Curbed LA: All Posts by Jenna ChandlerLove where you live2020-06-26T10:15:34-07:00https://la.curbed.com/authors/jenna-chandler/rss2020-06-26T10:15:34-07:002020-06-26T10:15:34-07:00Curbed LA Is Closing
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<p>It’s not good-bye — we’re moving to a new home. </p> <p id="YxJlGw">Dear readers, hate-readers, and vicious commenters,</p>
<p id="DXJ14Z"><a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/9/29/16384732/googie-southern-california-architecture">Googie</a>. “<a href="https://la.curbed.com/2013/1/3/10295162/leaked-settlement-shows-how-nimbys-greenmail-developers-1">Greenmailing</a>.” <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/5/18/15505446/hollywood-sign-hike-address-history-font">NIMBYs</a>. (So many <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2020/1/10/21060592/los-feliz-homeless-bridge-shelter-riverside-lawsuit">NIMBYs</a>!) <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2007-apr-22-op-williams22-story.html">Ugly buildings</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/maps/los-angeles-most-iconic-historic-famous-buildings">Beautiful buildings</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/maps/case-study-houses-los-angeles-map-visit">Maps</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/maps/literary-los-angeles-didion-bukowski">Maps</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/maps/1992-los-angeles-riots-rodney-king-map">Maps</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/10/6/16426076/la-river-revitalization-aecom-renderings">Renderings</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/maps/la-la-land-filming-locations">Filming</a> <a href="https://la.curbed.com/maps/chinatown-filming-location-map">locations</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/7/4/20682446/earthquake-los-angeles-fourth-of-july-shake-alert">Earthquakes</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2018/11/20/18097889/wildfire-pepperdine-malibu-shelter-in-place">Wildfires</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/8/17/16164670/beyonce-jay-z-house-bel-air-deal-closed">Beyoncé’s house</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/8/4/16095282/amazon-jeff-bezos-buys-house-beverly-hills">Jeff Bezos’s house</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/1/17/14297244/los-angeles-home-tour-adam-singer-black-laquer-design">Regular</a> <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/5/22/15170272/west-hollywood-home-tour-marcus-austin-paglialonga">people’s</a> <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2020/4/20/21227930/los-angeles-midcentury-home-tour-shannon-harvey">houses</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2016/4/4/11363474/los-feliz-murder-house-inside">Haunted</a> houses. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/5/15/18527824/walking-climate-emissions-solutions-los-angeles?fbclid=IwAR2tR4VUF7oXeeBJ4uxQcxdqzKM2Z0IH5sz7yLeNA4T6o6GcAXW27hVbMM4">Walk more</a>, <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2016/9/9/12824240/self-driving-cars-plan-los-angeles">drive less</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2020/2/10/21131547/executive-order-los-angeles-bus-transit-ciclavia">Seriously</a>, though: <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/6/2/15731916/paris-agreement-fight-climate-change-los-angeles-transportation">Drive less</a>. Trailblazing <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/3/20/18264802/paul-williams-architect-biography-homes-pictures">architects</a> and groundbreaking <a href="https://www.curbed.com/2017/11/15/16635056/la-mas-architecture-timme-leung-groundbreakers-2017">designers</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/2/12/18204101/palm-springs-joshua-tree-guide">Travel</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/9/20/16340038/los-angeles-streetcar-conspiracy-theory-general-motors">Conspiracies</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/8/23/20826908/breeze-blocks-wall-los-angeles">Breeze blocks</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/12/21/16794092/snow-los-angeles-photos">Snow</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/8/19/20726773/los-angeles-hotter-temperature-climate-change">Heat</a>. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/11/21/16643502/reasons-to-love-los-angeles">One epic Los Angeles love letter</a>. </p>
<p id="vaXr9z">For more than 14 years, Curbed LA <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2018/1/5/16852148/san-pedro-neighborhood-guide">chronicled</a> <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/4/9/18287086/lincoln-heights-chinatown-gentrification">and</a> <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/1/11/14206888/leimert-park-neighborhood-guide">explored</a> <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2018/1/8/16843676/kagel-canyon-valley-creek-fire">neighborhoods</a>, covered the housing market, <a href="https://la.curbed.com/maps/koreatown-map-development-construction-new-buildings">tracked</a> <a href="https://la.curbed.com/maps/arts-district-los-angeles-development-map-2">development</a>, <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2020/2/26/21145711/elections-california-primary-2020-los-angeles">informed</a> <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2016/10/11/13223850/los-angeles-voter-guide-california">voters</a>, recounted <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2018/2/22/16979700/west-adams-history-segregation-housing-covenants">important</a> <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/4/30/18411317/crestwood-hils-midcentury-modern-cooperative-housing">history</a>, and <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2016/8/18/12528616/venice-secession-los-angeles-vexit">broke</a> lots of news, thanks to the site’s many editors, writers, photographers, and illustrators. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/authors/carykadlecek0560435">Cary Kadlecek</a>, <a href="https://la.curbed.com/authors/jwilliams8901060">Josh Williams</a>, <a href="https://la.curbed.com/authors/evebachrach5810107">Eve Bachrach</a>, <a href="https://la.curbed.com/authors/marissagluck0260061">Marissa Gluck</a>, <a href="https://la.curbed.com/authors/jamesbrasuell9156080">James Brasuell</a>,<strong> </strong><a href="https://la.curbed.com/authors/Dakota%20Smith">Dakota Smith</a>, <a href="https://la.curbed.com/authors/nealbroverman3753624">Neal Broverman</a>,<strong> </strong><a href="https://la.curbed.com/authors/adrian-kudler">Adrian Glick Kudler</a>, <a href="https://la.curbed.com/authors/pauline%20oconnor">Pauline O’Connor</a>, <a href="https://la.curbed.com/authors/jeff-wattenhofer">Jeff Wattenhofer</a>, <a href="https://www.elizabethdanielsphotography.com/#/">Elizabeth Daniels</a>, <a href="https://la.curbed.com/authors/elijah-chiland">Elijah Chiland</a>, and <a href="https://la.curbed.com/authors/bianca-barragan">Bianca Barragan</a> are just a few of our longtime contributors who captivated readers as they <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/4/19/15360412/renters-rights-los-angeles-california-eviction">explained</a>, <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/8/21/20802678/los-angeles-heat-metro-bus-stops-shade">critiqued</a>, and <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/11/21/16643502/reasons-to-love-los-angeles">celebrated</a> Los Angeles. </p>
<p id="hD8OXO">Like the ever-evolving city we cover, Curbed LA has changed over the years, from an aggregator with attitude, to a gossipy real-estate blog, to a trusted local-news source. Now it’s time for a new chapter. </p>
<p id="wS2kM9">Effective today, we’re stopping production on this site. But it won’t be the end of Curbed stories about Los Angeles. Starting Monday, June 29, our stories will appear on <a href="http://Curbed.com">Curbed.com</a>, our flagship site. That’s in preparation for an exciting move over to <a href="https://nymag.com/"><em>New York </em>Magazine</a> this fall, where Curbed will relaunch as the newest vertical alongside brands like <a href="https://www.vulture.com/">Vulture</a>, <a href="https://www.thecut.com/">the Cut</a>, and <a href="https://nymag.com/strategist/">the Strategist</a>. At <em>New York</em>, we’ll have a bigger platform to tell the nation what’s happening in its best city, and even though I’ll be writing for an East Coast publication, I personally promise never to pen a story that wins <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2015/2/19/9991026/new-york-times-los-angeles-bingo">New York <em>Times</em> bingo</a>.</p>
<p id="rxc494">Curbed LA’s unapologetically Southern Californian point of view will live on, as will the Curbed LA newsletter, which will blast into your inbox every other Friday. Plus, you can still reach us anytime through the <a href="mailto:la@curbed.com">Curbed LA tipline</a>. And even though we’ll no longer publish new stories, the archived version of Curbed LA will remain online — a testament to the fact that we built an influential, multifaceted voice for Los Angeles in the time it took to complete <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2008/7/10/10565636/development-du-5">one</a> <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/6/10/18660478/target-store-hollywood-western-husk-opening">Target</a>.</p>
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https://la.curbed.com/2020/6/26/21293163/curbed-la-closed-archivesJenna Chandler2020-06-25T09:25:00-07:002020-06-25T09:25:00-07:00How L.A.’s Richest Neighborhood Tried to Stop a Black Lives Matter Protest
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<figcaption>Images of protests on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills inspired a protest in Bel Air. | AFP via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>In Bel Air, the negative response backfired on those who didn’t want a protest at all.</p> <p id="HDa2S2">The twisting, mansion-lined roads in the L.A. hills had been relatively quiet as tens of thousands of protesters flooded the streets in the flats below after George Floyd was killed by police officers on May 25. But it’s getting louder in <a href="https://la.curbed.com/neighborhood/856/bel-air">Bel Air</a>.</p>
