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THE VIEW FROM HERE - Before delving into the continuing decline of the city of Los Angeles, there is one bright spot. Pravda West (aka The Los Angeles Times) may soon bite the dust. Since the Times and its current socialite owner, Patrick Soon-Shiong, and his woke daughter, Nika, promote everything which is ruining Los Angeles as a world class city, the prospect of an ownership change provides a ray of hope for us eternal optimists that a new owner will turn the newspaper into a force for Truth, Justice and the American Way. For a more detailed analysis of Pravda West, one would do well to read the articles by Daniel Guss on Substack.
From its first day, December 4, 1881, the LA Times’ raison d'etre has been to support the personal goals, ambitions, and wealth of Los Angeles’ elite. For hundreds of years, LA had been overflowing with opportunity so that there was enough wealth to go around, even when the top 1% skimmed the cream. While some seeds of future destruction were being sown, they were not obvious.
Lets’ Talk Facts
As was predicted back in 2012 for reasons which were later the basis for Judge Allan Goodman’s January 2014 ruling rejecting the Hollywood Community Plan Update, the city intentionally uses fatally flawed data and wishful thinking to the extent it subverts the law. Garbage in, garbage out. Within a year Judge Goodman was removed from the case. The attorney (Yours Truly) who had done the work to show that Hollywood would lose population, if the city did not stop using Lies and Deceit for planning, was disbarred. Yours Truly had also committed the sin of suing the city over its Voting Trading System which Penal Code, § 86 had criminalized. Judge Fruin ruled the city council’s actions were de facto non-justiciable, aka above the law. The Vote Trading System allowed for the mass destruction of rent controlled units, thereby throwing tens of thousands of poor people on to the streets resulting in the Homeless Crisis. Killing the messenger did not change reality, but it did allow the crooks to thrive.
One no longer has to look to the future to predict Los Angeles’ population loss. It is already a fact.
“Like Los Angeles County, the city of Los Angeles has fallen below its 2010 census population, to 3.766 million in 2023 from 3.793 million in 2010, a loss of 132,000 since the 2020 census.” ... The State Department of Finance estimated the city’s population at 4.046 million in 2007, yet the subsequent 2010 census registered a count about 250,000 lower. According to the US Census Bureau, the city’s population peaked at 3,983 million in 2019.” See NewGeography articles In fact, Los Angeles lost so many people to other states that the State of California lost one Congressional seat in Washington D.C., and it predicted to loss up to 5 seats by the next census in 2030.
Because the Woker-Developer Alliance continues to use the Lies and Myths which ruined Hollywood, the city’s decline will continue. Hollywood went from about 214,000 ppl in 1990 to only 195,709 ppl in 2019 and the loss continues.
Los Angeles’ Worser and Worser Future in Two Words: Density and Corruption
Density drives up real estate prices. When a developer can construct a 5-story apartment in place of a single family home, the nearby land values skyrocket and the next home seller demands a Developer Price for his property. Along with other corrupt real estate practices, allowing developers to construct more density prices families out of the housing market. For a while, they turn to renting, but as the sales prices of homes increase, landlords increase rents. Thus, young families find that it could take 30 years to save up the a down payment. As a result, the youngest and brightest move away and employers follow to other states.
“Nowhere are California’s high prices more obvious than housing. The typical home value in California is $683,996, . . . High housing prices, caused in large part by restrictive zoning laws [required density], and high prices for other goods and services make it hard for people of modest incomes to live in California.” Employer costs dramatically increase since employees have only the employers to cover their bills. see Forbes, Businesses are fleeing California
Thus, excessive density causes all the factors which result in both people and businesses moving away from California. While the relationship between excessive density and a city’s decline have been known since 1915, corruption cared only about Wall Street’s and Developers’ short-term profits. Their attitude was to let the taxpayers pay the costs. Los Angeles is now paying over $1 Billion per year to combat homelessness and is doing a terrible job at it. Yet, the corrupt city councilmembers who participate in the criminal vote trading system approved the destruction of enough rent-controlled housing to house every single homeless person in Los Angeles, while constructing a glut of vacant units.
