGAN ON LA-Rick Caruso has a long and sentimental history with his property at 333 S. La Cienega Boulevard (currently the site of the shuttered Loehmann's department store.) It’s the first property he owned. It’s where he washed cars as a kid at his dad's dollar-a-day car rental business. And, it’s where he dreams of building his newest project that will make a statement about contemporary high-end housing by including an affordable housing component that could make it a landmark building in more ways than one. (See above photo of rendering.) 

Rarely have developers allowed low income housing units to be part of the mix in their high-end luxury buildings, preferring to subsidize affordable housing at off-site locations in return for the zoning variances they receive. But Rick Caruso, founder and chief executive officer for Caruso Affiliated, has a new take on that. 

Already a pioneer in trend-setting, open-air shopping experiences like the Grove and the Americana, Caruso could become a leading figure in egalitarian housing if he’s able to deliver on a pledge he made to a community group a few weeks ago, when he went on public record at the Mid City West Community Council's land use committee meeting, stating, “The affordable units will be treated like all other units, and serviced like all other units. There will be a lot of pride about the project, a lot of dignity and respect for the affordable housing tenants that will be interspersed throughout the building. They’re going to be just like everybody else. The same level of service, for free.” 

He’s a man with a dream to have his luxury housing tower shared by all walks of life -- rich and poor – in a residence building that is both elegant and equitable, where the 1% and the 99% come together. If Rick Caruso pulls this off, it will be groundbreaking; it will change the development and affordable housing paradigm, and could make him the very first billionaire-populist in the city. 

Caruso’s struggle to bring the community along into his over-scale dreamscape, that will make his tower one of the tallest buildings in sight, was evident at Mid City West Community Council’s recent land use committee meeting. 

As democratic-sounding as this may be -- housing the rich and the poor in the same building, with equality of service for all -- there’s a big downside: Caruso wants to build a 240 foot tall building in a zone that has a maximum height of 40 feet (see graphic, left.) That’s a huge increase in what’s permitted, which has many asking how much is too much? It requires a “spot zoning” variance which is anathema to many. In fact, “spot zoning” is one of the key reasons the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative is on the March 2017 ballot, having qualified with more than one and a half times as many signatures as necessary, illustrating the public’s hunger for zoning redress that has tapped the very nerve that Caruso is trying to soothe. 

There’s a very good reason he must go up: he cannot go down. As he told the community meeting, “I cannot go underground with parking because of a massive storm drain. That forces parking to go above ground, and increases the height of the project. The parking will be three floors above grade and two floors below grade,” explained Caruso as the reason he is proposing a twenty floor building in an area that is zoned for four floors. And, he says, he cannot lose units. “I need the height because it’s very expensive to build there. I need 145 units. It’s already down from 165 units.” 

“The way to bring the building down [in height] is to use more of the site, but lose setbacks,” said Caruso. “The alternative would be to make an office building, taking the existing building and re-leasing it, or taking it down and making a new building.” 

“I would be disingenuous to say there is no leeway [on the height.] My strong preference is for 20 stories. I can’t lose units. When I lose floors I lose units. Then I’d have to decide not to build the building. There are ten units per floor. I can make the height of the floors less high.” 

How the community reacted to this, and how much of a gap between what he wants and what they will be comfortable with came out in over three hours of presentations, deliberations and a full court press by Caruso himself, who faced a sharply divided community audience. It took an hour just to hear all the public comment for and against the project. It was a passionate exchange, with Caruso spending lots of time at the microphone answering questions and putting forth his case. Questions keyed mostly to the height of the building and how Caruso would accommodate affordable housing. 

In the end, the gap between what he wants, and how much the committee is willing to give, was mostly about the height question, although the on-site affordable housing element was also subject of much debate. 

When the committee finally took a vote, it was deadlocked on a motion that would have advanced the project. Key elements of that motion were: 

Height:

• The building should be ten stories maximum (currently projected at 20 stories.)
• The maximum height should be 120-125 feet (not the projected 240 feet.)
• The floor to area ratio should be doubled from 1.5:1 to 3:1. Floor area ratio (FAR) is the ratio of a building's total floor area (gross floor area) to the size of the piece of land upon which it is built.
• It should be zoned “general commercial” instead of “regional commercial.” 

Affordable housing:

• Should be consistent with SB1818 type conditions.
• Should be mixed-income community of 50% very low and 50% low, representing 15% of total units in building.
• Units should be on site, not off-site or a payment to the housing fund.
• Affordable housing should be run as affordable by LA Housing Department.
• A 55-year commitment to affordable units.
• Parking included in rent, not a separate charge. 