<p id="zZG8lG">On a recent Friday, Three 6 Mafia’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BJ4DZHVI64U">Hit a Muthafucka</a>,” UGK’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAB9D384MNc">Tell Me Something Good</a>,” and YG and Nipsey Hussle’s “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WkZ5e94QnWk">Fuck Donald Trump</a>” blasted from the speakers of an SUV parked at the end of a driveway. The trunk door was left open, and the beats and lyrics spilled out loud enough for neighbors and customers buying açai bowls and picking up dry cleaning at the nearby Glen Centre, a tile-roofed, eucalyptus-shaded shopping mall, to hear. </p>
<p id="DUMS71">The music, along with speeches from Martin Luther King Jr., have been playing almost every day for more than three weeks, after a Bel Air resident tried to stage a small, peaceful protest at the shopping center — but neighbors said it would harm the community, and the Glen Centre shut down for the day in response.</p>
<p id="gkHxdx">It all started five days after Floyd’s heart stopped beating as a Minneapolis police officer pinned him down by the neck. The killing ignited protests around the world, and on May 30, demonstrators on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills spray-painted anti-police messages on boarded-up luxury storefronts: “Fuck LAPD” at Chanel; “Eat the rich” at Hermès; “Make America pay for its crimes against black lives” at Alexander Wang. Photos of the vandalism were broadcast by local news stations, and that evening, Bel Air resident Mele Black posted a comment to an <a href="https://www.facebook.com/1585731190/posts/10219576141625889/?d=n">album</a> on Facebook. “I don’t condone this behavior,” she wrote, <a href="https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/05/30/rodeo-drive-protest-looting-george-floyd/">referring to the looting</a>. “But at this point .... <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/06/rioters-at-the-george-floyd-protests-dont-want-sympathy.html">I excuse it</a>. I will be on Mulholland and Beverly Glen protesting tomorrow at 11 a.m. Peaceful.” </p>
<p id="VItOlz">Black, who is white, says she was fed up with the racial injustices that had <a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/george-floyd-minneapolis-and-lies.html">touched off</a> the uprisings down the hill, and she wanted to stage a demonstration in support of Black Lives Matter in her own neighborhood. Located at the base of the Santa Monica Mountains, Bel Air is 87 percent white and only 3 percent Black. With a median household income of $210,000, it is part of the <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/5/30/15716230/la-richest-neighborhoods-wealthy-expensive-incomes">wealthiest Zip Code in Los Angeles</a>.</p>
<p id="hbWJFR">A resident in the area saw her comment about holding the protest and then posted to Nextdoor saying that it shouldn’t happen: “I just saw somebody comment on one of my friend’s posts that they are planning on doing a protest up at the Glen Centre tomorrow morning at 11 a.m. on Sunday. I have of course told them that we do not want or desire them in our neighborhood ... If anybody knows management of that building or has a relationship with the proper police departments please put them on notice.”</p>
<p id="Mw2Lzx">Neighbors accused Black of trying to incite riots. They said she would endanger families and Glen Centre businesses, like an upscale market and Starbucks. One neighbor warned that “professional agitators” would take advantage of the little protest and harm “our lovely community.” Soon, the local homeowners’ associations caught wind of the protest, as did the owners of the shopping center. </p>
<p id="xMIlrv">“We just received a notification from social media site <a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516509&xs=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnextdoor.com%2F&referrer=archive.curbed.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fla.curbed.com%2F2020%2F6%2F25%2F21289758%2Fbel-air-black-lives-matter-los-angeles" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank">nextdoor.com</a> that a protest is being planned at 11 am this morning at the Beverly Glen Ctr as a way to show that protests can reach affluent areas,” a warning from the Mulholland Estates homeowners’ association read. “Please take extra precautions ... We also strongly urge you to not have any outside visitors coming into the Mulholland Estates community today so we don’t distract the guards away from their primary responsibility of protecting residents.” </p>
<p id="bEw6Tc">To the dismay of residents and shoppers, the Glen Centre shut down. One resident wrote on Nextdoor: “Center closed in response. Lost business. Our poor local merchants.” Wendy Goldman, who is listed on LinkedIn as the owner and manager of the Glen Centre, wrote that she wanted to charge Black for the lost revenue that day. “You wanted to stand around by yourself and hold a sign, so now you should have to pay the piper,” she wrote. ( Messages left by Curbed with the Glen Centre were not returned.)</p>
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<cite>Jenna Chandler</cite>
<figcaption>Supporters left flowers and notes in the trunk.</figcaption>
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<p id="oxcYLr">Black was scared off, and with businesses closed, how much of an effect would a protest have anyway? She called it off and instead showed up unannounced one week later, on June 7, and was joined by her friend Courtney, who is Black and lives near the shopping center. (She did not want her last name used.)</p>
<p id="uevaUy">This time, the Glen Centre stayed open, but the Glen Development Company hired an armed security guard just in case. “As you have probably noticed, a couple of protestors with protest signs are standing on Beverly Glen Boulevard. It also appears that customers have now started to join them,” the company wrote in an email to tenants. “Although this protest seems to be peaceful, and we have no reason to believe it will escalate, our security company has recommended that we add an armed guard, in addition to the current on-site guard.”</p>
<p id="7SIq1P">Black says she had been thinking of Courtney’s family when she planned the first protest that never was. “They’ve been racially profiled since the day they moved in. After two and a half years, people still mistake them for being outsiders,” Black says. “I wanted to show my solidarity for them. I knew there was a possibility it would make my neighbors uncomfortable, but why would I go somewhere else to protest something that’s happening right in my backyard?”</p>
<p id="BMuSEG">In 2018, Courtney moved her family from Culver City to Bel Air to be closer to her daughter’s school.<strong> </strong>“We were excited to be here,” she says. “We no longer had to be on the 405 to drop off at school. We got a very private property where my kids could ride bikes and scooters, and we had the idyllic little market across the street.” </p>
<p id="bK9CXi">But even though her new neighbors in Bel Air regularly hosted big parties and celebrations at their homes, she says her family could too easily make waves in a very white community. “I spent the better half of two years saying ‘We have to be quiet.’” When her children did make noise in the front yard, she claims their neighbor sprayed them with a hose, something the neighbor refutes.</p>
<p id="NbWqG2">Courtney<strong> </strong>says her family has been asked to leave the shopping center when they ride their bikes in the parking lot or walk there with their dogs, whereas white dog owners have not. Lately, photos have surfaced on social media of her and her family on neighborhood walks that she says were taken well before the protest started. “I’m wearing clothes in the photos that I have not worn in the past few months,” she says. </p>
<p id="SPGw43">She says the photo- and video-taking has escalated over the past few weeks, with neighbors commenting on the father of her children’s large stature. He is also Black. One photo that surfaced was of him holding a baseball bat in their driveway. The implication was that he was aggressive, not that he was playing with his children. </p>
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<cite>Jenna Chandler</cite>
<figcaption>The Glen Centre shut down on May 31 after a resident planned a small peaceful protest.</figcaption>
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<p id="J1u2Rm">The Glen Centre’s closure on May 31 signaled to Courtney that the owners did not care about her family, who shops there daily, or the Black Lives Matter movement. “To close it says something. Sunday is a big day,” she says. “It was deafening.”</p>
<p id="VuKRev">Courtney isn’t afraid of being too loud anymore. The family is playing a curated selection of music by Black artists and speeches by civil-rights leaders from their car. “This music gets across what I feel and what I live every day as a Black woman,” she says. “My son can’t play with a water gun because he might get shot like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/23/us/in-tamir-rice-shooting-in-cleveland-many-errors-by-police-then-a-fatal-one.html">Tamir Rice</a>.”</p>
<p id="QDbeKH">She’s getting some of the reaction that Black got, with neighbors more concerned about the “obscenities” in the music and the disruption to local businesses (one commenter on Nextdoor said they weren’t being “neighborly”) than how Courtney and her family are feeling and how they have been treated. But some residents have started coming to their defense. </p>
<p id="yPEyub">“How about [we] all go give this guy a hug or a handshake (i guess COVID-19 won’t allow this) or honk to show support,” one neighbor wrote on Nextdoor. A couple of supporters have left bouquets and cards in the trunk. (“I was just there, it was horrible. It looked like the man was selling flowers out of the back,” one upset resident posted on Nextdoor.)</p>
<p id="1t80Hi">Employees who work at the shops have been supportive too,<strong> </strong>but Courtney and Black say shop owners haven’t even done the smallest things to show their support, like putting signs up in their windows.</p>
