Sounds like Mayor Villaraigosa’s State of the City message given a couple of days ago. But while everyone is looking at the cost of the bicycle paths, the dedicated bus roads, the subways and trains, what they fail to see is that this is designed to provide high-rise government sponsored housing.
Traditionally, here in Los Angeles, apartment buildings were limited to 2 stories. Not anymore. As I drive thru the city I see 4 and 6 story apartments going up. The zoning has changed so that many properties are allowed to build a second home on their12,000 sq ft lot. And as a recent WSJ news piece points out, California Declares War on Suburbia, April 12, 2012. The typical 4 houses per acre is giving way to transit villages with 30 houses per acre.
Another aspect of these new mega apartments is the senior housing. When we are told that there will be subsidized senior housing, who can argue with that, it is not limited to senior housing, the seniors are complaining that they are giving the housing to drug dealers and users.
Then there is the mayor of Lancaster, he was on our local newstalk radio telling us that preferential Section 8 housing is going to ex-cons. In many cases new 4 bedroom homes with a swimming pool, homes that the city took over when they were foreclosed on.
It is not the cost of the transportation, it is the denser cities we should be looking at.
I’m having difficulty parsing through all this. HUD has spent the last 20 years seeding the suburbs with section 8 apartments, effectively destabilizing those neighborhoods and emptying the city cores for re-development of the inner cities for the hipster DINK types. Now what? HUD is giving away the foreclosed homes in the suburbs to their client base? Or are they now re-building section 8 type apartment Projects style housing in their cities? What really puzzles me is that the HUD types only account for 15% of the population. Where the heck are they getting all these people from? This is just plain weird.
Bump!
California is probably the most beautiful place in the world. I’ve been there many times and I love it. The folks are friendly for the most part, and the world’s best restaurants are in California. If I couldn’t live in my beloved Florida anymore, California would be my next choice.
The libs should be ashamed to what they’ve done that slice of Heaven.