The land use committee vote was a deadlock and the matter was tabled. The next scheduled meeting is on October 6, when a motion can be created to send to the full board for its October meeting. Not reaching consensus at this meeting squeezed the window for community review. At least two more sessions (another land use committee meeting and then a full neighborhood council board meeting) will be required before Caruso knows how much support he will receive from the neighborhood council. And, he must play Beat-the-Clock with the March 7 vote date for the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative which, if passed by voters, will result in a moratorium on “spot zoning.” 

A few weeks after that community meeting, Rick Caruso met with CityWatch to present some new information that specifically addresses some of the concerns raised in the deadlocked motion at Mid City, especially the affordable housing element. This may go a long way toward helping him align with the community -- that is, if he and the community can ultimately agree on height. 

He began by revealing a change in plans: “In response to community input, two years ago, we cut the retail square footage in half and reduced the number of proposed apartments from 162 to 145. In addition, we committed to creating new open space, building new crosswalks and bike lanes, and landscaping and maintaining the city medians. We are planning for a neighborhood-serving restaurant and market, ensuring community use of 333’s board room, and making a 55-year commitment to affordable housing. We also changed our entitlements to eliminate the Regional Center issue and become an SB 1818 project.” 

CW - Why are you dropping the “Regional Center” designation? 

R.C. - “The 333 La Cienega parcel is a unique island surrounded by four major streets (San Vicente, La Cienega, Burton Way, and 3rd Street) and is immediately adjacent to Cedars Sinai Hospital and the Beverly Center. It was logical to extend their Regional Commercial designation to the 333 parcel without negatively impacting single family residences or setting a new precedent. However, we take community stakeholder recommendations seriously. They asked how we could both build this project without the Regional Center zoning and ensure that the affordable housing would be monitored as if it were an SB 1818 project. The new entitlements accomplish both.”

CW – Are you changing the zoning so it will match that of your Burton Way building? 

R.C. - “We seek to extend the zoning for 8500 Burton Way to its sister property across the street, 333 La Cienega. Instead of a GPA to Regional Commercial, the project would be amended to “General Commercial” which is consistent with nearly every other adjacent property on 3rd Street and San Vicente. The result is no new precedent for zoning, the entitlements simply bring 333’s zoning up to that of its neighbors. As with 8500 Burton Way, 333’s [zoning] will be height district 2.” 

CW - Are you switching to SB 1818 (the state's density bonus law) status? How will that impact the number of affordable units? 

R.C. - “Yes, the change is to both enshrine the affordable housing as an SB 1818 project and allow for the number of units needed to make the project work. This includes funding millions of dollars in street and safety improvements as well as building the new open space. 

The SB 1818 calculations are 5% “very low income” housing as seven (7) units. However, we have already committed to eight (8) units and that will be in our agreement with the City. These units will then be monitored by the City’s Housing and Community Investment Department (HCID) to ensure public oversight.”

CW - Why is there no affordable housing at 8500 Burton Way? 

R.C. - “8500 Burton Way was entitled years ago. Our region now has a significant housing crisis. Thus, changing times led us to include those units in this project.” 

CW - How important has been community feedback to your plans? 

R.C. - “This world-class project will be one that the community is proud of and the market-rate for building units allows us to provide millions of dollars of public improvements and the ability to have affordable housing. Furthermore, I believe 333 La Cienega will set the new standard where these types of public commitments and community collaborations are the norm rather than the exception.” 

“I want the buildings (at 333 La Cienega and 8500 Burton Way) to be a brother and sister -- sympathetic to each other,” concluded Caruso. 

The dreamer-developer had one final word about the project: “I want to make it work for everybody.” 

Caruso will find out if that dream can come true in the next few weeks, as the neighborhood council again weighs in on his plans.

(Tim Deegan is a long-time resident and community leader in the Miracle Mile, who has served as board chair at the Mid City West Community Council and on the board of the Miracle Mile Civic Coalition. Tim can be reached at [email protected].) Graphic: Rosalie Wayne. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

@THE GUSS REPORT-In any political campaign, there are legions of highly paid professionals who know every nuanced rule about campaign finance, and it is their job to maximize that knowledge for their clients.

Sometimes, this political set makes patently absurd interpretations of those rules to give their clients an unfair and sometimes illegal advantage. When they do, the local elections arbiter is supposed to enforce the rules and rectify the transgression. 