<p id="9FXrbQ">About a week ago, three men who don’t live in Bel Air showed up to support Courtney. As they stood outside, Courtney and the men, who are Black, shared stories about being called the N-word as children and not knowing what it meant, but knowing it must be derogatory because of the hateful way it was said. “Even in these affluent communities, they still feel the same things we’re feeling,” says one of the men, Chris Rogers, 29, who lives in Hollywood, where protests against police brutality have drawn tens of thousands of people. </p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="OWtW8M">Mostly, Courtney’s interactions have been with the police. Cops have been called multiple times, and she received a misdemeanor citation from the LAPD on June 13 for “loud, unnecessary, and unusual noise,” “loud music from car,” and “disturbing neighbors.” But she says she’s willing to face arrest to keep the musical protest going. “We’ve lived uncomfortably every day ... Now, finally, you all see what living uncomfortably is like every day,” Courtney says. “You won’t have silence for a good, long while.”</p>
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https://la.curbed.com/2020/6/25/21289758/bel-air-black-lives-matter-los-angelesJenna Chandler2020-06-23T10:50:00-07:002020-06-23T10:50:00-07:00How to Bribe a Los Angeles Lawmaker
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<figcaption>Getty Images/iStockphoto</figcaption>
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<p>Escorts, cash, and karaoke bars.</p> <p id="0Mf9ah"><em>Editor’s note: FBI agents </em><a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/los-angeles-city-councilman-jose-huizar-arrested-federal-rico-charge-alleges-he-agreed"><em>arrested</em></a><em> Los Angeles City Councilmember José Huizar on the morning of June 23 at his home in Boyle Heights in connection with their investigation into corruption at City Hall. Huizar is accused of federal racketeering, and the U.S. Attorney alleges he led a ring of aides, lobbyists, and developers who arranged bribes in exchange for his help getting real estate plans approved. In one instance, prosecutors allege that Huizar accepted $600,000 from a developer that the councilmember used to settle a sexual harassment lawsuit against him in 2014.</em></p>
<p id="Zdc84e">José Huizar has presided over Downtown Los Angeles during its emergence as a neighborhood for<a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/3/9/14866600/downtown-la-architecture-hotels-restaurants"> wealthy locals and tourists</a>, holding more sway over what<a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/12/18/21026595/downtown-development-los-angeles-skyline-comparison"> gets built</a> than anyone else, other than, perhaps, the developers themselves. Huizar, who grew up just outside Downtown in Boyle Heights, was elected to represent both areas on the Los Angeles City Council in 2005. He has staked a large part of his legacy on making the Broadway corridor the heart of Downtown, <a href="http://offthefreeway.com/2015/business/npiper/">reopening old movie palaces</a> and attracting businesses like the<a href="https://www.dezeen.com/2014/01/21/ace-hotel-opens-latest-branch-in-downtown-los-angeles/"> Ace Hotel</a>, which opened in 2014, and<a href="https://la.eater.com/2013/10/16/6350893/egg-sluts-grand-central-market-stall-soon-ready-to-open"> Eggslut</a>, which opened in Grand Central Market in 2013.</p>
<p id="9BQZCp">Huizar has not been charged in a<a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/1/14/18182352/jose-huizar-fbi-investigation-development"> federal corruption case</a> that’s unfolding in Los Angeles, but he’s the only person who matches the <a href="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20039270/Chiang_Allegations.pdf">details</a> in <a href="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20039258/Justin_Kim_plea_agreement.pdf">court</a> <a href="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/20039267/Esparza_plea_agreement.pdf">documents</a> describing an L.A. lawmaker, identified as “Councilmember A,” who took a cash bribe from Downtown developers in exchange for help getting rid of opposition to their plans.</p>
<p id="eX995t">From a videoconference broadcast to a courtroom in the federal courthouse on June 3, Justin Jangwoo Kim, a real-estate appraiser and former City Planning commissioner, pleaded guilty to fixing the bribe: $400,000 in cash, collected in a paper bag. The courthouse, fenced off because of protests over police violence, and closed to the public because of the pandemic, was almost entirely empty, as Kim remotely entered his plea.</p>
<p id="9NDPgG">George Esparza, whom the Los Angeles<em> Times</em> has described as <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-27/ex-jose-huizar-aide-george-esparza-guilty-plea-pay-to-play">one of Huizar’s closest aides</a>, has also <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/former-aide-la-city-councilmember-agrees-plead-guilty-rico-charge-stemming-pay-play">agreed to plead guilty</a> to racketeering as part of what the U.S. attorney has described as a “pay-to-play bribery scheme.” In a plea agreement Esparza signed on May 21, he is described as a city employee and a special assistant for Councilmember A, for whom Esparza admits helping Kim arrange the bribe. </p>
<p id="Z2NWkN">Also pleading guilty — to falsifying facts during the FBI investigation — is a second City Council member, Mitch Englander, who represented a swath of the San Fernando Valley from 2011 until 2018.</p>
<p id="lPhAYt">Huizar is not named in any plea agreements, but based on their conclusions regarding the details in the court records, Mayor Eric Garcetti and Los Angeles City Council president Nury Martinez asked him to resign on May 28, saying details in those filings are “<a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-28/garcetti-l-a-city-council-president-martinez-huizar-resign">disgusting</a>.”</p>
<p id="KUKLyS">The corruption probe has proved, in sordid detail, that at least two Los Angeles City Council members were not working for average Angelenos. As court records make clear, they were working for companies that can afford to withdraw hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and hand it off in a paper bag like a $15 takeout meal.</p>
<p id="rj1kYs">The development company referred to in the court documents is a limited-liability corporation named 940 S. Hill LLC that has three managers listed in state business records: Dae Lee, Jeong Kim, and Hyuk Lim, three Fashion District merchants. (This is the limit of Jeong Kim’s involvement, as described in court records; all other references in the story are to Justin Jangwoo Kim.) An appeal had been filed against their plans to build a high-rise with 232 condominiums on Hill Street, and they wanted Councilmember A to get that appeal dropped.</p>
<p id="HthdN3">The councilmember was down to help make the appeal go away — at a price. In a series of meetings that took place in cars, a coffee shop, bowling alley, hotel, and karaoke bar in 2016 and 2017, Kim helped negotiate the sum — an aid for the councilmember initially wanted $1.4 million and agreed to $400,000. (The developer would later tack on an additional $100,000.) The bribe was handed over in February 2017. The condominium plans were<a href="https://planning.lacity.org/pdiscaseinfo/document/MTcwODk10/03b6cd7a-61f3-4d27-8bc5-9bb6e20119bc/pdd"> approved</a> two months later by the City Planning department, but construction has not started.</p>
<p id="4nzBxS">Toward the end of the June 3 hearing, U.S. Central District Court judge John Walter asked Kim if he had done all of these things, and Kim responded demurely: “Yes, I did.” As part of a plea agreement, he must cooperate with federal officials as they continue investigating corruption and “pay-to-play” real-estate deals with elected officials in the city of Los Angeles.</p>
<p id="Mhsq4m">Some of the details that investigators have uncovered — escorts and Lakers-game tickets and greed, clandestine meetings, and cover-ups — belong in the plot of a great<a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/12/16/21019466/film-noir-definition-meaning-best"> noir</a>, a genre that has fictionalized some of L.A.’s ugliest truths. But unlike the movies, no one is watching as the Department of Justice slowly but publicly untangles how some wealthy developers get their projects approved.</p>
<p id="aBgoC3">It’s unknown at this point exactly how many deals like this the councilmember put together (others have been described in court records), but Kim had a long-term vision for building up a lucrative development operation in Downtown L.A., and it hinged on the councilmember, who Kim referred to as his “boss.” Together, they were plotting a succession plan, with Kim agreeing to find an unidentified “associate” who would form a political action committee supporting the councilmember’s unnamed relative in a bid to replace him when he terms out this year. </p>
<p id="b7M3n4">The succession plan is one of the key details in the court documents that seems to point directly to Huizar: The filings say a relative of Councilmember A announced her candidacy to succeed him in September 2018. They also say that Councilmember A was the chair of the City Council’s planning and land-use-management committee. </p>
<p id="8ECOoU">The timeline matches Huizar’s own: In September 2018, Huizar’s wife, Richelle, announced a campaign to replace her husband, but she <a href="http://www.ladowntownnews.com/news/richelle-huizar-quits-city-council-race/article_54b4c62e-edcf-11e8-91e7-dba86822a166.html">dropped out of the race two months later</a> after the FBI raided their Boyle Heights home. Huizar also chaired that committee from July 2013 to November 2018, when he was <a href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-huizar-committees-20181115-story.html">stripped of all committee assignments</a>. Huizar’s attorney declined to comment for this story.</p>
<p id="HGWVWA">Kim, who resigned from the L.A. City Planning commission in 2011, has donated to the campaigns for a majority of the current City Council, including Mitch O’Farrell, Herb Wesson, Paul Krekorian, Marqueece Harris-Dawson, and Huizar. He was also a business associate of George Chiang’s. (Chiang is another development consultant and real-estate broker from the San Gabriel Valley who has agreed to plead guilty in a separate case tied to the corruption investigation.)</p>
