Time for a Moratorium - Time for Affordable Housing
By C.V.
Beck
Time for a moratorium now? Yes, I
think so. In fact, I think it’s been time for some time now and now, we
are overdue. People can stick their heads in the sand if they want to but we are
approaching the Tsunami of uncontrolled hyper-overdevelopment and really need to
get a grip, grab a- holt of it and take control of our neighborhoods and our
streets. We can’t go on like this, we really can’t. Unless you just
don’t care about anything except the money. I guess there are a lot of
people out there like that but I find it hard to believe that most people
aren’t fed up now.
Let’s hear from the community on this
now.
Another thing on my mind is the
willful withholding and withdrawal of truly affordable housing off the
market.
There are hundreds of vacant
units west of the 405 freeway, about 400 of them are at Lincoln Place being kept
off the market. There are 100,000 homeless people in Los Angeles. How did this
happen? Is it possible that it might have something to do with the Ellis Act in
1986? And more truly affordable housing is being trashed needlessly and replaced
with truly not affordable housing.
I
am sure that the powers that be could declare that 30% of all vacant
“luxury” housing be immediately made available to those who need
truly affordable housing and that those developers and landlords abusing the
Ellis Act, itself an abuse of power, could, if they wanted to, make available
through their own networks, this 30% at the same rates of rent that the
displaced persons are now paying, under the rent stabilization ordinance. Or is
this too radical?
Posted: Sat
- October 1, 2005 at 05:30 AM