Homelessness

The city’s ‘Right to Organize’ ordinance requires landlords to recognize tenant associations in their buildings.

Sonali Kolhatkar: The federal government has for years enabled the private market to make money off our housing needs. Now, as home prices and rents skyrocket, there is a simple solution: offer people a public option for housing.

A homelessness czar would be a non-politician, not beholden to appeasing his or her constituents, who for decades have spoken loudly to restrict housing development, usually for the purpose of keeping “other” people out of their neighborhoods.

Homekey provides local public entities with large, capital grants that can be used to purchase existing buildings and convert them into housing for people experiencing or at risk of homelessness.

Joe Mathews: The assembly could provide a model of how Californians of every stripe can hash out their differences, and find better ways forward.

Randy Shaw: Infante was not always a fan of new housing. “I was that person who saw a new development and thought ‘here come’s gentrification.’

Danny Haiphong: Biological and chemical weapons are a vile expression of how far U.S. imperialism will go to maintain its economic and political supremacy.

Randy Shaw: I saw through this campaign that Lee is among the state’s hardest working and politically committed legislators. He is a true gem.

Dick Platkin: Public opinion polls consistently report that Angelenos consider the homeless crisis to be the city’s most pressing problem.

Randy Shaw: Why does California  put speculator profits ahead of the state’s need for affordable homes? The power of Big Real Estate.

Dick Platkin: The COP26 climate change handwriting is on-the-wall, but it has failed to move public officials from inconsequential adaptation to mitigation.

Dick Platkin: LA Council members have proposed nearly 300 sites for a camping ban.  But insufficient housing is still an issue.

Dick Platkin: To add insult to energy, these white collar grifters adorn themselves in the purest of motives.  They claim they are building low-income housing, addressing the climate crisis, increasing transit ridership, fostering inter-generational wealth, and reversing racist housing practices.

Randy Shaw: It’s not “pro-housing” to support apartment bans through much of a city. Sharply restricting where tenants can live is not “progressive.”

Dick Platkin: At one time, the Democratic Party stood for policies that successfully addressed the country’s chronic housing crisis. What changed, and why?

Dick Platkin: This housing crisis did not happen by itself.  It is the result of deliberate policy decisions at every level of government over the past half century.

Liz Theoharis: This eviction crisis is happening at a moment when there’s already an existing population of 8 to 11 million homeless Americans who have only been thrown into a deeper set of crises during this seemingly never-ending pandemic.

Dick Platkin: When you put these Neighborhood Council fauxgressives under the microscope, you find liberal slogans encasing a political agenda that could have been, and probably was, written by real estate developers and their admirers.