There are well over 115,000 vacant units which would house all the homeless people several times over. Yet, Mayor Karen Bass and the Woker-Developer Alliance including Government Newsom will spend billions of taxpayer dollars to construct Affordable Housing. And here’s the kicker. They will be paying many of the same developers who destroyed the rent-controlled housing which caused the Homeless Crisis. The politicos talk “bonds” because so many naive voters think “bonds” are somehow free money. No. Way Jose! Here’s how it works. Wall Street buys the city’s bonds, and the city loans the money to developers, who skim billions off the top, side and bottom of loans, only to then declare BK. A kindly BK judge then relieves the developer of the need to repay the city’s loans, but the city taxpayers still have to pay off the bonds to Wall Street bankers.
The corruption impacts not only the poor, but also destroys our most productive segment of the population, i.e. young families. In addition to destroying rent-controlled units, developers have destroyed tens of thousands of “starter homes.” One can see this situation in Hollywood, where smaller two and three bedroom homes are torn down for apartments. Starter homes are essential to build a strong middle class because families who are starting out cannot buy a home in The Oaks. As the developers destroyed starter homes, the supply dropped which put upward pressure on prices. When the starter homes were sold to build apartments, all other starter homes jumped to the Developer Value so that the starter homes which remained were too expensive.
Wall Street had another ploy which affected the higher income middle class Millennials; it would buy up distressed homes, e.g., foreclosures, and rather than resell them as was the traditional practices for banks, they would withhold them from the sales market, thereby limiting supply and driving up prices and rents.
Then, there was the use special algorithms by RealPage to hype costs to rent apartments and homes. Long story short, this is the old collusion in restraint of trade in that one company had the algorithms and the real estate owners subscribed to its service so that owners could raise rents at the same time. One might say, it’s AI’s playing chess against renters.
But Wait, Here’s the Worser and Worser Part
The Woker-Developer Alliance is attacking the one thing which middle class Millennials and Gen Zers want most, i.e., a nice, detached home, with a yard in a safe neighborhood. The Wokers are serious about destroying single family areas. A judge has ordered the city of Beverly Hills not issue any building or remodeling permits until it approves a plan for Poverty Projects aka Affordable Housing While a lot of people love to soak the rich and vilify the wealthy, there is a down side. California has a current deficit between $38B and $68 because our taxing the rich policies have driven so many wealthy people out of California that tax revenues have dropped so that we cannot fund basic services. Los Angeles and Beverly Hills face a nightmare scenario – the construction of poverty projects in whatever area the developers or the state mandates that they be built. Who will want to pay $7 to $10 million for a modest Beverly Hills home when in two years, a 5 story Poverty Project could be constructed next door? Who wants to pay $1.5 M in LA and risk living next to a Poverty Project?
By attacking single family neighborhoods, the Woker-Developer Alliance threatens the American dream. Wokers refuse to admit that minorities also want the American dream of their own home, their own yard, in a safe neighborhood and decent schools. Wokers and Developers are essentially Colonialists who believe that they have the right to dictate to the poor and minorities what sort of housing they should want, i.e., crammed apartments without any parking so they have to rely on the slow, dirty, dangerous subways and fixed rail transit. BTW, mass transit is another way that the Woker-Developer Alliance loots tax payers of billions of dollars each year.
How Much Worser Can the Woker-Developer Alliance Make LA?
No one knows, but let’s remember that the US Wokers support Hamas, the destruction of Israel, and extermination of Jews because Wokeism classified Jews as oppressors. Judge David O. Carter thinks single family areas should be destroyed because white racism caused Blacks to be homeless. (He has no explanation for Whites’ being homeless.)
(Richard Lee Abrams has been an attorney, a Realtor and community relations consultant as well as a CityWatch contributor. You may email him at [email protected].)
