CommentsEASTSIDER-Notwithstanding all Mayor Garcetti’s talk about how wonderful his homeless plan is, he recently discovered at a Venice Town Hall that the troops think he and the City Council are full of you-know-what.
Gil Cedillo in CD1 is currently making the same discovery in the Lincoln Heights Parking Lots debacle.
The Background
Prior to the 2016 vote on Measures H (LA County ½ cent sales tax) and HHH (LA City’s $1.2 billion bond for homeless), Assemblymember Sebastian Ridley-Thomas gave a really good talk to the NC LANCC folks. His premise was twofold. First, to address homelessness in LA, it would take a combined effort of short-term housing/shelters from the City, combined with necessary medical, psychological, and social work resources that the County can provide.
He also indicated that the best research indicated that the system could not deal with any more than about 50,000 homeless in the entire County, with an emphasis on getting the recently homeless handled first so that they would not join the ranks of the permanently homeless. Thus, the two separate funding proposals. Unfortunately, by the time the measures passed in November 2016, the County realistically had over 50,000 homeless, and the only thing the City Council seems to know how to do is create more and more hopelessness with their unaffordable ‘affordable housing’ trickery.
As I wrote back in May 2016, by the time that the LA City ballot measure was adopted, it was in fact a Giant Bait and Switch with the homeless and the voters both conned.
As explained in the article, as soon as another measure (Measure S) was defeated, the truth came out:
“The City Administrative Officer recommended, and the City Council approved, an AHOS program that now offered ‘affordable multifamily housing,’ ‘mixed-income housing,’ ‘affordable homeownership,’ ‘innovative methods of housing,’ and, finally, “permanent supportive housing” for the homeless.”
Thus, the cruel hoax. In December, I wrote another article about exactly what the City was doing. Along the way, the City had decided to use City owned property to build, I mean “house,” the homeless, and also decided that this could only be done by “prequalified vendors:”
“Well, that didn’t last long. In a mid-November move, the recommendations had suddenly winnowed down to four developers, and the types of housing now magically include “Permanent Supportive Housing, Affordable Multifamily Housing, Mixed-Income Housing, Affordable Homeownership,” and my favorite, “Innovative Methods of Housing.”
And Then There Was Lincoln Heights
Back in April, focus switched to the Lincoln Heights Parking Lots as a primo “Example of Measure HHH Bait and Switch Scam Pulled Over Voters’ Eyes.”
Remember, back when the Measure passed, there were ultimately only four, count them four pre-approved developers who could even bid on any homeless housing/shelters or the like that were going to be built on designated City-owned properties. GTM Holdings and WORKS were not on the pre-approved list.
The original list was approved December 14, 2016, after Measure HHH passed. So suddenly, on December 6, 2017, almost a year later, CD1’s Councilmember Cedillo made a special motion to add GTM Holdings/WORKS as a pre-approved developer. The motion also asked to make them the sole and exclusive developer for the Lincoln Heights Parking Lots.
With Council approval on March 7, 2018, the City executed an “Exclusive Negotiation Agreement” for them to have the rights to develop the five Lincoln Heights Parking Lots.
It was a sleazy bait and switch, with no explanation to anyone about how an elaborate process to approve four exclusive developers suddenly added a fifth developer for Lincoln Heights Parking Lots only.
But wait, there’s more...
Latest from the Lincoln Heights Developers
Hat tip to Scott Johnson of the irascible MayorSam blog for this one. He went to a Community Meeting on October 10 held by the developers of the Parking Lots and gave me a copy of their 17-page PowerPoint handout.
As far as I know, the PowerPoint presentation is not available online, so I have provided a scanned version of the October 10 presentation here.
--attach pdf file
It’s amazing. There are 34 slides, and the homeless are mentioned exactly once. Of the slides, 10 are comments cards from prior sessions. The bulk of the comments are about “affordable” and “supportive” rental housing. In the slide about who the developers are and what they do, the developers indicate that they are good at building affordable housing for “families and individuals of modest means,” as well as Senior housing and large family affordable. Nowhere does it indicate any familiarity with homelessness or anything else that was covered in the City’s grand plan for Measure HHH. You know…the bond issue the voters passed?
Here’s a sampling of their pitch, emphasizing “Local Community Benefits”:
- Music space for youth
- Classes for youth and seniors
- Community center for at-risk youth
- After school programs for youth
- Job training for at-risk youth
- Pre-K/nursery school
- Child Care Center
- Senior care for increased socialization and less isolation
They also evidently don’t know how many units they will develop, but “anticipate” between 200 and 220 units, total, after they figure out “how the 261 parking places will be paid for.” For me, the killer is the “Here are the Facts” slide, which specifically says that they will be building a mix of affordable and supportive rental housing, and that “No homeless shelters will be built.” That’s right. The Homeless Measure HHH will have NO homeless housing!
The Takeaway
Let’s remember that when Measures HHH and H were floating around, the idea was that the City would provide bond money for the homelessness right away, and the County would provide additional supportive services from their ½ cent sales tax as soon as they could. You can go to Ballotpedia, if you’re into pain, and find the summary sheets and texts of both measures.
Yet here we are, almost two years after both Measures passed, and exactly what has the City done? Bupkis, that’s what. This is morally unacceptable.
I mean, we have something like 50,000 homeless and growing, and the City has $1.2 billion dollars total to address their needs for shelter and help. With ultimate costs of the Lincoln Heights development somewhere between, say, $10 million and $20 million to provide around 220 housing units, do the math! It’s ridiculous. Not to mention how many years it will take to finalize the plan, fund the project, and actually build the housing. Sheesh!
At some point it seems to me that the City is at risk of getting sued for the Lincoln Heights Parking Lot project, and here’s why. The only way that the City could build anything on this property is under the auspices of Measure HHH. Otherwise, they couldn’t simply repurpose the land for another fake “affordable housing” development.
Perhaps keeping the parking lots and declaring failure would make more sense than this vision from a Kafka novel. At least parking lots provide decent parking for the local businesses around Broadway. And by the way, it’s getting cold out there for actual homeless people. Now.
As my friends in Kern County say, “this dog won’t hunt.”
(Tony Butka is an Eastside community activist, who has served on a neighborhood council, has a background in government and is a contributor to CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