Welcome to the Los Angeles County 4th District Supervisor’s race between Republican Steve Napolitano and Democrat Janice Hahn, both of whom seek to replace incumbent Don Knabe, Napolitano’s former boss who has endorsed Napolitano, a former Manhattan Beach Councilman, in the race. 

The story goes like this. For the primary season, Napolitano chose the “unlimited personal funds” option to fund his campaign, while Hahn chose the “$50,000 personal funds limit.” In Napolitano making that choice, it lifted the $1,500 limit for donations from individuals to Hahn’s campaign for the primary only. That limit would be reinstated if and when her campaign continued toward the November 8th General Election, which it has, and in which she will face Napolitano. The details were outlined in a March 16, 2016 letter from Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/LA County Clerk, the subject of which was revisited in a July 12 communique from Logan’s office.

When Hahn’s fundraising update was filed on August 1, it showed hundreds of thousands of dollars raised from political action committees (PAC) beyond the limit of $150,000 for the primary and $150,000 for the General Election. Napolitano’s campaign immediately jumped on the issue and, on August 10, Logan’s office advised the Hahn team that the aforementioned removal of the $1,500 individual donation limit did not lift the $150,000 PAC limits. Logan’s letter added that the Hahn campaign would not be penalized for this campaign finance violation if those funds were returned within 30 days, which was September 9. The penalty for not honoring the 30-day deadline could be triple the amount of funds raised illegally.

Since Logan’s August letter and with the November 8 General Election rapidly approaching, the Hahn campaign (which has not responded to CityWatch requests for comment for this article) has employed pretzel logic to hold on to these excess funds … apparently okay with the penalties they would face should their client win the runoff. 

These campaign finance rules were established in 1996’s Proposition B, the details of which can be found in Logan’s January 2016 updated pamphlet to candidates on the subject. 

“The rules are the rules, the Hahn people know them, refuse to honor them, and are way past the deadline to return these illegally raised funds,” says Napolitano. 

In an August 31, 2016 LA Times article, Hahn campaign spokesman John Shallman stated that Logan’s earlier letters about the lifting of personal donation limits also applied to the $150,000 PAC limit, a sentiment that was refuted in Logan’s September 19 reply to Hahn’s people.

“While we recognize that the letters sent on March 16, 2016 or July 12, 2016 do not specifically state that the aggregate PAC limit in 2.190.040 C remained in place,” Logan’s letter stated, “the letters describe the intent of LACC section 2.190.070 D, which is to remove the $1,500 individual contribution limits only.” 

In other words, the Hahn campaign says that because Logan’s earlier letters did not specifically state that the $150,000 PAC limit remained, they were free to raise as much PAC money as they wish.

But by that tortured perspective from the Hahn campaign, none of the other campaign finance rules should apply either, since none of them were addressed in Logan’s letters. 

In fact, there do not appear to be any circumstances which would lift the $150,000 PAC limits, a rule that may irk Hahn’s people, but that they no doubt have long since known. 

Napolitano points out his frustration that Logan’s September 19 letter gives the Hahn campaign even more time to cure the violation, 30 days from that date, which is 40 days past the originally established repayment date. “I am running to represent everyone in this District, regardless of whether they donated to my campaign, the Hahn campaign, someone else, or nobody at all. But we all must live by the same set of rules. Right now, those rules are not being enforced,” he said. 

That lack of enforcement and extended deadlines might be due to pressure from some of Logan’s other bosses, the other County Supervisors, some of whom have endorsed Hahn in the race, showing once again that in politics, the rules don’t always apply and that influence (a friendly way to say corruption) almost always rules the day.

(Daniel Guss, MBA, is a writer who contributes to CityWatchLA, Huffington Post and KFI AM-640. He blogs on humane issues at http://ericgarcetti.blogspot.com/. Follow him on Twitter @TheGussReport. His views do not necessarily reflect those of CityWatch) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

LABOR AND ECONOMIC POLITICS-If you’ve been paying attention to the news in California at all for the last year or so, you could be forgiven for mistaking the left wing of the California Democratic Party as a pro-labor institution. 

In the summer of 2015, the City of Los Angeles passed a groundbreaking phased $15 minimum wage, to be implemented by 2020. As the most recent legislative session closed, a whole raft of workplace protection legislation was passed. And most recently and memorably, Governor Jerry Brown signed landmark farmworker overtime protections into law, correcting the eight-decade-old exclusion of farmworkers from standards enjoyed by industrial and white-collar laborers. 