<p id="tEzmI2">According to the FBI, Chiang connected Councilmember A, again widely believed to be Huizar, to a Chinese developer, who the Real Deal has identified as<a href="https://go.redirectingat.com?id=66960X1516509&xs=1&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftherealdeal.com%2Fla%2F2020%2F05%2F13%2Fprivate-jets-prostitutes-and-luxury-hotels-brokers-plea-deal-points-finger-at-jose-huizar%2F&referrer=archive.curbed.com&sref=https%3A%2F%2Fla.curbed.com%2F2020%2F6%2F18%2F21279345%2Flos-angeles-corruption-jose-huizar-fbi" rel="sponsored nofollow noopener" target="_blank"> Shenzhen Hazens Real Estate Group</a>. Together, Chiang and the developer arranged a trip to Hong Kong and China for the councilmember and his family, agreed to contribute $100,000 to his relative’s election campaign, and gave tickets to Lakers games to his aides. In exchange, the councilmember helped get the developer’s<a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/9/17/16322762/downtown-la-development-w-hotel-la-live-shenzhen-hazens"> plans</a> for a W hotel and 435 condominiums near L.A. Live approved, including writing a motion needed to clear the plans through the Huizar-chaired planning and land-use-management committee.</p>
<p id="z1FTyb">Huizar has given no indication that he will give up his seat before his term ends. He seems to have enjoyed the power, even just the appearance of it. In an email to one of his aides on December 15, 2015, he wrote, “Just a reminder to commit and follow up when people ask me to be on honorary committee. For events even when I am not attending. I just saw that practically all of councilmembers were on HOPE honorary committee and I wasn’t.” The aid, Mayra Alvarez, sued him in 2018, claiming wrongful termination. Copies of emails and text messages contained in the lawsuit, which has not been resolved, show how Huizar treated her, constantly demanding cups of tea, almost always without saying please or thank you. One text thread reads only:</p>
<p id="SHk9RU">Tea</p>
<p id="ZMdNap">Tea</p>
<p id="BYovjD">Tea</p>
<p id="sfbhLt">Huizar and Englander, the other Los Angeles councilmember implicated in the investigation, served on the planning and land-use-management committee for more than five years. Englander stepped down from the council two years ago to work for a sports and entertainment company. After he resigned, the FBI accused him of trying to cover up gifts and trips he took with real-estate developers. </p>
<p id="0YM9Mr">As part of his plea agreement, he has admitted to taking a trip to Las Vegas in 2017 with an unnamed real-estate developer, lobbyist, and an unidentified business executive who worked with developers. They paid for his hotel room, $34,000 in bottle service, and ordered him an escort. At one point, the business executive gave Englander an envelope with $10,000 in cash in a casino bathroom.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="6v7Gg4">Later, after the FBI had begun questioning Englander and the business executive, the two drove around Downtown L.A. in Englander’s car while the councilmember allegedly coached the executive on how to lie to investigators, like a scene out of a political thriller. If they asked about escorts and checked his phone records, Englander told him to say, “I was so drunk I don’t remember calling,’ or ‘I don’t remember, maybe I called the wrong number.’”</p>
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https://la.curbed.com/2020/6/18/21279345/los-angeles-corruption-jose-huizar-fbiJenna Chandler2020-06-17T15:45:34-07:002020-06-17T15:45:34-07:00Black Lives Matter Organizers Share How Defunding Police Could Fund a Better L.A.
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<figcaption>Melina Abdullah, center, chants after she was detained by police in July 2016 while protesting the deadly <a class="ql-link" href="https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-lapd-shooting-redel-jones-20160712-snap-story.html" target="_blank">police shooting</a> of <a class="ql-link" href="https://lasentinel.net/no-justice-for-redele-jones.html" target="_blank">Redel Jones</a>, a 30-year-old mother of two. | Photo by Al Seib/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>“No one is saying that we don’t want to have strong systems of public safety.”</p> <p id="qpvSAZ">Every morning around 7 a.m., the older folks who lived around Audubon Middle School in <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/1/11/14206888/leimert-park-neighborhood-guide">Leimert Park</a> spilled out onto their front porches. They would chat with each other as they sipped their coffees, some still dressed in their robes. Sometimes they would shout a warning to the stream of kids walking by: “Stop cussing or I’m gonna tell your mama.”</p>
<p id="BMUojC">As someone new to the <a href="https://www.kcet.org/shows/departures/the-center-can-hold-leimert-park-and-black-los-angeles#:~:text=Nothing%20in%20the%20early%20history,of%20Vermont%2C%20developer%20Walter%20H.">historically black neighborhood</a> some two decades ago, Melina Abdullah remembers watching the spectacle each morning with growing curiosity, until one day she asked her new neighbors what they were doing. They were watching the babies go to school, they said. </p>
<p id="q8vwT3">That, she says, was public safety.</p>
<p id="YNIehX">“It was beautiful. It was the building of community,” says Abdullah. Neighbors knew each other and looked out for each other. It was why Abdullah, as a young single woman, felt safe living in an apartment that was accessible to the street.</p>
<p id="juLrFr">On Monday, Abdullah shared the anecdote with lawmakers who serve on the City Council’s budget committee, making the case that defunding the LAPD is not just about reimagining an entirely new form of public safety but a better Los Angeles, one built around strengthening and supporting communities. </p>
<p id="LMzC7Z">In making the presentation, Abdullah was joined by<strong> </strong>Baba Akili, a longtime activist and orator; <a href="https://www.innercitystruggle.org/david_turner">David Turner</a>, a youth organizer and doctoral student at UC Berkeley; and Kendrick Sampson, an actor and activist who founded BLD PWR. Together, they laid out a simple but revolutionary vision for L.A. shaped by their own experiences.</p>
<p id="oAytzY">Turner, who grew up around Florence Avenue and Crenshaw Boulevard in Hyde Park, says his parents struggled with domestic violence, and when the police got involved, it never helped. Either his mom or dad went to jail, and they never resolved their issues. Instead, he said, it broke their family apart.</p>
<p id="jrobPu">“You all have the power and ability to make a new Los Angeles ... that protects little black boys like I was, little black girls like my sister,” he told councilmembers.</p>
<p id="9K00WT">If the bulk of local taxpayer money did not go to policing in the city of Los Angeles, the money could instead be spent on food, homes, and health care. It could ensure more residents, especially in communities that have been undervalued and ignored, had access to libraries and parks and free public transit. Trained family counselors could respond to domestic disputes. Their message was: Police don’t make communities feel safe. </p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">We presented <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/PeoplesBudgetLA?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#PeoplesBudgetLA</a> at a special City Council meeting. The data is compelling...with policing as Angelenos' lowest spending priority. It's far-reaching...engaging 50,000+. Most of all, it's a call to courage...a referendum to <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DefundThePolice?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DefundThePolice</a> & <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/ReimaginePublicSafety?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#ReimaginePublicSafety</a>. <a href="https://t.co/ELveQFMYDT">pic.twitter.com/ELveQFMYDT</a></p>— #BlackLivesMatter-LA (@BLMLA) <a href="https://twitter.com/BLMLA/status/1272707440606355457?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 16, 2020</a>
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<p id="bGIhLJ">Their vision has the support of 24,426 Angelenos; that’s the number of responses they’ve received over the past 30 days to a survey asking residents how they would spend the city’s budget. Their responses have formed the “<a href="https://peoplesbudgetla.com">People’s Budget</a>.” Nearly half, or 46 percent, said they would maximize investments in universal aid and crisis management, a category that would include economic assistance, food security, housing security, public health, and health care. The second-biggest priorities were the built environment and reimagined community safety. Nearly 2 percent said they would prioritize law enforcement and policing. </p>
<p id="jl8w1r">“No one is saying that we don’t want to have strong systems of public safety,” Abdullah told ABC7 on Tuesday. “Just that when you talk about public safety, you can’t reduce it to policing ... It’s really important that people understand that those calls for abolition are rooted in real logic. Policing in this country <a href="https://plsonline.eku.edu/insidelook/brief-history-slavery-and-origins-american-policing">evolved from slave-catching</a>.”</p>
<p id="XmMTtt"><a href="https://thelandmag.com/the-people-v-melina-abdullah/">Abdullah</a> moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1990s to earn her master’s degree and Ph.D. in political science at USC. She’s now a professor of Pan-African studies at Cal State Los Angeles and a Los Angeles Unified School District parent. In 2013, after George Zimmerman was acquitted in the killing of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, she helped form the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter. Over the past few years, she has routinely disrupted police-commission meetings, led a sit-in at City Hall to demand the firing of former police chief Charlie Beck, and coordinated weekly rallies at the Hall of Justice calling for the resignation of Los Angeles district attorney Jackie Lacey.</p>
