LA City is doing us harm, taking our rents & taxes for other purposes...see

from LA WEEKLY =re LA housing cost this is a repost from http://www.laweekly.com/2009-01-15/news/l-a-39-s-hidden-housing-disaster

[snip]
$962: Last year’s [2008] average cost of renting in Los Angeles, 43 percent higher than in 2000. 49: That’s L.A.’s bottom-of-the-barrel “housing affordability” rank out of 50 big American cities, with San Francisco ranked last, according to a 2008 survey by San Francisco nonprofit SustainLane.com. from 2003 to 2006. 7,369: The number of affordable units lost during the same period, mostly through conversions to luxury units but also demolitions related to new housing.

13,713: The net number of rent-controlled apartments and houses lost between 2001 and 2007 to demolition sparked by new construction and, even more often, to condo conversions sparked by the housing bubble’s rush to home ownership.

If the city’s numbers are accurate, Los Angeles has been losing a massive supply of affordable housing, while city leaders repeatedly take credit for approving 10,000 to 14,000 new units during each boom year — one of the busiest construction periods since the end of World War II. In the face of widespread neighborhood resistance to this most recent boom, city planners approved often-sprawling luxury complexes in Hollywood, along Wilshire, on the Westside, in the Valley and downtown — while the city was hemorrhaging its existing cheap rental stock.

City Controller Laura Chick says 90 percent of the units built during the construction frenzy were for those earning at least $135,000......

Apartments built before 1979 are rent-stabilized, allowing property owners to charge new tenants at market rate but restricting rent increases on existing tenants. Owners make up for the lost revenue by taking less profit, or raising rents for other tenants. How about the mayor’s $5 billion housing plan? Villaraigosa has not produced any documents proving that lenders or other sources are even offering such funds. But if they were, would it make a difference? [snip]

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another repost here from http://www.laweekly.com/2008-12-11/news/l-a-slams-residents-with-stiff-fees-and-taxes/
LA WEEKLY again [snip]

in May 2006, the City Council announced a trash-collection fee that Villaraigosa sold to residents by publicly promising it would go to hiring 1,000 new cops. In concert with that, the City Council has boosted the trash fee 330 percent, from $11 to $36.32.

The fee hike goes far beyond the actual cost of collecting and dumping trash. By this fall, it had generated a $137 million mountain of cash. But Villaraigosa’s vow that the excess funds would go to hiring cops proved untrue. An audit by city Controller Laura Chick has shown that Villaraigosa and Police Chief William Bratton spent only $47.2 million hiring new officers. Much of the rest went to raises and perks for the powerful police union. Although no laws were broken in the failure to spend the money as promised, Chick says (in a careful parsing of the actions by her political ally, Villaraigosa) that the mayor “incorrectly stated that the fees would be used exclusively to hire new officers, which we [now] know is not the case.”.... . Soon, water rates will jump by $5.25 on a typical water bill, but costs will be far higher for those who regularly water their lawn.....
the revised 2008-2009 city budget, which has increased car-towing fees by more than 100 percent to $100, hiked parking tickets dramatically, and almost doubled city campsite fees to $10 per night at places....[snip]

who is taking actions to change and improve these LA CITY neglects and corruptions?

Who else is writing, calling, informing and not-allowing our city to be taken by politicos stealing our livelihood and taxes?

are you ? pass this info on and let the rest of the concerned citizens KNOW what is happening....local issues are global as they happen here and elsewhere ....where peoople do not have the luxuries and freedoms we take for granted in Los Angeles, California, USA and the Americas !


(C) maryjanie 2009