1.

Now if there were just a way to get to downtown without sitting in traffic. I keep hoping for a real train system in this city.

2.

Yeah, the RED, GOLD and BLUE lines are so tricky (not to mention the EXPO and GOLD Expansion). there's no one to hold my hand and help me get my ass out of my car which is the only way I can conceive of getting around...

3.

Oh there's plenty of ways to get downtown without sitting in traffic. Unfortunately it seems you're based in Santa Monica (it seems ironically at an old train station) which makes things a bit more difficult. My advice? Use the Metro Trip Planner and see if their are any Big Blue Bus 10's going by you. It's a surprisingly easy ride to downtown from Santa Monica. Traffic pending of course.

4.

on my bus to work this morning a guy from chicago was talking to the driver, saying: "one thing I will never understand about this city, is that if you take almost any individual, put a subway entrance in front of his house with a straight line to the front of his workplace, and bring the cost of gas up to $19 a gallon, that individual will still take his automobile to work."

downtown really is the easiest destination for the city's public transportation system.

5.

Uh, you could also live down here . . . that's what most of the projects they are talking about are after all, residences.

Welcome to the future, walk to work, who would a thunk it?

6.

you could if you make 90k a year. or you could live almost anywhere in l.a. and commute to downtown for $3/day maximum

7.

Silly me! I know lots of people living down here who don't make anything like that kind of money. They are not going broke or scrimping either. Don't believe the hype.

Walk to work, or work at home.

8.

Living in L.A. and having a short commute is not about money. It is about not believing the bad press. When we moved to the Pico/Crenshaw area, we had friends show up and casually ask if we had any drive-bys lately. (No, we never did.) Many of our peers have run to Simi Valley or Santa Clarita because they are convinced that they are "safe" there. My commute to work is 2 miles on the 210 bus. Their commute is hell. I thought that showing friends that you can live and raise kids in L.A. would inspire them to give it a shot. But they are afraid they will get shot. And to my dissapointment, a friend of almost 20 years and his wife had a baby just moved to Simi Valley (they said they felt unsafe living in the Valley).

One last note, my 15 year old son carries his blue bus pass (the bus depot is a few blocks away) and gets himself around without us having to drive-him.

9.

I´m confused by the downtown yuppie hype, too. Teacher here, 60K salary, live alone, bought a loft two years ago and am doing fine (yes prices were lower then, but i could find a nice loft today for what i pay in mortgage).

The "ohhh, look at us downtown, we´re soooooo rich and sooooo exclusive" line from DCBID is already biting em in the ass as middle class earners dismiss the region on account of a few survey results from selective dtown projects.

10.

yes but what does pattycake think?

11.

It's the HOA that will get you. How do people pay around 2,500 a month or more in mortgage then another 700 bucks for the HOA? That just blows me away.

12.

More importantly, where did you get the down payment that gives you a monthly mortgage payment of $2,500?

13.

negative amortization fixed for a certain # of yrs. with a cap. It's not so bad if you make a good living -but have nothing or very little for a downpayment. After a few yrs. you refi-
It doesn't work for everybody.

14.

#13 is in response to #14-

HOA dues suck!!! Sometimes they're okay(wrong word, but tired)-water can be expensive, gardening, leaky roofs etc..-you have to make sure the board manages well or get on the board.

15.

I wish neighborhoods of single family homes had HOA dues. I've seen old folks refuse to sell and downsize, but stay in their homes and let them deteriorate. The 2700 sq. foot house across the street from me needed $300,000 to rebuild because it had deteriorated so badly. But instead of selling years ago and moving to an apartment, the couple lived there, and died there. Instead of enjoying their old age, they lived in squalor. HOA dues would have forced them to downsize or take a reverse mortgage and maintain the place. Either option would have been better than living as they did.

16.

I wish neighborhoods of single family homes had HOA dues.

They do in pretty much all subdivisions developed by the Irvine Company, IIRC.

I'm surprised that Victoria Park and Lafayette Square don't have stronger HOAs.

17.

Pete:

Lafayette Park charges a voluntary $50 a year annual dues. They circulate a list of who pays, and about 95% of the residents do. Everyone there seems to be on the same page.