<p id="KqjFoS">Over the past several weeks, Abdullah has helped guide huge marches through some of L.A.’s wealthiest neighborhoods, a <a href="https://laist.com/2020/05/31/melina-abdullah-black-lives-matter-la-protest-police-violence-george-floyd.php">strategy</a> to get white people to finally pay attention to police brutality against black Angelenos. </p>
<p id="0SiJZU">On Monday, she told City Councilmember Paul Krekorian that for as long as he’s been chair of the budget committee, she and other organizers have been countering the mayor’s budget proposals, only to be met with silence. “We’ve been calling on the defunding of police for almost five years,” she said. </p>
<p id="sEf6Yy">Now she finally has their attention.</p>
<p id="RveEAY">Nury Martinez, the first Latina president of the City Council, said anyone “who grew up in those neighborhoods” and has “actual lived experiences” would not find it difficult to support their vision. </p>
<p id="lypfO9">Martinez has already proposed pulling $100 million to $150 million from the <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2020/6/2/21277088/defund-police-los-angeles-lapd-budget#:~:text=The%20total%20budget%20for%20the,allocate%20%241.86%20billion%20to%20policing.">$1.86 billion LAPD budget</a>, part of a larger $250 million investment that Mayor Eric Garcetti has said will be diverted to <a href="https://laist.com/latest/post/20200603/mayor-garcetti-protests-losangeles-june3-pressconference-livestream">job programs in health and education</a> in black neighborhoods and communities of color.</p>
<p id="XTeG3v">That’s a start. It’s the equivalent of the $120 million budget increase the LAPD was set to receive this year — until protesters swarmed the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-02/more-than-1-000-protesters-converge-on-mayor-garcettis-residence-demand-change">mayor’s mansion</a> in Hancock Park, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/CA87si5BVne/">demanding that he defund the police</a>. </p>
<p id="pZGjf9">On Tuesday, City Councilmember Herb Wesson introduced a motion to replace police officers with unarmed service responders — such as medical professionals, mental-health workers, and homeless-outreach workers — in “noncriminal situations.” It was a <a href="https://twitter.com/HerbJWesson/status/1272938977729757184?s=20">direct response</a> to the presentation Abdullah and other activists had delivered the day before.</p>
<p id="dTnF5r">“The presenters... were absolutely right, we need to reimagine public safety in the 21st century,” Wesson said in a tweet. “We have gone from asking the police to be part of the solution, to being the only solution for problems they should not be called on to solve in the first place.”</p>
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https://la.curbed.com/2020/6/17/21291991/defund-police-meaning-peoples-budget-los-angelesJenna Chandler2020-06-12T08:21:01-07:002020-06-12T08:21:01-07:00L.A.’s Homeless Population Grew 13 Percent Since Last Year’s Count — and Is Likely Already Worse
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<p>“‘Are our leaders capable of solving this problem?’ I think is a really valid question at this point.”</p> <p id="SG4P3X">The number of people without homes in L.A. County now stands at 66,433, a 13 percent jump since <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2019/6/4/18651445/homeless-count-data-stats-los-angeles">last year’s count</a>, according to <a href="https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=4558-2020-greater-los-angeles-homeless-count-presentation">new numbers</a> released today by the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA).</p>
<p id="VDB0U1">It’s the second year of double-digit increases in the homeless population for both the county and the city of Los Angeles, where the unhoused population is up 14 percent since 2019. Robin Petering, who runs a research and advocacy company that works with homeless organizations, responded with a breathless “Oh my God” and “Wow” when she was read the results over the phone. </p>
<p id="Xz2VVe">“It’s disheartening,” she said upon hearing the numbers. “‘Are our leaders capable of solving this problem?’ I think is a really valid question at this point.”</p>
<p id="3KuuGa">Many frustrated Angelenos will have the same reaction. On the one hand, the numbers seem shocking because L.A. has invested so much to <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2020/1/21/21071123/homelessness-los-angeles-how-to-fix">fix the problem</a> over the past few years — namely $1.2 billion in voter-approved bonds for subsidized apartments and an emergency shelter program — only to have fallen even further behind. But the response to the crisis has not matched the scale of the problem. Heidi Marston, the head of the Homeless Services Authority, says “bolder” action and an additional $500 million is needed every year “over a long period of time.”</p>
<p id="kppvQ9">The surge continues to be fueled by high housing costs, low wages, and a severe shortage of subsidized apartments that people with low incomes can afford. Fifty-nine percent of those who were homeless for the first time in 2019 cited economic hardship. These issues disproportionately impact black Angelenos, who make up 34 percent of L.A. County’s homeless population — and die from COVID-19 at double the rate of white people — but comprise just 8 percent of the county’s overall population.</p>
<p id="Lwo6fV">The newly released data is based on a point-in-time count conducted in January, before the novel coronavirus hit L.A., imperiling the economy and leaving nearly 600,000 people without work. The number of homeless people is probably higher now, even when you factor in that 6,010 people most at risk of dying from COVID-19 were rushed into shelters between March and May, which is also after the count was completed. </p>
<p id="ohSk1R">“Any <a href="https://www.latimes.com/homeless-housing/story/2020-05-14/coronavirus-unemployment-homeless-study-increase-45-percent">projections</a> that have been made say we’re due for a <a href="https://challengeinequality.luskin.ucla.edu/2020/05/28/ud-day-report/">really high inflow</a> into homelessness without significant intervention, and we haven’t seen a significant intervention,” Petering says. “We have some <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2020/3/20/21186979/renter-relief-coronavirus-los-angeles">minor eviction protections</a>, but I don’t think they were robust enough or even well advertised.”</p>
<p id="47TXEC">One estimate, by Columbia University economics professor Brendan O’Flaherty, is that nearly 30,000 Californians could end up homeless because of the economic devastation the pandemic has caused. </p>
<p id="GxeN3J">The Homeless Services Authority was able to place 22,767 people into housing last year; it’s an area in which the agency has made steady headway. The number of housing placements has more than doubled since 2014. “There has been progress,” says Robin Hughes, president of nonprofit housing developer Abode Communities. “We are housing more people and getting more people off the streets.”</p>
<p id="r7vAJK">But LAHSA hasn’t been able to keep up with the influx. The number of people who became homeless last year was 82,955, and two-thirds of unsheltered adults were homeless for the first time. “The vast majority are from L.A. County and fell into homelessness while in L.A.,” says Marston.</p>
<p id="NSQkLw">She says the agency will try to stop a “flood” of evictions brought on by the pandemic. But if L.A. is going to prevent more people from becoming homeless, the solution can’t only be to build additional affordable housing, as important as it is. The city and county need to transform foster care, health care, and <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2020/6/2/21277088/defund-police-los-angeles-lapd-budget#:~:text=What%20Los%20Angeles%20could%20do,billion%20LAPD%20budget%20%2D%20Curbed%20LA">criminal justice</a>, systems that have <a href="https://www.curbed.com/2020/6/10/21280272/racism-homeless-people-black-lives-matter">unequally harmed black people</a>. </p>
<p id="v2RRwx">“We can settle for nothing less than ending homelessness for those who experience it and stopping it before it begins for anyone else,” Marston says.</p>
<aside id="9J7aa9"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The Unsurprising Reason More Black Americans Are Becoming Homeless","url":"https://www.curbed.com/2020/6/10/21280272/racism-homeless-people-black-lives-matter"},{"title":"7 Ways You Can Help the Homeless in Los Angeles","url":"https://la.curbed.com/2018/1/22/16911052/homeless-count-volunteer-donate-housing"}]}'></div></aside>
https://la.curbed.com/2020/6/12/21288028/homeless-population-number-los-angelesJenna Chandler2020-06-11T09:58:56-07:002020-06-11T09:58:56-07:00California Lawmakers, Trying to Stop Evictions, Still Won’t Cancel Rent
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<p>Under a new bill, tenants would not be evicted for missing rent payments.</p> <p id="53de91">For years, California has been gripped by a housing-affordability and homelessness crisis, which has only been amplified over the past three months by a global pandemic. As the state begins to reopen, emergency measures designed to help renters will lapse, and evictions will mount. </p>
<p id="hxdH1Z">“There is no evidence that state or local leaders have begun to plan for what now appears to be an inevitable intensification of what was already a humanitarian crisis,” UCLA professor and public-interest attorney Gary Blasi said last month when he warned of a flood of evictions in coming months.</p>
<p id="PFn67I">Five legislators finally did act on Wednesday, introducing a bill that would make it temporarily illegal for landlords to evict tenants who haven’t paid rent during the pandemic. If the bill passes, it would undoubtedly help keep unemployed renters — a number that totals 449,000 in Los Angeles County alone — in their homes at a time when California cities cannot afford to have more people on their streets. </p>
<p id="oSUW5D">But <a href="http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201920200AB1436">Assembly Bill 1436</a> would not provide rent forgiveness or relief in the form of cash assistance, which renters have been demanding since March. <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2020/5/1/21241415/california-rent-strike-landlords">Landlords</a> would still be allowed to collect rent through other means, like small-claims court, says Sasha Harnden, a policy advocate at <a href="https://wclp.org/our-staff/alexander-harnden/">Western Center on Law & Poverty</a>, which is sponsoring the bill.</p>
