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ANGRY ANGELENO - It's at times like this that it's important to reflect on how we got here and who is responsible.
Elections have consequences. The 2022 Election brought us Progressive (and, yes, it has now become a dirty word in Los Angeles) Lindsey Horvath at the County of LA and fellow Progressives Katy Yaroslavsky, Hugo Soto-Martinez, Eunisses Hernandez, and Kenneth Mejia (City Controller who acts more like a Council Member than a Controller, and not in a good way) at the City of LA. How did all these troublesome youngsters get such high political positions. For that, you can thank the LA Times under the ownership of Patrick Soon-Shiong, whose daughter is young Progressive activist Nika Soon-Shiong. I only have a very cheap subscription to the LA Times (for the first time) for research purposes in order to write these columns...mainly to look up old articles. What's your excuse for accelerating the destruction of LA by funding the Times fishwrap?
There are only 5 LA County Supervisors. Paul Koretz, who is also horrible, but in a different way, should have run against Horvath, because traditionally, these County Supervisor seats don't go to foolish youngsters. But he didn't. So, who ran against Lindsey? Henry Stern and Robert Hertzberg, both repping the Valley in Sacramento. Henry Stern would have beaten her in a runoff. Unfortunately, he didn't make the runoff...Hertzberg did and he lost. For some reason, it became all about abortion rights, which local politicians don't really deal with. Ironically, I even remember a hit piece that arrived way too late in my mailbox that claimed that Lindsey was a conservative in college, Notre Dame.
Anyway, Lindsey was a much-despised Council Member in the tiny City of West Hollywood (aka WeHo), which when taken together with the tiny City of Beverly Hills on a map, are a donut hole in the middle of the Massive City of Los Angeles. This will be important later, this geography lesson. Lindsey put Nika Soon-Shiong, the daughter of the Owner of the LA Times, on WeHo's Public Safety Commission, where she advocated for reducing funding for law enforcement...as did Lindsey. When the LA Times endorsed Lindsey, they did NOT mention the connection to Nika, daughter of Patrick Soon-Shiong, but, even worse, they did not mention that Lindsey supported the reduction in funding to law enforcement. Because that would have lost Lindsey votes in a close election. And the LA Times, the unethical rag that it is, plays dirty.
An Utterly Ridiculous Debate about LAMC 41.18
So why am I writing about Horvath today? Right after the recent Election, Progressive activists, freshly drunk on power on the heels of winning again with Anti-Car Measure HLA (endorsed by the Times), a stealth proposal to use “Road Diets” to create the Gridlock that will lead to Congestion Pricing...comes a Screaming Attack on LAMC 41.18. Based on some “secret” report that was supposedly withheld that shows that 41.18 is supposedly not making homelessness better or making it worse. The most ridiculous conversation that we (sadly) have to acknowledge with a response when we should just laugh in the face of those propagating it.
LAMC 41.18 exists to Protect LA City Residents. I know, what a concept to Extreme Progressives, that something is for the benefit of The Residents and not for the Homeless Industrial Complex. LA City Residents are Under Siege from Homeless Druggy Criminals and the only tool to protect them is 41.18. That code section basically doesn't allow homeless people to camp in certain places, like next to schools. Extremists like Nithya Raman and Hugo Soto-Martinez are not interested in protecting our schools from homeless encampments. SO, how well 41.18 works, whether or not homeless people come back to the locations that have 41.18 signage, depends on the level of enforcement by police, and that depends on whether your council member is a good one that cares about your safety like John Lee (heavily criticized by Clueless Controller Kenny Mejia), who just got reelected by a landslide, or a lousy one who cares more about the homeless than your safety as an actual taxpaying Renter or Homeowner, like Nithya Raman, who may be headed to a runoff later this year and lose her position on the Council. If she wins, it will only be because of the help of Mayor Bass (who campaigned for her both in person and in video ads), currently prancing around Paris for the Olympics and morphing into Eric Garcetti before our very eyes.
Whether or not 41.18 solves homelessness, makes homelessness better or worse, leads to housing...those are all False Ridiculous Questions. All 41.18 does is carve out certain areas in the Massive City of LA where the homeless are not allowed to camp. They have all the rest of the Massive City of LA to camp in, which is plenty. Besides, many 41.18 zones are NOT well enforced. For example, if you live in Katy Yaroslavsky's council district. She's been attacking 41.18 under the radar for a long time now, even questioning the cost of the metal signs. If you have a large encampment near your residence, good luck getting it cleared without your council member's support. You think the cops want to clear encampments? So, a foolish progressive council member is just what they need to tell you that there's nothing that they can do for you.
