CommentsTHE VIEW FROM HERE-On March 2, 2012, CityWatch published Hollywood Becomes Fraudywood, explaining why Garcetti’s 2012 Update to the Hollywood Community Plan was a fraud.
Two years later in January 2014, Judge Allan Goodman rejected the Hollywood Community Update agreeing that it had been intentionally based on fatally false data and wishful thinking to the extent that it subverted the law, i.e., Lies and Myths.
The New Hollywood Community Plan Update (HCP2)
The current Update is similarly a pack of outlandish lies and absurd myths. The core defect of the current Hollywood Plan was brought to the city’s attention back in May 2016 when it lied about Hollywood’s 2016 population being 206,000 ppl. The population was only 195,709 ppl.
HCP2's Intentional 10,000 Lie
Ironclad proof that the city is lying about the 2016 population comes from the US Census interim updated for 2019 stating that Hollywood’s 2010 population had been 198,228 ppl (as HELP had claimed during the 2012 litigation) and by 2019, Hollywood’s population had decreased to 195,709 ppl. That is more than 10,000 fewer people than 206,000 ppl which the city knowingly claims (206,000 - 195,709 = 10,291 ppl). They use this lie to justify more mixed-use projects in Hollywood.
HCP2's Violates The Law
The City asserts that its Hollywood population of 206,000 is based on SCAG 2016 data. The SCAG 2016 RTP contains no population for Hollywood. In addition in mid May 2016, the State Department of Finance was asked for the population data for Hollywood and it responded that it has none. The first step in the environmental review process is the determination of the correct population for the baseline year. Save Our Peninsula Committee v Monterey County Board of Super-visors (2001) 87 Cal.App.4th 99, 124-125. The city simply lied about the population in 2016 and it had no credible basis for its population of 206,000 ppl. As Judge Goodman noted with the 2012 HCP Update, the deception is intentional. The lie is so obvious that one wonders why the City would even make it. Just as it had done with the 2012 HCP, the city invented a number which it liked, 206,000 ppl, and has stuck with that false number. Once again, the city has been caught basing the entire Hollywood Plan on a gigantic lie which invalidates the entire plan. Anyone who submitted any comment on the HCP2 not knowing about lie was deprived of their legal right to have accurate data so that they could make rational comments.
“A prejudicial abuse of discretion occurs if the failure to include relevant information precludes informed decision-making and informed public participation, thereby thwarting the goals of the EIR process." San Joaquin Raptor Rescue Center v. County of Merced (2007) 149 Cal.App.4th 645, 653. "... A clearly inadequate or unsupported study is entitled to no judicial deference. Berkeley Keep Jets Over the Bay v. Board of Port Commissioners (2001) 91 Cal. App.4th 1344, 1355.”
At the May 17, 2016 scoping meeting, the City showed a chart which depicted Hollywood’s population declined from 1990 to 2010 and then abruptly with no explanation, the population veered upwards. Meanwhile, the Department of Finance and the USC Sol Prices School of Public Policy published data that the City of Los Angeles was experiencing slow growth and will continue to experience slow growth for the coming decades. If such an unusual turnaround did occur, the City was under an affirmative duty not only to provide reliable data but also to explain the cause of the abrupt population shift.
The 2019 Recirculated Draft EIR continues the big lie about Hollywood’s having 206,000 pp in 2016 instead of only 195,709 ppl, but now it tells an unbelievable whopper. In 2040, Hollywood should expect up to 264,000 ppl.
Under CEQA, The HCP2 Must Include a Down-Sizing Down-Zoning Alternative
Hollywood’s population trend has been downward since 1990 when it had 213,883 ppl to 195,709 ppl in 2019. By concealing the population decrease, the city avoids studying a Down-Sizing Down-Zoning Alternative (DS-DZ Alternative). The DS-DZ Alternative would include plans to improve the quality of life of Hollywoodians and not how to make a tiny gaggle of developers wealthier. In face of the absurd over development, Hollywood continues its downward population spiral, and its quality life likewise is crashing. People fail to realize that step one in most new projects is the destruction of poor people’s homes. The Garcetti Administration ‘s idiotic Trickle Down Supply Side Economics has been a nightmare. Constructing cramped apartments does not attract Millennial Families. Rather, it drives up housing costs and drives out Family Millennials. When Family Millennials leave, employers also depart.
The 2012 HCP Caused the Homeless Crisis
Since the HCP allowed unmitigated destruction of rent-controlled housing (RSO units), thousands of Hollywoodians in CD 13 were made homeless in order to construct the horrid mixed used project projects. When someone is made homeless, they tend to stay close to their prior homes as they know the area, they have friends nearby and know the stores and location of social services. The Garcetti’s Manhattanization Mania then moved South to the traditional Black areas, the Blacks experienced destruction of their RSO homes. Like the poor Whites in Hollywood in 2012, the Blacks in South LA became homeless not due to evil white people who discriminate against Blacks, as US Disrict Court David O Carter would have us believe in his April 20, 2021 order, but by the destruction of their rent-controlled homes.
If anyone in CD 4 is displeased with present conditions, just wait until Garcetti, Raman, and Judge Carter use the HCP2 to add mixed use projects up Beachwood Canyon, in Windsor Square, Los Feliz, and all of CD 4's HPOZs.
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. The views expressed herein are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch. You may email him at [email protected])
-cw
