CommentsVIEW FROM HERE-Most enterprises have unintended consequences. After harmful results materialize, people often press ahead ignoring the injury they are causing.
“[M]assive toxic dump site was discovered on the ocean floor between Long Beach and Catalina Island and scientists believe the site has been there for . . . at least 70 years. . . . the barrels [are] filled with toxic chemicals leaking and littered across the ocean floor...”
While the toxic chemicals were not the desired result of commercial operations, the manufacturers knew about them. Generally, manufacturers find that remedying the harm cuts too deeply into their profits. Hence, they ignore the toxic by-products. Eric Garcetti’s first approach to the homeless crisis which his Manhattanization Mania caused was to ignore it, then his surrogates blamed the victims, and now they are moving into the concealment phase.
Eric Garcetti’s Perverse Pursuit of Manhattanization Is the Number One Cause of the Homeless Crisis
First, he attacked Hollywood and now the rest of Los Angeles. Often the bland name “Gentrification” is employed, but the Manhattanization’s predatory abuse of the poor is far more devastating than that name suggests. The poor are seen as disposable trash to be swept away. Story by Patrick Range McDonald.
Garcetti Did Not Accomplish His Gargantuan Enterprise Alone
In 2001 when Garcetti was first elected to the city council, Los Angeles was the nation’s most desirable urban destination. Present day LA does not make the top 50 desirable cities; by 2016 it had already fallen to number 60. June 30, 2020, Insider, the 50 Best Places to Live in America, Ranked, by Tanza Loudenback, Mark Abadi, and Erin McDowell. LA heads most lists of the worst of urban ills, e.g., fewest parks, most unsheltered homeless, worst traffic in the world, worse GINI Coefficient, escalating home prices and rents, flight of the Millennials, most corrupt city hall, etc. We can see that Paradise was Lost. Nay, not just lost but thrown away for one goal – to make the 1% wealthier while making the rest of us poorer.
Garcetti and his billionaire developer buddies may not argue that the human refuse which they had made of tens of thousands of Angelenos was an unforeseeable consequence of Manhattanization. They were warned in 1915! The intervening 86 years between the warning and Garcetti’s 2001 election had proved the accuracy of the 1915 warning set forth in The Study of Street Traffic Conditions in The City of Los Angeles … as reported in the September 15, 2016 issue of CityWatch:
“The 1915 Study laid down the main principle that business, retails store, etc. had to expand outwards towards the periphery as there was a mathematical relationship between population density and traffic congestion. In fact, expansion would occur as a matter of course, unless retail, business, and population were artificially restricted to a core area. Business, retail and industry had to follow the population as the residential areas expanded. The concentration of offices etc. in the Basin would benefit a few wealthy landowners while harming everyone else. (1915 Study p 38)”
Densification Concentrates Land Value in the Hands of the Very Few
The denser a developer can build on his plot, the more it is worth per square inch. It takes no genius to see that a 15-story building on a 200 x 200 foot lot will rake in a lot more rents than a 2 story office building with significant lot setbacks and green space. Those additional 13 floors should have been spread out among several garden-style office buildings in the Valleys within a few minutes drive of the workers’ homes. Sprawl spreads the wealth.
The Density-Mass Transit Scam
By constructing high rise office density in the Basin and bedroom communities in the valleys, contractors make billions more dollars with mass transit to transport so many people during rush hour into very small, highly dense areas. This system is financially devastating to a city. Subways and fixed rail transit cost a fortune to construct and to maintain. Their replacement has to begin within 30 yeas of construction which means LA has already reached the point where it should replace its original lines. The alternative is that their deterioration ratchets up the maintenance costs, again making the billionaires wealthier.
As soon as the office towers have trouble attracting tenants due to congestion, they demand more mass transit to haul people from Granada Hills to urban cores, DTLA, Century City, Hollywood. Then, city officials I demand more density along the subways and fixed rail lines to generate more ridership to pay the increased mass transit costs. It’s a fool’s game. New York City with the most profitable subway system has been running about a $8 Billion annual transit deficit. The only people who benefit are the contractors and the high-rise owners.
People Already Live along These Mass Transit Routes Suffer
The most lucrative way to increase residential density along a subway route is to tear down older units in favor of larger apartment projects. The cheapest existing apartments are rent controlled units. “Buy low, sell high” is not some esoteric doctrine. The individual developer wants to buy the cheapest property and to load it up with largest project to maximize his profit. A vital role of government is to protect society from economic predators.
Garcetti Had The Most Responsibility to Make Certain His Manhattanization Mania Did Not Fall Hardest on LA’s Poorest
Look at it this way, there was crime before Al Capone, but afterwards we had the Mob. “Kingpins like Al Capone were able to rake in up to $100 million each year thanks to the overwhelming business opportunity of illegal booze.” Similarly, Garcetti’s turning the LA City Council in a criminal enterprise created an “overwhelming business opportunity” for developer corruption.
While Garcetti was councilmember of Hollywood’s CD 13, the state amended Penal Code § 86 to make vote trading by councilmembers a felony. Buying or selling a vote for a return vote is bribery. Not a complex concept! Yet, LA City Council had its own law – each Councilmember must vote Yes for any project, not matter how terrible, which another councilmember places on the city council agenda. That is why all projects pass with unanimous approval.
Unlike toxic waste deep in the ocean which can be hidden for decades, the human waste which Garcetti had dumped onto the streets was more readily visible, yet quite easily ignored. When people did begin to take notice, the city launched a vicious propaganda campaign in which Los Angeles media gleefully partook. The homeless were painted as shiftless, criminals, drug addicts, mentally ill. In other words, it’s their own fault that live in the squalor on the street --The revival of the Undeserving Poor.
To intensify the public disgust with the homeless, Garcetti made certain there were no sanitation services. How long would the Hollywood Hills remain rubbish free if the city provided no trash service? Then, the rats and typhus jumped from the streets into city hall. Garcetti’s Mafiazation of LA trash hauling had raised the trash hauling rates so high that DTLA businesses found it cheaper to dump their rubbish next to homeless sites. As the homeless numbers grew and street condition in DTLA worsened, the homeless began moving out, camping in the underbrush of LA’s extensive freeway system.
The homeless crisis was foreseeable; treating the homeless like toxic waste was a choice. So too is his next phase, concealment.
(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
