Los Angeles

Is Los Angeles too lucky for its own good? – The National Enquirer

„Travel”

LA remains a destination for people from around the world, many of them young, skilled and creative. They move here for culture, commerce, climate, fashion and for many other reasons.

The National Enquirer, reports:

That’s a situation many cities can only envy, but success comes at a cost. In the case of Los Angeles, this creat power of attraction created a major housing affordability crisis.

The book written by Richard Florida, “The New Urban Crisis,” describes Los Angeles as a ”prime example of the dark side of success” with severe housing shortages, deepening segregation, inequality and the decline of the middle class. In the book, the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana metro area leads all other major hubs, including New York City, on what he calls the “urban crisis index.”

More than 500,000 households in Los Angeles, and a total of 1,000,000 in Los Angeles County, have what the census bureau calls ”precarious housing situations”. That means the dwelling is substandard, or that families are doubled up, or that they spend more than half their income on housing.

Then, of course, there are over 50,000 homeless people.

Just to give you some updated information, today, in Los Angeles, the median price for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,995!

”Los Angeles alone can’t solve a regional or national housing crisis”, mentioned professor Jerry Nickelsburg of the UCLA Anderson Forecast, nor can it stem the tide of people who want to live here.

“People moving into California are better-educated and have higher incomes than those who are moving out,” he said, and that’s having a direct effect on rising rents.

Calls for rent control are met with cries that such controls are unfair to landlords and drive up costs for other renters.

Why we can’t keep up with housing demands

Developers argue that eliminating red tape and simplifying environmental requirements would speed construction, and prices would drop as supply increases. Critics counter that new luxury units will far outnumber less-expensive apartments.

A solution would be for developers to kick into a fund for affordable housing. This is already in use now in San Diego, San Francisco and could raise $100 million a year and be leveraged to create $400 million in housing annually. Developers however are saying the proposal would slow construction and lead to higher prices. Also, in most cases, landlords think it’s unfair to require them to charge far less than they could get in a free market.

There are so many reasons for cities to figure out what they can do on their own, or in conjunction with officials from other cities and the state.

So, the Los Angeles City Council must come up with something good for the people that are faceing major problems, people that where part of the upper medidle clas not long ago.