From what I've seen in the past, many of California's new slums were created by the "redevelopment agencies"--eg, money wasted on unrentable storefront strips nobody wanted and left to stand empty and decay while the politically connected contractors beat it out of town with the loot.
I've noticed that most of the Redevelopment projects end up with parking a couple of blocks away, then have blind entrances where you go in a door and then walk through an empty corridor to get to the "stuff".
That makes a lot of sense if you're building a government facility that is of a type frequently bombed or shot at, but all it does is create un-rentable retail space when stuffed into a private building.