There is an element of deja vu here. Former Mayor Garcetti, besides building very expensive fully-stocked apartments in good neighborhoods for homeless people from outside the City (other cities, other parts of California, and from the other 49 States), created “A Bridge Home”, which some of us activists referred to as Garcettivilles. Most of these were supposed to be temporary structures on city parking lots that would be there for only 3 years. The neighborhoods that were tricked into accepting these were promised that homeless people would not be camping within a fairly wide radius of the new homeless use. In other words, your “unhoused neighbors” & “fellow Angelenos” (yeah, right) who were priced out of apartments in your neighborhood (a ridiculous story peddled by the Pro-Developer LA Times) would be put into this homeless housing and the City would make sure that new homeless people would not come and take their places on your sidewalks. Along came Covid, and the homeless activists basically said “We Want It All. It's not enough for us to have 99.9 percent of the sidewalks. We want that last 0.1 percent.” And they got it. Of course, the cops could easily move the tents once and have strict enforcement. But Garcetti and his fellow lying politicians had an excuse to break their promise to these sucker neighborhoods. Politicians lie. I believe I also saw a lease extended a while back on one of these Garcettivilles in the San Pedro area. Once they take away your city parking lot for a homeless use, did you really expect them to ever go away? If anything, it will get torn down to become expensive homeless apartments. Homeless people keep pouring into the City of LA from elsewhere. This problem will never get solved with the likes of Eric Garcetti or Karen Bass at the helm. I should also mention that there was an official effort to gentrify Skid Row in Downtown LA by the politically connected Downtown Developers building Luxury Housing there. So, a lot of homeless people were also pushed out of Downtown into other parts of the City.
But the Politicians who recently sat on the sidelines or endorsed Measure HLA deserve this. They created a monster: Progressive Vultures Feasting on the Carcass of a Dying City. Mayor Karen Bass was MIA for Measure HLA, Heather Hutt endorsed HLA (probably trying to get an LA Times Endorsement, what she deserves is for the Times to endorse Grace Yoo anyway), I didn't hear a peep out of our elected LA City Attorney (who was endorsed by the Times and has been SUCH a disappointment) about the liability that HLA creates for the City, and the ONLY City Council Member that was loudly opposing Measure HLA was Traci Park.
So Where Does Lindsey P Horvath Play Into All of This?
And, if you're wondering, the P stands for Pandering. Well, Lindsey endorsed Measure HLA, of course. She also sits on the LA Metro Board (along with Bass, Katy Yaroslavsky, and other LA Politicos), so she knows that that Gridlock will lead to Congestion Pricing on our local roads. But don't worry about Lindsey. She makes a huge salary. She'll be able to pay those tolls. Will you? Don't worry if you can't. You can sell your car and take the bus!
So, David Zahniser just summed up the Week's LA Political Damage Report for the Times with “The Battle Over LA's 'No Encampment' Zones Gets More Intense”. He says that “...Horvath publicly blasted the law, declaring that 41.18 ...is a failure.” This, because of a LAHSA memo that “called the law 'generally ineffective' at moving homeless residents into permanent housing.” AGAIN, that's NOT the purpose of the law...the purpose of the law is to protect tax paying renters and homeowners from homeless druggy criminals from elsewhere. So, you know, our economic base doesn't run away to, say, live in another City, or another County like Orange County, or move away to another state altogether. Especially if they have small children. Turns out that “Horvath...sits on LAHSA's Board and is currently its Chair....” Well, that's interesting. Maybe she's the one that leaked the memo to the Press at this opportune moment with HLA just having passed and the Mayor playing Olympic Photo Opps in Paris.
“Horvath declined an interview request.” Well, of course she did. She's not that bright. So, a live phone interview might expose that. Better to get staff help for “an email” that attacks the cost of 41.18, which frankly is tiny in the grand scheme of the Homeless Industrial Complex with 150 dollar per night hotel rooms for the homeless, newly built apartments that cost over Half a Million Dollars for the homeless, Millions of Dollars spent to keep druggies “safely” using drugs (a priority for Horvath) with clean needles and Overdose Kits at Libraries and in Vending Machines, etc, etc. You mean, a cop car telling a homeless guy to move his tent out of a no camping zone is expensive? GTFOOH.
Zahniser continues: “Horvath was a council member in West Hollywood...That City has a law barring the public from sitting, sleeping or lying ON ANY sidewalk...” [emphasis added] So, she's a hypocrite! Got it. Her City is pushing homeless people out of the donut hole that it shares with BH into the City of LA that surrounds them. I told you at the beginning of this column that the geography lesson would be useful. “Asked about [the WeHo law], Horvath said [the City of] West Hollywood had housing and 'substantial services' for its homeless population.” First of all, that's a bunch of BS. Only because no new homeless can set up shop in your city and you push them onto the City of LA. There's a reason homeless people are called transients...they move around. Foolish Mayors like Garcetti and Bass roll out the red carpet to homeless people from elsewhere. But Horvath should also be trying to protect all the people that voted for her in the City of LA. Nah...she's probably already eyeing even higher office. And making sure she gets endorsed by the LA Times, assuming Nika's Daddy still owns it, in her Next Election.🗳️
(“The Angry Angeleno” is the nom de plume of Yuval Kremer. Yuval is a Registered Democrat; a Cali-Camp, Harvard-Westlake (pre-merger), USC, and Loyola Law School Alum; and a former ballot candidate for Mayor of LA (failing to prevent Mayor Garcetti's reelection) and LA County Supervisor (ran against Sheila Kuehl, Katy Yaroslavsky's former boss). The opinions expressed by Yuval are his and his alone (not those of CityWatchLA), but will likely be yours soon!)