<p id="nlHM5Z">“We were already struggling before the pandemic. What’s going to happen when I get a bill for past-due rent?” said Imperial Beach renter Patricia Mendoza, holding back tears. “How am I going to pay that?”</p>
<p id="Tjl0dr">Mendoza, a single mother who was furloughed in March, then laid off in April, joined a press briefing Wednesday to announce the bill. She called it “an important step” when more are needed. </p>
<p id="MassY1">There’s a patchwork of temporary rules and laws in place to help renters across California impacted by the coronavirus, but there are also a lot of gaps. Most significantly, even though renters can delay payments to landlords right now, they still have to eventually payback what they owe, and the governor has <a href="https://oag.ca.gov/news/press-releases/following-judicial-council%E2%80%99s-emergency-eviction-rule-attorney-general-becerra">not stopped property owners from filing eviction cases in court</a>. </p>
<p id="d1xScC">On April 6, the <a href="https://www.courts.ca.gov/policyadmin-jc.htm">Judicial Council of California</a> suspended all hearings on eviction cases, preventing “an eviction tsunami that should have hit L.A. County the first few weeks of April,” says Elena Popp, an eviction defense attorney in Los Angeles. </p>
<p id="H8cpXu">The rule is set to expire 90 days after the governor’s state-of-emergency declaration is lifted. At that point, Popp says cities without strong tenant protections will face what she calls Tsunami No. 2. “Much more must be done to protect tenants from displacement,” she says.</p>
<p id="YZ7bvh">In the city of San Francisco, supervisors voted Tuesday to permanently bar landlords from evicting tenants who haven’t paid rent, even after the pandemic ends. But like AB 1436, tenants would still have to pay back what they owe over time. The city of Los Angeles is moving to create a $100 million rent-assistance program using federal relief funds, enough to help 74,074 renters.</p>
<p id="E4g7n5">If signed into law, AB 1436 would be in effect for 90 days after the state’s COVID-19 emergency order expires.</p>
<p id="gT5FPd">In his May report, Blasi concludes that the most direct strategy to reduce evictions for the nonpayment of rent is what activists have been demanding since the pandemic started: eliminate the need to make rent payments at all. </p>
<aside id="VEm5ix"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Landlords want rent relief too","url":"https://la.curbed.com/2020/5/1/21241415/california-rent-strike-landlords"}]}'></div></aside><p id="zeg0Ey"></p>
https://la.curbed.com/2020/6/11/21286765/rent-payments-evictions-californiaJenna Chandler2020-06-05T09:05:00-07:002020-06-05T09:05:00-07:00You can now buy a piece of Echo Park for $100
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<figcaption>Chango, a coffee shop in Echo Park, closed in 2018, with its owners <a class="ql-link" href="https://la.eater.com/2018/5/2/17312054/chango-coffee-closes-echo-park-news" target="_blank">citing</a> high rents and competition. Nico says, as a property owner, it wants to preserve longtime tenants. | Los Angeles Times via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Nico isn’t revolutionizing landownership, but maybe it can do a little good </p> <p id="p13K40">At a brick bakery on Sunset Boulevard, Stephen McCarty sells technicolor rainbow cakes dyed with dragonfruit, blueberries, and turmeric. McCarty, who relocated from New York City in 2007, has developed a <a href="https://www.instagram.com/solar_return/">following</a> for his vegan cakes. But he had to close the doors to his shop, <a href="https://solarreturnshop.com/">Solar Return</a>, in mid-March, and was only able to open for no-contact pickups around Mother’s Day—with help from his landlord. </p>
<p id="VWGZbh">The executives who run <a href="https://mynico.com/">Nico</a>, the property management and real estate investment corporation that owns McCarty’s building, realized early in the pandemic that, with the economy all but shutting down, tenants would be pinched trying to make rent. At the end of March, they released security deposits to tenants in their three buildings, <a href="https://la.curbed.com/neighborhood/865/echo-park">all in Echo Park</a>, and the second week of April, they set up $150,000 in grants for rent payments, none of which had to be paid back. </p>
<p id="kn7pBu">“If we didn’t have a sympathetic ear in the landlord’s office, we would basically be giving away our ingredients and our time,” says McCarty, who tapped into the fund to keep his business afloat.</p>
<p id="I37UZp">Nico is giving Angelenos an opportunity to own a piece of their neighborhood. If Nico’s community-investment strategy works, long-time Echo Park residents who haven’t already been pushed out by gentrification, including renters, will have a chance to make money from property ownership—just like people with lots of money have always had the opportunity to do.</p>
<p id="N8OQeg">Nico is offering $10 shares to the public in its small real estate portfolio, an amount that’s unusually low for the real estate investment game. Anyone can buy in, but investors who live in and around Echo Park have different redemption rights, and every investor must purchase at least 10 shares, for a minimum investment of $100. That secures a financial stake in the company and a say in how it operates. Nico’s officers are also giving $1,000 worth of shares to the tenants in their 80 apartments.</p>
<p id="2s3aIa">Like Warby Parker and Patagonia, Nico is a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/04/companies-benefits">certified B corporation</a>, meaning it is deemed to be as committed to its social mission—to preserve rent-controlled apartments and give longtime residents more say in how their neighborhoods grow and change—as it is to turning a profit. </p>
<p id="Yt6d5X">“We believe real estate has an outweighted influence on neighborhoods, and is too driven by capital,” says Max Levine, who cofounded Nico. “We want to help stabilize communities and manage properties in a more responsible and humane way.” </p>
<p id="mHkI2o">No matter how much good Nico might try to do in Echo Park, it will still be making money off renters and small-business owners in a neighborhood that has been treated by developers as a real estate gold mine, with little regard for the impact that has on the people who have been displaced. </p>
<p id="yqi0op">“I thought about that a lot. This could be a way for white people to alleviate guilt about gentrifying,” says Kevin Graves, a graduate student and renter in Silver Lake who’s investing in Nico (he also moved here from New York City). He decided to buy shares after seeing an ad for Nico on social media. “If people are going to make money on the gentrification of Echo Park, let’s have it be the people who have lived here for a long time instead of being squeezed out,” he says.</p>
<p id="ZYYh6L">Real estate companies do shape the look, feel, and dynamics of communities. They decide, to a large extent, how much to charge for rent, which businesses get to occupy their buildings, and what the buildings look like. The typical resident doesn’t get have much power over how a residential block or commercial strip is designed. Most renters don’t even know the people they cut their rent checks to. Nico, for its part, is not hidden behind a vaguely named LLC. </p>
<p id="KoWUjn">“The vision for these buildings? We want to be longterm stewards of great assets, and we want to build community and support our residents and contribute to the stability of their lives,” says Levine. “We want to be great property owners.”</p>
<p id="oGScFc">Nico is “democratizing” real estate ownership, says Helen Leung, an urban planner who serves on Nico’s advisory board. “Real estate is the primary way to build equity,” she says. “But typical real estate investments aren’t accessible to the average person.”</p>
<p id="6fuXAz">She was also impressed with Nico’s commitment not to evict anyone under the California <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2020/2/4/21122683/ellis-act-rent-control-evictions-los-angeles">Ellis Act</a>, which is essentially a commitment not to tear down the buildings that Nico owns, all of which are rent-controlled, or convert rental apartments into for-sale units.<strong> </strong>Levine says Nico will ensure tenants get to live in their apartments for as long as possible. Leung, who runs a community nonprofit based in Frogtown, where she grew up, says she looks forward to holding Levine and his partners to their word. </p>
<p id="zQHw7J">Before he relocated to Los Angeles to launch Nico with his business partner, John Chaffetz, Levine lived in New York and worked for <a href="https://www.storagedeluxe.com/">Storage Deluxe</a>, a self-storage developer. He is also a part owner of Mile End Delicatessen, a Jewish deli in Brooklyn. </p>
<p id="qKmsYI">A few years ago, he says, he began trying to figure out how to use his real estate knowledge for good. When he met Chaffetz, the pair got to talking about how when most people think about investing in their communities, they envision homeownership. “But you have to have enough money for a down payment, and that’s a high bar,” he says. </p>
<p id="NRV2KV">Chaffetz is a former Morgan Stanley employee who cofounded Timberlane Partners, a real estate company that <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2015/9/30/9915728/echo-park-developer-shares-secrets-on-how-to-gentrify-apartments-for">purchased and flipped several old apartment buildings</a> in Echo Park and Silver Lake over the past several years. In 2015, Bloomberg described Timberlane’s strategy: “Buy neglected apartment buildings in promising neighborhoods, renovate, raise rents, and fill them with young professionals.” Chaffetz told <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-09-30/meet-the-hipster-real-estate-developers-building-for-millennials">Bloomberg</a> that Timberlane was “putting together a portfolio it plans to hold for decades.” But its website shows that it sold five of its six Los Angeles properties in 2018 and 2019, including one that it sold to Nico for $9 million.</p>
