Little Pink Houses for You and Me
The Mayor proposed putting a $500 million housing bond before voters sometime in 2006. In addition to the bond, the proposal includes a $10 million no-interest loan program to help moderate income first-time homebuyers. If the bond passed, it would work in concert with the city’s $100 million housing trust fund, and cost current homeowners $34 a year more in property tax.
Los Angeles’ current homeownership rate is the nation’s lowest at 39%. The bond would underwrite home ownership for low to moderate income individuals, including teachers, nurses, firefighters, and police officers, providing them an incentive to buy a home and invest in their community.
Speaking of police officers, as both Hahn and Antonio Villaraigosa failed in their attempts to pass Measure A, the half-cent sales tax increase to fund a bigger police force, the Mayor hopes the bond will coax the 80% of officers that currently live in the suburbs to move to the city. Hey, if he can’t pay for more officers, he’d better try to keep the ones he’s got happy.
This is all supposition, of course, as conventional wisdom has the bond going the way of A: meaning the Mayor won’t be able to come up with the required two-thirds majority to pass it.
Antonio also offered his proposal to voters today. His solution to the widespread housing problem? Well, he didn’t offer a new program or a new idea, he wants to fully fund the $100 million housing trust fund THAT ALREADY EXISTS. Oh yeah, he wants to create some ‘partnerships’ (I’m sure his ambiguity is intentional). Yeah, that’ll build better, cheaper houses and make better neighborhoods. Partnerships between unnamed partners. He must have used his thinking cap to come up with that idea.
*Note the pic is from the first time Hahn promised the trust fund...
Posted by Anonymous @ 1/20/2005 05:18:00 PM
7 Comments:
I am becoming more and more angry at how the Mayor deceptively uses the police, the firefighters, the teachers, etc, to try to bolster his bull crap plan to additionally tax the residents of Los Angeles.
If the Mayor was EVER serious about his plans, he would find a manner(assuming he could think out of the box) to enable the public safety officers to reside in ALL neighborhoods throughout the City of Los Angeles. He would use the same creativity he used in fighting secession to find a manner to get donations of funds to be used for our public safety officials as low interest loans, to match downpayments to a certain maximum amount, etc. But he doesn't really care. He just really wants to be reelected and that is all.
If the Mayor really understood or cared, he would realize that most police officers remain armed even when not on duty. They in a way 'patrol' wherever they are in this City. They are committed and dedicated professionals. If they live in the City of Los Angeles, instead of Simi, Santa Clarita, Palmdale and even ARIZONA or LAS VEGAS(since his introduction of the 3 daya a week 12 hours a day program....with four days a week off), they would naturally add more protection for the good people of the City and would without overtime, add to policing in the City as they do in the Cities they now live....just by being armed and in the City and having neighbors and others in the community know !!!
So Mr. Mayor.....use your head or any head you can get and realize how this will help Bratton without just the addition of more cops for more salary.
Pass all the bond measures you want, but just try to build the damned housing in this town. If you were able to get the entitlements, trust me, the developers would build it, bond subsidies or not!
FROM MEATEATER:
We could pass a law like Chicago, where police officers are OBLIGATED to live in the city, as a good way of getting police to start being more a part of this city.
As for Boi, I agree, but the problem isn't City Hall. It's the neighborhoods. That is the true third rail of LA politics. It ain't capricious councilmembers who kill projects, it's NIMBYites in the neighborhoods. Any free market fantasy that things will get easier for builders has one speed bump with City Hall red tape, and one massive mountain with neighborhood councils and homeowner groups. It's what you would call a conservative wedge issue. :-)
FROM MEATEATER:
Oh, yeah, Chief Parker, I'm pretty sure that New York has a worse homeownership rate, but I could be wrong. It was up to recently at least: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/housing/hvs/annual98/ann98t14.html
Have any of you knuckleheads thought that maybe officers don't live in LA because its a public safety issue for them? Gang bangers today are more violent than when I grew up. They assault, shoot at and fight with officers all the time. Would you want your family near these terrorists? Wouldn't you be afraid that if you arrested one of those hard core crips or bloods they may just go to your son's school and harm them? Wake up! This is the real world living in LA. If these lame ass city council members don't get officers more help and fast, we're going to start losing more and combine that with the 1,000 we lost we Parks and this city would be up shit creek
Hey, Meateater, you are wrong. The Daily News quotes Wendy Greul, "We have the lowest home ownership rate in the country, 39%." Guess facts aren't as important to you unless you're spouting homophobic views. Please leave this site to people that ACTUALLY know what they're talking about.
FROM MEATEATER:
First of all, please review your Mayor Sam archives. Being homophobic, I believe, was pinned on MEATBALL or some other person. Not me. It would be hard for me to be homophobic.
Second, Wendy Greuel is wrong or misquoted. I will give you a number of sources:
http://www.lacity.org/lahd/02B-LOWHOMEOWNERSHIP.pdf (from LA Housing Department--says LA is SECOND-lowest)
http://www.lmu.edu/csla/press/releases_2001/11_29_01_l_a_times.html
(from LA Times, as printed by LMU)
http://www.joelkotkin.com/Demographics/LAT%20Locked%20Out%20of%20a%20House.htm
(Joel Kotkin)
Lastly, it wasn't the City Council who rejected more cops this last time, it was the residents of Los Angeles County. Even in L.A. city it was rejected. Now anywhere else, 64% would be a mandate (just look at what W calls 51%), but that is the way new taxes go, so LAPD wife up above or whomever it is, may want to propose HOW we pay for more cops. The best efficiency improvements might get you some cops around the edges, but the council didn't seem to want to pay for them and the mayor proposed paying for them with money he didn't have. No one is talking straight--is it an increase to the trash fee, is it some ballot measure again, what?
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