Readers React: Investors are sprucing up dilapidated housing. Policymakers should welcome them, not drive them away

To the editor: Though well intended, your recent coverage of tenants in Long Beach receiving notices to vacate only tells a partial story by wrongly painting greedy housing providers as the primary culprit in creating burdens for low-income renters.

The truth is that for years, low-income areas in cities such as Long Beach have stagnated, suffering from a dearth of capital investment, bleak job prospects and dilapidated housing characterized by low rents. Today, investors are pouring in money and generating opportunities to earn higher wages as business flourishes.

The knee-jerk reaction is to prevent change by preserving the status quo (blighted neighborhoods and lost opportunity) through policies that are proven failures like rent control and “just cause” eviction. A far better approach is to embrace progress and welcome new capital while developing sensible policies to help ease the burden for renters caught in transition as our neighborhoods take the next step forward.

George Karahalios, Long Beach

The writer is a real-estate investor and member of the Small Property Owners Alliance of Southern California.

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