CommentsVIEW FROM HERE--If Mayor Garcetti were in charge of LA’s weather, we’d be buried under six feet of snow on July 4th.
Apparently, Angelenos have had a collective prefrontal lobotomy as they cannot connect Los Angeles’ continued decline with its leadership. Garcetti is the longest serving elected official in Los Angeles with his initial term as Council District 13 councilmember beginning on July 1, 2001. As Garcetti’s power grew, Los Angeles deteriorated. More telling yet, LA’s creeping demise as a world class city corresponds to where Garcetti has power – first CD 13 and then the city overall.
The 2010 US Census showed that in the few terms that Garcetti had been CD 13 councilmember, so many people and businesses had fled his part of Hollywood that it ceased to qualify as a legal council district! One cannot get a more literal real-world example of destruction than for his district to legally die! Tom LaBonge’s CD 4, the other major Hollywood district, gained population and businesses during the same time frame. Not since Friday, October 13, 1307 when Phillip IV King of France attacked the Knights Templar had the number 13 proved so unlucky.
Due to a 1925 ordinance, however, the city of Los Angeles must have fifteen (15) council districts. LA should have adopted the hotel triskaidekaphobia solution and skipped a CD 13 but instead added a new District 16 in the Valley. Instead, the city allowed CD 13 to steal portions of other districts. “Would have, could have, should have” won’t save us now.
Based on 2010 US Census data and analysis presented by Hollywoodians Encouraging Logical Planning (HELP), Los Angeles Council Superior Court Judge Allan Goodman in his January 14, 2012 Order threw out Garcetti’s June 19, 2012 update to the Hollywood Community Plan. His Honor found that Garcetti’s Update had been based on “fatally flawed data” and “wishful thinking” to the extent it “subverted the law,” i.e. Lies and Myths. One would think, but one would be wrong, that such a horrible rebuke would deter Garcettism.
Garcetti Had Been Warned
In March 2012, the city attorney and Department of Planning had told Garcetti basically there same thing, i.e. his Hollywood Plan was based on falsehoods and should be based on the 2010 census data. Garcetti said, “No.” On June 19, 2012, when the Hollywood Plan came before the city council, Councilmember Richard Alarcon put the same question to LA Planning Director Michael LoGrande, who was flummoxed by being asked anything and as usual he had no coherent reply.
Advance To 2020 – the Year of Endless Disasters
Garcetti is once again pushing his new unimproved and fatally flawed Hollywood Community Plan. LA politicos ignore that Los Angeles is much, much worse off now than in 2012.
“Los Angeles topped the list of the world’s most gridlocked cities for the sixth straight year, with drivers spending 102 hours in congestion in 2017 . . .” INRIX 2018 Report
Under Garcetti, LA went from have bad traffic, to having the worst in the nation to having the worst traffic congestion in the world! Angelenos would go berserk if the Dodgers were the worst team for six years in a row?
For years Los Angeles has had the nation’s worst Homeless Crisis. What makes LA’s crisis the worst is that in cities like NYC, thousands of the “homeless” have shelter, but LA’s homeless sleep in the gutters and die on the sidewalks outside city hall. 20% sleep in the open while 25% are lucky enough to have a tent or other makeshift lean-to, usually along a freeway wall or in a riverbed. Another 30% sleep in vehicles.
Garcetti’s Manhattanization Created LA’s Homeless Crisis by Targeting Rent
Controlled Apartments for Destruction
Of course, Pravda West (Soon-Shiong’s LA Times) cannot see the connection between tearing down thousands of poor people homes and the increased in homelessness. Rather, Patrick Soon-Shiong seems to believe that a lack of new luxury apartments causes homelessness.
Los Angeles Has America’s Worst Talent Attraction Scorecard [TAS]
EMSI’s Talent Attraction Scorecard ranks 601 US Cities for their degree of attraction, i.e. do people want to move there. In planning for the future, it is vital to know where people want to live. Populations are not static. If Millennials are leaving a city, do not build more schools because soon, the city will have fewer students. Los Angeles now has the worse TAS score of any US city and the LAUSD wants to build more schools.
As CityWatch has noted for years, Family Millennials are fleeing Los Angeles. Since 2019, EMSI TAS documents (p 11) that Los Angeles City lost 26,438 ppl, while LA County lost 39,373 ppl. (Calif. Dept. of Finance 2020-12-16) If the City and County losses were proportionate, LA City would have lost only 9,843 pp. Yet, Angelenos still believe that LA has a housing shortage just as Trumpists still believe that Trump won the 2020 election in a landslide. Garcetti would have Angelenos believe that the fact babies are born in LA, each birth is a demand for more housing.
Not only do Family Millennials leave Los Angeles, but the cream of the crop is fleeing. They have the best education and job skills making relocation easy. The fraudulently highly price of a single-family homes is a major factor in driving out Family Millennials. It would be folly to squander thousands of dollars each month on rent when one could be buying a house in El Paso. Who wants to sweat for 10 to 15 years to accumulate a down payment? Why work like a dog to make your landlord wealthy?
Family Millennials comprise the most coveted population segment since they are stable, spend money and will bear the burden of future taxes. People who start families make long range plans and they stay fixed for decades. Thus, Family Millennials are attracted to cities where they can buy a single family home with a yard, decent schools and with lack of traffic congestion ... Los Angeles has the most expensive housing, the worst traffic, the worst homeless crisis, and the worst schools. The only reason LA is not a ghost town is that Garcetti does not control the weather.
(Richard Lee Abrams is an attorney and a community relations consultant. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch, He can be reached at: [email protected].)
-cw
