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upcoming Super Bowl and most certainly in time for the Summer Olympics. Sadly, the situation we see on the streets today has become such a pervasive problem that many have become somewhat oblivious to all the drug use, graffiti, prostitution, and crime that have invaded and seemingly conquered our streets.
Take any of these issues be it crime, homelessness, addiction, or even our lousy sidewalks and potholes, while I admit these are all
(except for the condition of
the sidewalks and streets) complicated issues, I am convinced there are solutions out there. But, unfortunately, “Team City of L.A.” never seems to deploy or even propose any sort of workable solutions that could solve these problems. Defunding the police was an idea put forward, and the City did cut the police budget at a time when crime was just beginning to increase, riots and loss of property was taking place, and now we have constant “smash and grab” robberies and are riding a major crime wave.
On homelessness, it seems the
only solutions are conceived
by our elected genius, City
Councilmember, Mike Bonin...
G-d help us all. Other than
the obvious camping on our
sidewalks or in parked busses
in front of people’s homes,
Mike has been a proponent of
building $550,000 to $650,000
each housing units, more like
condominiums, to solve the
homelessness crisis. No matter
how generous the taxpayers of
Los Angeles are and no matter how many billions of dollars in bond money is raised due to the generosity of California taxpayers, perhaps it could be a hundred billion, that will not begin to make a dent in housing the 60,000 or so homeless on our streets today when Mike wants to build housing that costs as much as $650,000. It just makes no sense, and solutions like these are not workable nor sustainable.
64 FEBRUARY 2022 - APARTMENT MANAGEMENT MAGAZINE AMM1/6
So, take the major underpinnings of homelessness...addiction, mental illness and then abuse (not necessarily in that order). Now, if we address each issue separately, the homeless population that suffers from addiction, mental illness or abuse, and work on solutions to those issues, perhaps some headway could be made. Like I said, it is complicated, but something must be done, and quickly. However, the first step would be for
those in the City of Los Angeles to admit these problems exist among the homeless population...fat chance! Instead, their rallying cry is always one against us, and that is to complain about “too high” rents and “evictions” by unscrupulous landlords, rather than admitting to the very true underpinnings of why people are living on the streets. Sadly, “we” rental property owners are too easy a target, especially when we have elected feeble- minded politicians who merely pander for renter votes to stay in office and to maximize their government pensions thus allowing them to suck on the teat of the California taxpayer forever, “to death do us part.”
Today, we are still in the midst of the City of Los Angeles eviction moratorium and rent freeze, and there’s no other ordinance like this that remains in effect anywhere in the U.S. today. While inflation runs out of control at unprecedented levels not seen for the last 30 or more years, our rents are frozen until some unknown future date and then one more year thereafter – yes, there’s a
12-month ‘tail’ on the rent freeze. How is that going to work out for us? Do not the officials in the City of Los Angeles get it?
We are being pulled at both ends with not only rent that has been frozen, but billions in uncollected rent due to government-imposed eviction moratoriums. Yet, we have seen no relief from property taxes, rising insurance premiums, higher gasoline prices
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