<p id="zVv0qS"><a href="https://luskin.ucla.edu/person/paul-ong">Paul Ong</a>, an economics professor and director of UCLA’s Center for Neighborhood Knowledge, says there are more democratic forms of landownership, like <a href="https://la.streetsblog.org/2017/08/03/community-land-trusts-an-overlooked-model-for-l-a-housing-affordability/">community land trusts</a>, which don’t exist to make a profit. Benefit corporations like Nico might set out to do good, he says, but “in our market economy there are incentives and pressures to mold behavior around maximizing profit to the degree that your noble ideas become secondary.” </p>
<p id="k1VXyT">On the other hand, if you’re profit-driven alone, Nico’s holdings may ultimately be too small to make any significant returns for investors, says Eric Sussman, an adjunct accounting professor at UCLA and partner at <a href="https://www.clearcapllc.com/our-team/">Clear Capital LLC</a>.</p>
<p id="Pu2tdk">“I’ve never seen a real estate investment trust own so few properties,” he says. “If this whole approach is to allow renters to get a piece of the action or somehow invest in their own units, I think there are less expensive, more liquid, better ways to go about doing it.”</p>
<p id="yzP0Uj">The goal, Levine says, is for Nico to start buying more rent-controlled buildings in Echo Park and surrounding neighborhoods, including <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2017/1/26/14391534/macarthur-park-development-street-vending-gentrification">Westlake</a>, as it recruits more investors and raises more money. </p>
<p id="ruS7v6">“The great untold story of neighborhood change is the pressure that capital puts on communities and how those investments define success, which is in purely financial returns,” he says. But on the other hand, he says, “we don’t view capital as bad.”</p>
<p id="FMwFNW"><strong>Update: </strong>This story has been updated to show that Timberlane sold one of its Echo Park properties to Nico in 2019.</p>
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https://la.curbed.com/2020/6/4/21266916/nico-investment-company-echo-parkJenna Chandler2020-06-02T12:50:12-07:002020-06-02T12:50:12-07:00What L.A. could do with its $1.8 billion police budget
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<figcaption>A demonstrator holds up his hands in front of the police in Fairfax while protesting the death of George Floyd on Saturday. | AFP via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>It could go to housing, parks, and transportation</p> <p id="Rf9srh">Rubber bullets broke their skin, tear gas burned their eyes and lungs, and <a href="https://twitter.com/ShotOn35mm/status/1267634730624643072">batons lodged into their stomachs</a>. Some were <a href="https://twitter.com/SophiaLeeHyun/status/1267216604388978689?s=20">run over by a police SUV</a>. Over the past six days, thousands of Angelenos, from Downtown to <a href="https://laist.com/2020/05/31/melina-abdullah-black-lives-matter-la-protest-police-violence-george-floyd.php">Fairfax</a>, have marched to end police brutality and were <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-04/videos-capture-police-violence-aggression-amid-l-a-protests">met with more of the same</a>. Mayor Eric Garcetti condemned the slayings of unarmed black men and women at the hands of law enforcement just as he committed <a href="http://cao.lacity.org/budget20-21/2020-21Proposed_Budget.pdf">$1.86 billion to the Los Angeles Police Department</a>.</p>
<p id="KX6TGx">The LAPD will receive a $120 million increase in funding under Garcetti’s budget, which was adopted by default Monday after the City Council declined to review it by the June 1 deadline. More city money will be dedicated to policing than any other service this budget year. If you added up the budgets for housing, streets, and transportation, then tripled the sum, it still would not match the city’s LAPD budget. </p>
<p id="jRY34X">But for Garcetti to achieve his aims of “righting the wrongs” of more than two centuries<strong> </strong>of racial injustice, most of that money should instead be deployed toward housing, public health, free transportation, food, and parks, say organizers with the L.A. chapter of Black Lives Matter. </p>
<p id="D53BAh">“He’s paying a lot of lip service on Minneapolis,” says Melina Abdullah, a professor of <a href="http://www.calstatela.edu/academic/pas/pan-african-studies-mission-statement">Pan-African studies</a> at California State University, Los Angeles, and an organizer with Black Lives Matter. “It’s really important that he looks in his own backyard.” </p>
<p id="vrUCeh">On May 26, the day after <a href="https://www.startribune.com/boss-remembers-george-floyd-as-a-good-friend-person-and-a-good-tenant/570775702/">George Floyd</a> was pinned to the ground by Minneapolis police officers, more than two dozen organizations in Los Angeles, including Black Lives Matter, released a <a href="https://peoplesbudgetla.com/">budget proposal</a>—based on a survey of 1,470 Angelenos—to dramatically reshape how L.A. spends money, stripping most of it from LAPD to instead go toward “universal needs” such as <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2020/2/12/21133788/housing-right-social-public-los-angeles-bonin">social housing</a>. In the days that followed, protests swept across Los Angeles and the nation; “Defund the police” was among the messages displayed on signs and spray-painted boarded-up buildings.</p>
<p id="LSYkvS">“Changing L.A.’s budget doesn’t dismantle the deep, structural racism in the country, but it’s a start,” says Jacob Woocher, a spokesperson for the coalition.</p>
<p id="UPtYME">The mayor says he welcomes conversations about rooting out discrimination, but he also says Los Angeles—which has <a href="https://patch.com/california/los-angeles/list-socal-cities-raising-minimum-wage-2020">raised the minimum wage</a>, published a report on the disproportionate impact of homelessness on black people, and is working to create a human-rights commission and office of racial equity—has already made progress. </p>
<p id="kcC7oO">“This is part of our culture,” he said at a press briefing on Sunday. “For a lot of people who are outraged about Minneapolis, I invite you to be part of these things, not to paint a caricature of a department or a city.”</p>
<p id="esbfAw">But the budget, Woocher says, is one of the best places to see where the mayor is actually placing his priorities.</p>
<p id="Dse2Fd">The total budget for the LAPD is $3.14 billion. But that includes pensions, healthcare costs, and other expenses that are fixed and that the mayor and City Council can’t control right now. From their discretionary pool of money, they will allocate $1.86 billion to policing.</p>
<p id="6FXJXe">That surpasses the $1.2 billion that Garcetti swayed voters to spend on 10,000 apartments for homeless residents over the course of a decade. The mayor has slashed general fund spending for the Housing + Community Investment Department, which oversees the Proposition HHH program, by <a href="http://cao.lacity.org/budget20-21/BlueBook1/">$1.2 million</a>, and its staffers are among the 16,000 civilian employees who will be furloughed to <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-20/coronavirus-garcetti-budget-story-2020-2021-furloughs-cuts">save money</a> as city revenue has been decimated by the pandemic. (Meanwhile, LAPD officers with college degrees will receive <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-05-26/lapd-bonuses-los-angeles-city-coronavirus-budget-crisis">$41 million in bonuses</a>.)</p>
<p id="QStkuj">The furloughs will threaten the Housing Department’s ability to complete the 1,025 apartments slated to open by this time next year. </p>
<p id="zCSTLO">Each of those apartments, built in partnership with private developers, costs the city $133,717 on average to construct. With the police budget, the city could instead<strong> </strong>help fund the construction of 14,000 additional long-term housing units for homeless Angelenos.</p>
<p id="uhiOqw">Permanent housing is widely viewed as the solution to L.A.’s seemingly never-ending homeless crisis, and the furloughs put that in jeopardy. But the effects of cutting the department don’t stop there. The housing agency helps tenants facing eviction (it has reported receiving 500 calls every day during the pandemic), oversees a grocery-card program, and is <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2020/5/27/21271925/los-angeles-renter-relief-program-subsidy">putting together a $100 million fund that will help Angelenos pay their rent</a>.</p>
<p id="bqcBPf">“Our programs serve as a safety net in these unprecedented times,” department manager Rushmore Cervantes <a href="http://clkrep.lacity.org/onlinedocs/2020/20-0600_misc_04-24-2020.pdf">wrote in a memo</a>. “Reducing the working hours will create a deficit in resources available to our constituents in dire need.” </p>
<p id="uyrG43">The amount that the LAPD will get from the city next year is more than double the <a href="https://www.capradio.org/articles/2020/05/21/details-remain-scant-on-gov-gavin-newsoms-plan-to-spend-750-million-on-hotels-for-homeless-residents/">$600 million </a>in federal relief money that the state of California is poised to spend to buy hotels and motels to permanently house 15,000 homeless residents most at risk of dying from COVID-19.</p>
<p id="LoPQUG">In 2017, black people made up 9 percent of L.A. County’s general population but 40 percent of its homeless population. “That is not based on poverty. That is based on structural and institutional racism,” the then-head of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority told the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/12/22/us/los-angeles-homeless-black-residents.html">New York<em> Times</em></a> last year. He added: “There is probably no more single significant factor than incarceration in terms of elevating somebody’s prospects of homelessness.”</p>
