VOICES-What are the implications for Los Angeles? It is hard to know without more detailed analysis. (See Joel Kotkin story.)
Within Hollywood, for example, we know that the different population trends between CD 4 and CD 13 are significant. Between 2000 and 2010, CD 4 increased its population, while CD 13 lost so many residents, that overall Hollywood ceased to qualify as a legal council district. Although this fact is often repeated, people persist in ignoring it.
We know at the census tract level where the greatest population loss occurred, i.e., in those census tracts contiguous to the subway stations which were the focus of the CRA/LA projects. for example, the census tracts contiguous to the Subway Station at Hollywood and Western with the very ugly Metro Apartment on top of the subways station lost 1,684 people.
This population loss is more significant when one considers that before the station and Metro Apartments were constructed, the lot was vacant. That means the contiguous census tracts lost so many people that the population exodus overwhelmed all the new apartment dwellers in the Metro Project. Then, on the north side of Hollywood, there is the new senior apartment complex (Ralphs) where there had been essentially nothing for decades. Again, the population loss was so great that is also swamped the additional renters in that complex.
No one wants to take the time to contemplate the public policy implications of the subway and CRA Projects. In a small neighborhood where we can see the hundreds of new apartments, we still know there was a huge population loss. This was not an isolated example: The subway stop at Sunset-Vermont lost 1,678 people and the subway station at Santa Monica - Vermont lost 802. At Hollywood-Highland, the loss of 346 ppl.
People respond to the things that a city does and we have data which establishes the construction of the subway stations with the CRA mixed-use project caused the entire area to deteriorate so badly, that CD 13 experienced such a population flight that it no longer had enough people to be a legal council district.
Gail Goldberg, former Director of Planning, predicted in 2006 that Garcetti's modus operandi was leading to disaster, and one cannot think of a better definition of disaster than a council member's literally destroying his own district.One should note that the graying of Hollywood is part of the problem. The two projects mentioned above are senior projects and a new senior projects opened one block away rather than construct a community party with community parking beneath.
Both the park and the extra parking would have made the area more family friendly, but instead the neighborhood gets a senior project with deficient parking and only a 3 foot set back along much of Garfield.
The city then wonders why it cannot attract businesses. The public policy which Garcetti has followed since 2001 made Hollywood business-unfriendly. As Patrick MacDonald showed in 2013, the family unfriendly and hence business unfriendly policies of Garcetti have been more insidious than people realize.
See LA Weekly, Hollywood's Urban Cleansing 12,878 ‘Mostly Latinos Are Pushed Out by City Hall, High Rents and Hipsters’, by Patrick Range McDonald
(Rick Abrams lives in Hollywood.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 12 Issue 90
Pub: Nov 7, 2014
