Homelessness is Everywhere in the Southland
When I was on the board of a local family homeless shelter 25 years ago, the saying was that “the average homeless person was an 8-year-old white child.” But we all agreed the homeless were evenly divided between those with alcohol/drug addiction problems, mental illness and economic crisis.
Those numbers have changed.
Studies have shown that about 60 percent of today’s homeless population in Los Angeles got there because of economic factors — chiefly mind-boggling rents of $2,500 for a 2-bedroom apartment and a total absence of affordable housing of every type.
The voters have taxed themselves to pay for more housing but the problem is growing faster than the original solution (more permanent housing). We need something done NOW. It is shameful that people are sleeping on our sidewalks.
Councilman Mike Bonin offers some solutions to what must be done. It seems like the majority of voters have compassion and want to end homelessness. They also agree that the solution is to build homes — Duh! The breakdown comes with the urgency of the problem. The homeless can’t wait years for developments to come to fruition. Their lives are being destroyed now. Open your minds. Support something being done ASAP.
Diane Middleton
San Pedro
Seabreeze Scandal
Guess you guys are giving Hahn and Buscaino a pass on the rather large
“Contributions,” I’d call it an out and out bribe they received in turn for their support of the $7 million harbor gateway apartment complex.
What a difference a “D” makes.
So much for watching out for the “people.”
Frank Pereyda
San Pedro
Good to hear from you Frank,
I don’t believe that the “D” affiliation holds much bias in this newspaper as we have often reported on the failing of many public officials, most notably Buscaino (D-San Pedro). The only “D” that can be used in relation to Seabreeze development scandal is Dumb — both on the part of the developer and with the LA City Council reps who voted against the neighborhood council to approve it.
James Preston Allen
Publisher
Gentrification of Ports O’Call
I appreciate the articles and editorials on the gentrification of Ports of Call. James Preston Allen — who I have known since about 1994 — is still thankfully able to write with a simplicity and clarity that is unknown even in larger newspapers. I appreciate the articles and editorials on the gentrification of Ports O’ Call. Yours may be a small paper in a sense but you manage to keep readers connected to the larger scheme of things. Who says that the White House is the only important news in town for the country’s welfare?
I sense that the gentrification- rent control-tax credit property movements may be closely linked. I read one site about the Affordable Housing Act proposed but there did not seem to be any enforcement provisions or penalties for non-compliance; the act has no teeth.
But maybe one day you can devote a full page to the public speaking about the pros and cons of gentrification
Juan Johnson
Los Angeles
Save Ports O’Call
The duplicitous actions of the Port of Los Angeles (POLA aka Harbor Department) and lack of historical consideration, sensitivity to the local community, patrons and long term employees of Ports O’Call Restaurant and the surrounding village is despicable demonstrating complete lack of compassion to the poignant concerns of the people at risk, and total mercenary intent.
As the landlord, POLA, has long been culpable for many years of neglect and negligence: Offering only month to month leases, not maintaining the property or landscaping safely or aesthetically, forcing viable businesses to close; and now with the threat of Ports O’Call Restaurant (and Spirit Cruises) being shut down causing over 100 to lose their jobs (many who have worked there for nearly three decades) and face the unemployment queue that will cost taxpayers. The proprietor’s livelihood also is at risk because if the business closes it is a death knell, and dubious it will be reincarnated.
POLA and the “carpetbagger” developers are morally corrupt and whatever action can legally be taken to abort the outrageous plan for the so called “historic waterfront” should be utmost in the minds of all concerned citizens of San Pedro, who have been speaking up yet being completely disrespected if not ignored
The impassioned pleas made at the Board of Harbor Commissioners recently have fallen of deaf ears with the flagrant lack of humanity or compassion. The POLA claims it is the “developers” and the latter in turn claim it is the POLA who are responsible and making the decisions. It’s like an invisible ping pong game and those people and businesses that have been and are being compromised are the ball back and forth across the oxymoron net.
The proposed plan for developing the “historic waterfront” is appalling, from the name change to the destruction of property; and specious to continue to state “historic” if the history is obliterated.
Ports O’Call has a name that resonates around the world and is simply like Aladdin’s lamp in need of some polishing to open up the treasures to be found that are intrinsic to the seaside landscape. To tear down what has the ethos of six decades is heinous. Even the Constitution has Amendments and the plan should thus be reconsidered. Restore, revitalize, resurrect Ports O’Call for the greater good of all concerned today and for the future.
Stephanie Mardesich
San Pedro
Kudos to Students Standing Up Against the NRA
I’ve been a teacher for more than 30 years. My job is to teach, challenge, and enrich my students’ minds.
Donald Trump’s response to the latest tragic school shooting—to put even more guns in our schools—is just the latest Trump scam. It’s a distraction. It’s meant to divide us. And it certainly won’t make our kids safer.
But the Parkland students aren’t falling for it, nor are young people and students all over the country—including many who have been organizing against gun violence for years. Over the coming weeks, they are coming together to organize marches and other protests all across the country. I’m standing with these students, and so is MoveOn—by mobilizing its millions of members to participate in the protests and by pressuring corporations to cut their support for the NRA.
We know how to reduce gun violence: for starters, universal background checks and bans on high-capacity magazines and AR-15s and other military-style assault weapons like the ones used in Parkland—and in Sutherland Springs, San Bernardino, Aurora, Orlando, Las Vegas, and Newtown. And we know the way to get there: direct pressure on corporations, demanding action from politicians at federal and state levels and replacing them when they fail to act, and—ultimately—breaking the stranglehold of the NRA by isolating it from its corporate and political enablers.
Republicans in Washington are so completely bought by the NRA that new federal laws are unlikely in the short term. But the students leading the movement to end gun violence—from Parkland and from communities across the country that have been impacted—aren’t waiting for the Republicans in Washington, and neither is MoveOn.
Student-led groups and their allies, including hundreds of thousands of MoveOn members, are calling on corporations to stand up to the NRA, and this #BoycottNRA movement is catching on like wildfire. The retailer Dick’s Sporting Goods is the latest to defy the NRA by taking AR-15s and high-capacity magazines off its store shelves, while Walmart and others are raising the age of who can purchase guns. Indeed, the NRA isn’t invincible. (Remember the old “emperor has no clothes” parable? That’s the NRA right now.)
MoveOn is joining students in keeping the pressure on corporate America and pushing to pass new laws in state legislatures. And MoveOn has launched one of its biggest campaigns ever to end Republican control of Congress in the 2018 midterms this November, so that by this time next year, we can kick out some of the NRA’s biggest congressional enablers, show that the NRA can be beat, and start to move forward with common sense gun legislation in Congress, too.
I pledge to stand with students—not by carrying a gun but by standing up to the NRA. Will you join me in the fight against gun violence by making a donation to MoveOn today?
Robert Reich
Former Secretary of Labor, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at UC Berkeley