<p id="DzAdY7">More than half of all LAPD arrests of the homeless population in the first half of 2017 were for nonviolent offenses, including failure to appear, drugs, and petty theft, according to <a href="https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=2823-report-and-recommendations-of-the-ad-hoc-committee-on-black-people-experiencing-homelessness">researchers at UCLA</a>. Those researchers also found that while the number of arrests made by the LAPD declined in the general population from 2012 to 2017, they rose at a faster rate among the homeless population.</p>
<p id="iuR3Rg">The City Council had until Monday to change the mayor’s budget before it was de facto adopted. But the budget does not take effect until July 1, and the chair of the council’s budget and finance committee says the budget will be vetted before then “with full participation of the public.” No council members indicated they are ready to defund the LAPD, despite many committing to “fundamental” and “systematic” change during their Tuesday council meeting, the first since the protests erupted.</p>
<p id="nvdNwp">Abdullah says she will continue to put pressure on the mayor and the City Council to consider the people’s budget.</p>
<p id="BNmU49">“White supremacy and racism come in many forms,” says Abdullah. It’s not enough, she says, to speak out against blatant violence or the president. “When we say ‘black lives matter,’ it is specifically state-sanctioned violence, but we also need to look at the ways our City Council and the mayor ignore us or throw crumbs at us.” </p>
https://la.curbed.com/2020/6/2/21277088/defund-police-los-angeles-lapd-budgetJenna Chandler2020-05-27T16:29:22-07:002020-05-27T16:29:22-07:00Los Angeles wants to help pay your rent
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<figcaption>As many as 74,074 renters in Los Angeles could get help from the city to pay their rent. | Getty Images/iStockphoto</figcaption>
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<p>But you have to qualify</p> <p id="yDvUGM">If you’re a renter in the city of Los Angeles who earns $63,100 or less, City Hall might help pay your rent.</p>
<p id="N7pTng">Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez is moving to put $100 million in federal coronavirus relief dollars into a local renters assistance program. The city would pay up to half of your rent—up to $1,000 each month—for two months, and the checks would go directly to <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2020/5/1/21241415/california-rent-strike-landlords">landlords</a>. The goal is to get the program up and running by July 1.</p>
<p id="kvhbZ7">To qualify, renters would need to prove that they have been impacted by the pandemic. They would also need to meet income requirements: 80 percent of the area’s median income, which varies based on family size, but is <a href="http://home.hacla.org/abouts8">$63,100 for a single household</a> and $90,100 for a family of four, for example.</p>
<p id="NA2cVv">With LA’s unemployment rate at a <a href="https://labusinessjournal.com/news/2020/may/22/county-unemployment-rate-jumps-modern-record-196-a/">record 19.6 percent</a>, “there is an absolute feeling of desperation out there,” said Martinez. “There are people who were living pay check to pay check before the pandemic and are now living day by day.”</p>
<p id="TVwT3J">The city’s housing department estimates that as many as 74,074 renters could benefit from the program. Roughly 862,000 households citywide are renters.</p>
<p id="TKYwxV">The city had already planned to create a COVID-19 relief fund, but had only come up with about $3 million so far, all from council offices. The $100 million injection would make it “the largest rental relief fund in the nation” created by a city, Martinez said.</p>
<p id="e7oygo">It will take some time to get the expanded program put together, because it’s up to the full City Council to decide how to spend its $694 million in federal CARES Act money, which must be used by the end of the year. But the proposal already has the support of John Lee, Mitch O’Farrell, and Herb Wesson, along with Mayor Eric Garcetti.</p>
<p id="GmlJCk">Martinez says she anticipates that demand will be so high that the volume of online applications could crash the housing department’s website. </p>
<p id="A8CMxF">“The need is so great,” she said.</p>
https://la.curbed.com/2020/5/27/21271925/los-angeles-renter-relief-program-subsidyJenna Chandler2020-05-22T17:22:40-07:002020-05-22T17:22:40-07:00LA now has until September to shelter homeless living along freeways
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<figcaption>Tents occupied by the homeless line a freeway overpass in Downtown Los Angeles. | AFP via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The city and county are arguing over who will pay for the shelters</p> <p id="lgUO9B">A federal judge is giving Los Angeles a lot more time to move thousands of homeless residents away from freeways. </p>
<p id="544w65">The city and county now have until September 1 to “humanely” relocate anyone camped within 500 feet of an overpass, underpass, or ramp and into a shelter or “an alternative housing option,” such as a <a href="https://www.citylab.com/equity/2019/02/homeless-safe-parking-lots-sleeping-in-cars-city-programs/581128/">safe parking site</a> or <a href="https://www.curbed.com/2020/4/22/21215319/empty-hotels-homeless-housing-california-coronavirus">hotel or motel room</a>. </p>
<p id="AusMRa">The extension was granted today by U.S. District Court Judge David O. Carter in an updated preliminary junction that was initially set to go into effect at noon. </p>
<p id="oehyEh">Carter has said that is “unreasonably dangerous” to allow people to live in areas that may be contaminated with lead and other toxins or that carry increased risk of being injured or killed in a car crash or earthquake. He said he was compelled to intervene because neither the city or the county appeared “to be addressing this problem with any urgency.”</p>
<p id="dYF75N">“This is a call for local governments to embrace their responsibilities to the unsheltered and to radically rethink how we address the homelessness crisis,” said Daniel Conway, a policy advisor with the <a href="https://www.la-alliance.org/">LA Alliance for Human Rights</a>, a coalition of nonprofits, service providers, small business owners, and Downtown LA residents suing the city and county over their response to the homeless crisis. “All parties should embrace this opportunity to house thousands of our most needy neighbors at a time when they have never been more at risk.”</p>
<p id="R80Zp3">Once the city and county meet all of the requirements in the preliminary injunction, they will be able to enforce anti-camping laws around the freeway. </p>
<p id="WErRd2">Last week, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told reporters that he did not view the preliminary injunction as an “order” and said “we hope... we can come to a common agreement.”</p>
<p id="k8Mo5t">Since then, the city and county nearly came to an agreement over how to handle the freeway encampments. But the deal fell apart at the last minute as they squabbled over who would pay for the shelters. </p>
<p id="tMnGly">In court filings, the city said it was ready to commit to creating 6,100 new “shelter opportunities” in the next 10 months—if it received “appropriate levels” of funding from the county. But the judge noted that the number included 2,200 hotel and motel rooms already contracted under the state’s <a href="https://la.curbed.com/2020/5/12/21251847/homeless-hotels-project-roomkey-los-angeles">Project Roomkey</a>, as well as 1,000 shelter beds that were set up in recreation centers at the start of the pandemic. </p>
<p id="JcW3UY">In the updated injunction issued today, the judge reminded city county leaders that money for homeless services is ultimately not their property, because it comes from local taxpayers, the state, and federal government.</p>
<p id="4qHqM9">“The disagreement between the city and county over the relatively minor costs of this pilot program does not bode well for the future as the program is scaled up across the city and county,” Carter wrote. “It is regrettable that this ongoing endeavor to develop humane and sustainable responses to the challenges of homelessness is beleaguered by a legacy of bureaucratic entanglement and gridlock.”</p>
<p id="tbUqsy">In 2018, Carter issued a similar ruling in Orange County when he ordered officials to immediately house 1,000 living in tent camps in the Santa Ana River. As a result, Orange County cities committed to <a href="https://voiceofoc.org/2019/09/homeless-shelter-commitments-expand-to-three-new-cities/">opening enough shelters</a> to house all the camp residents. </p>
<p id="AhuWwA">One detail that’s not made clear in the preliminary injunction is where exactly the unhoused residents will go. Due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the city of LA has turned recreation centers into emergency shelters, which are currently housing 988 people, but cannot add more capacity due to social distancing guidance. The city is also negotiating leases with hotels and motels with a goal of housing 15,000 at-risk homeless residents, but currently only 1,850 rooms are filled.</p>
<p id="YwwfwA">For decades, Los Angeles has failed to provide enough shelter to house people living on the streets and in their cars. In 2017, a United Nations official who toured Skid Row called LA’s homelessness crisis a “<a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=22533&LangID=E">tragic indictment of community and government policies</a>.”</p>
<p id="UBlcEp">Complying with the preliminary injunction would require a massive undertaking, mostly because Los Angeles County is so large and is traversed by so many freeways. Los Angeles is home to an estimated 974 miles of state and federal freeways traveling through the 4,751 square-mile county. Last year, a point-in-time survey counted <a href="https://www.lahsa.org/documents?id=3423-2019-greater-los-angeles-homeless-count-los-angeles-county.pdf">58,936 homeless residents</a>, 44,214 of whom were unsheltered.</p>
<p id="v7dM1F">The city and county must give reports to the judge on their plans for establishing shelters and clearing the freeway areas, and the judge has threatened to advance the deadline if they don’t “demonstrate satisfactory progress.” The first is due June 12.</p>
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https://la.curbed.com/2020/5/15/21260566/homeless-freeways-los-angeles-camps-shelterJenna Chandler