All of these initiatives have been spearheaded by California Democrats, against heavy opposition by Republicans and their big and small business backers. All this is exemplary of what might be termed the “wage strategy,” the effort to reduce poverty and inequality by artificially raising the wages of California’s poorest and most vulnerable laborers. 

Business interests deride the wage strategy for slowing job growth, arguing that it increases costs for both small and large businesses. This critique has merit, but the unspoken reality behind it is that if labor acts as a free and fluid market where employers can adjust costs solely based on market forces, rather than a protected or unionized force unto its own, there is nothing guaranteeing a basic standard of living and pay for workers, who are not mere economic forces but living, breathing human beings with needs and passions of their own. 

So the wage strategy of artificially inflating workers’ wages and adding worker protections, while harmful to businesses, is conducive to income stability if properly executed. 

We could argue until the cows come home as to whether or not a $15 minimum wage in Los Angeles or an 8-hour workday in the Central Valley is the best way of doing that, or whether market-based measures like the Earned-Income Tax Credit and agricultural sector-specific labor policies would be better alternatives. But sometimes in legislation, establishing the principle is more important than perfecting the administration of policy; and as of September 2016, the principle that the state of California ought to guarantee laborers a decent wage has generally been secured. 

But that is not enough, and indeed, that can be harmful in the long run if pursued on its own, without addressing other economic factors. The most pressing of these other factors is the skyscraping California cost of living, in all its forms -- high energy prices, high housing prices, high costs of doing business, and the rest. 

The California Democratic Party, while adamantly pursuing the wage strategy, has done nothing to pursue a “cost strategy” of reducing the cost of living across the board. Absent a cost strategy that makes business and overall living easier in the state, pursuing a wage strategy alone is tantamount to progressive self-congratulatory backscratching. 

Democratic elites can make themselves feel like they’re doing good for the working class, without doing anything significant to reduce the cost of living for the working class, and let workers keep more money in their pockets. Pursuing one strategy is not enough -- both must be pursued in tandem, or the state risks becoming either a low-job wasteland or a low-wage serfdom. 

But not only have left-leaning Democrats failed to pursue the cost strategy -- they have in many cases impeded and even reversed its advancement by Mod Caucus Democrats. Shortly after farmworker protection measures were passed, other measures were instated to divert more water to fish, and thus away from farms. 

Generally agricultural interests -- both management and labor -- are better off and more productive with more water flowing to the farms, and diverting water for conservation purposes raises the cost of doing agricultural business and productivity, thus making life harder for farmers and their employees. 

This glaring hypocrisy -- raising farmworkers’ wages while increasing their cost of doing business -- is a drop in the bucket compared to other Golden State cost-of-living stories. 

One particularly egregious example is the Brown regime’s relentless pursuit of climate legislation to increase the percentage of energy California derives from green, renewable, unreliable sources like wind and solar. This emphasis on low-productivity fuel-less energy sources, coupled with the planned closure of reliable energy producers like the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant, only raises the cost of electricity for every Californian, impacting the poor and working classes the most. 

Democratic proposals to increase the gas tax to pay for much-needed road infrastructure, rather than repurposing transit funds to repave the roads, has a similar impact on transportation costs for drivers -- who disproportionately come from lower-income backgrounds. 

Another beast the California Democratic elite refuses to tackle is the cost of land and housing, which is largely buttressed by abuses of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and general NIMBYism on the part of wealthy coastal homeowners who like seeing their homes increase in value, at the expense of less well-off newcomers. 

Study after study across the board suggests that the best solution to the price of housing is not rent control, but increasing supply -- building more houses to lower prices for more people. But draconian regulations and NIMBY activism preclude this from becoming reality, and as such, the people of California remain hitched to high housing costs. 

Thus, regardless of the increases in real income for workers that the California Democrats have been advocating, the California working class will continue to labor under relatively low profits simply due to the high cost of living and doing business which is buttressed by California’s high costs of housing and energy, which are largely influenced by its regulatory code. 

Elite coastal Democrats can congratulate themselves all they want for being a “party of the people” and “supporting workers;” but it certainly is a uniquely Californian way of supporting workers, barely increasing their pay without decreasing their costs. Then again, the Golden State has never been known for its consistency.

(Luke Phillips is a political activist and writer in California state politics. His work has been published in a variety of publications, including CityWatch, Fox&Hounds, NewGeography, and The American Interest. He is a Research Assistant to Joel Kotkin at the Center for Opportunity Urbanism.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams