LOS ANGELES

THE DOCTOR IS IN - For two previous decades of grassroots/neighborhood council transportation advocacy, I (and so many others) watched in horror as a multimodal and environmental-friendly transportation/mobility program descended into a developer- and lobbyist-oriented money grab. 

THE EASTSIDER - The LA Times article said it all: Attorney awaiting sentencing in DWP case accuses Feuer of aiding extortion, perjury. 

PLANNING WATCH -  The 1965 Watts and the 1972 citywide civil disturbances garnered a few days of media coverage. 

HOMELESS CRISIS - By the lone tent under the cement overpass, just visible from the Hollywood Freeway, Fernando Maya waited with several backpacks stuffed with clothes, electronics and food.

THE DOCTOR IS IN - There is a wonderful, and very long-overdue, rail line that would serve southeast L.A. County communities (largely working-class Latinos) that was approved by Metro. 

LA ZONING - California’s chronic housing shortage stems from specific shortfalls in several key elements needed to reach a level of construction that would relieve the crisis.

LA MAYORAL ELECTION - Is there any among us so naive to think that the Los Angeles mayoral debate scheduled for Tuesday, March 22^nd will be anything more than a non-stop stream of BS? BS is too mild a term for the caca-doodoo which the candidates and the moderates throw at us. 

HOUSING WATCH - Los Angeles voters approved Prop HHH in 2016 to allow the City to issue $1.2 billion in bonds to house the City’s homeless – a simple matter of building 10,000 units within ten years.

L.A. PANDEMIC FUNDS ANALYSIS - The COVID-19 pandemic exposed a slew of inequities, but for small businesses in Los Angeles and across the country, one of the most consequential involved access to credit.

SHOW BIZ - “Scary Lucy,” the much-maligned statue of comedy legend Lucille Ball in her hometown of Celoron, New York, was just a brief blip on the cultural radar when a fan campaign demanding its removal went viral several years back

CITY PLANNING - As California’s climate grows hotter and drier, fires have become increasingly common and more destructive. 

HOUSING WATCH - Today, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved a motion that instructs city agencies to provide a report about city-owned properties that can be used for temporary or permanent homeless housing.

UNHOUSED - I’m @rooflesser and I live in public in LA.

THE VIEW FROM HERE - The underlying socio-political dynamics of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Garcetti’s Manhattanization of Los Angeles are essentially the same –

MAYORAL RACE - According to the LA City Clerk’s office, there are 28 candidates who have pulled papers to enter the race to become the next mayor of Los Angeles.

TRANSIT WATCH - Business will have to be shown that a good climate can be made for needed job growth here in Los Angeles.

MY THOUGHTS - Nostalgia for the past is a given, especially by older generations.   

PLANNING WATCH - The State of California’s Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) has approved seven new local Housing Elements and rejected 190 others, including the unabashed pro-development Los Angeles Housing Element, adopted by the City Council in November 2021. 

RantZ and RaveZ - The LAPD deployment of Patrol, Detectives, Administrative and support personnel is shrinking at an alarming rate with the number of experienced Police Officers retiring, moving to other law enforcement agencies and selecting professions that don’t require them to be armed and wear a bullet proof vest to remain alive and “Protect and Serve” the people of a community.

THE VIEW FROM HERE - Prelim Point: Inter-urban transit between cities and Intra-urban transit should not be confused. 

THE VIEW FROM HERE - Like it or not, people have to engage in prognostication or allow their lives to buffeted about like leaves on the ocean waters.