Victoria Park charges $10 a year. Out of approximately 200 homes, only 13 families currently pay. You heard that right. Why are Victoria Park residents so disengaged?

Here is just one example of neighborhood politics: We just had an issue that needed to go before the Mid-City Neighborhood Council. Victoria Park residents met and took a vote on the issue. The president of the Neighborhood Association met with Mid City Neighborhood Council and relayed a completely different vote that what happened at the meeting. When neighbors asked "why is the vote different", the president said it was because you people that voted who didn't pay dues. (Of course, at the neighborhood meeting, the question of paying dues never came up. And, of course, had the president liked the way the neighborhood voted, this would not have been an issue.) Anyway, only after mid-city neighborhood council members insisted 3 times on knowing the voting results despite who did or did not pay dues, did the true vote come out.

This is the kind of stuff that goes on in Victoria Park again and again. Because of this kind of political manuevering, almost everyone in the neighborhood has just opted out.

Anyway, that is probably more information than you were expecting.

Tim

18.

"I wish neighborhoods of single family homes had HOA dues"

for what? to sweep the street? to provide police and fire proetction? pick up the garbage? its called TAXES. thats why we pay them.

"HOA dues would have forced them to downsize or take a reverse mortgage and maintain the place"

nice! why not an "old people" tax so we can move them along if they don't pay or can't afford it. that will make our neighborhoods nice and tidy.

19.

for what? to sweep the street? to provide police and fire proetction? pick up the garbage? its called TAXES. thats why we pay them.

Except that, thanks to Prop 13 only allowing annual assessment increases well below the rate of inflation, one's property tax bill covers less and less of those services the longer one lives in one's house.

Most suburban cities act as glorified HOAs, anyway. Their governments exist for the sole purpose of raising incumbent homeowners' property values. Central cities have much broader arrays of economic interests and thus do far less kissing of residential property owners' asses. (For more reading, I refer you to William Fischel, The Homevoter Hypothesis.)

20.

less/lower taxes is a GOOD THING! as my wise old dad used to say "when you rob Peter to pay Paul you can always count on the support of Paul"

I support Prop 13. nice clean easy way to assess property (as discussed on other postings). If you want to raise taxes then lobby to raise the RATE not the method.

21.

Hey DelRey:

Prop 13 is wonderful. But is it fair? I bought in 1994. My taxes are ONE FIFTH of what my new neighbors are. Why? Because I bought in 1994 when the market was low and they bought in 2006 when the market was high. What I pay in taxes doesn't begin to support everything we use, from the public schools, to the libraries, to the city tree trimmings, to the police to the firemen. My neighbors have no kids, so they use less city services than we do. Yet they pay 5 times as much.

You must already own a home here in L.A., which is why it works for you.

22.

Hey DelRey:

Prop 13 is wonderful. But is it fair? I bought in 1994. My taxes are ONE FIFTH of what my new neighbors are. Why? Because I bought in 1994 when the market was low and they bought in 2006 when the market was high. What I pay in taxes doesn't begin to support everything we use, from the public schools, to the libraries, to the city tree trimmings, to the police to the firemen. My neighbors have no kids, so they use less city services than we do. Yet they pay 5 times as much.

You must already own a home here in L.A., which is why it works for you.

23.

To the AntiTim, who thinks taxes replace HOA dues:

Do you own property? Do you maintain it? That is what I was talking about. The front door of the house across the street could not even open. (The house had shifted years ago and the owners just stopped using the front door.) After they died and the house was put up for sale, everyone in the neighborhood got to see the inside. These people lived in completely unsafe conditions. AND TAXES DON'T FIX THAT.

What does fix that? A reverse mortgage. In unlivable condition, the house still sold for $500,0000. They lived in squalor, and their heirs got a half million dollars. Better they should have maintained the place, enjoyed their later years, and left their heirs only $200,000.

24.

its a free country. if they want to live in squalor and leave the cash to the kids its their right. Let me see if I understand: You advocate a fee or tax that people pay to the city(?) and that money is then spent by the city to fix or maintain homes owned by private citizens?

How do we then pay for the people who run this new agency of your? Should we take that money out of the money collected from the fees?

Great idea! Here is another: Let people keep their money and do with it as they see fit.