Opinion: Opinion L.A. feels your pain!
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Readers speak up on an assortment of recent online features. All letters in Original Spelling®.
On Sonni Efron’s ‘Flip-flop on Darfur,’ Huntington Beach’s own Lucas Hennes writes:
I have a small quibble about the assertion that Democrats and Republicans have ‘switched places’ between Iraq and Darfur. While your assessment of the Darfur situation is certainly true, during the run-up to the Iraq war, the justification was never human-rights based, but based on national security. It was only when there were clearly no ‘WMD’ in Iraq that the Bush administration and other leading Republicans began playing the human rights card, after we had already blown off the UN and invaded the sovereign nation of Iraq. Furthermore, while I’m certainly not going to argue that Iraq was devoid of human rights abuses, they pale in comparison to those occurring in Darfur. The closest thing to the current events in Darfur that occurred in Iraq happened in 1988. That was twenty years ago, and while the massacre of the Kurds was very significant, a twenty-year old massacre hardly justified immediate attention. The current massacres that are happening in Darfur, on the other hand, need to be dealt with now. As cute and ironic as it is to juxtapose the two issues, the circumstances don’t even begin to compare.
This week’s Dust-Up on L.A.’s housing crisis drew responses from Mathew Andresen, who writes...
Regarding affordable housing, I think it’s funny how both author’s ignore the real problems and solutions in LA. If it costs too much to own/rent, then you either get roommates, or move. Problem solved. Mandating a certain percentage of homes as affordable housing is nothing more than a tax on the other purchaser/renters of the units. And rent control just serves to keep prices down below what they should be. I posit that the problem in LA isn’t too little housing, but to many people wanting to live in the same space. That’s what causes prices to go up. Moreover, I think LA could use to have some people move elsewhere. Would that be so bad for freeways to start to un-congest, and for schools to become less crowded. The solutions to LA’s problems isn’t to keep cramming more and more people into the same area, and to continue overburdening the public systems. But to instead let supply and demand work. As prices go up, people will start to leave until the demand for housing units equals the supply. Then prices will stabilize. As long as population keeps increasing, prices for land and housing will keep going up. There is a finite supply of land, thus increased demand will keep pushing up prices. And if you live in a desirable area, it will go up even faster. You want to stabilize prices, then you must stabilize population. All the other talk of affordable housing is really just higher taxes being levied on other home owner/renters. Once everyone gets their head out of the clouds and starts looking at the reality on the ground, maybe we can make some progress.
...and from Santa Monica’s Joel C. Koury, who avers:
This week in the LA Times online edition, a professional writer for one of those conservative foundations once again brought out the old recycled arguments that blame rent control for the affordable housing shortage in Los Angeles and Santa Monica. But there is one critical flaw in his logic. Our cities are not like Palmdale which is surrounded by hundreds of miles of undeveloped land. Every square inch of Los Angeles and Santa Monica are totally developed and since these are highly desirable communities to live in with an ever increasing population explosion, there will always be more demand for converting rental property to homes and condos. We will never have as many affordable rental units tomorrow that we have today. Even uncontrolled rental units bringing in thousands of dollars a month are regularly being converted to million dollar condos. Mark Twain once said, ‘Buy land ! since they are not making it any more.’ Until someone can find a way to either invent more land or stop people from buying the limited housing that’s available, rent control is the only way to preserve any affordable and middle class housing in our communities. Michael McGough’s ‘No soldier shall be quartered...’ prompted Dwane Brown to weigh in all the way from Arlington, Texas: Mr. McGouch, It seems that any use of ball point pens, computers, fax machines, typewriters, phones, tv, radoi, etc. shall not constitute protection under the First Amendment. Therefore any journalist, editor, publisher, opinionist, etc. who uses same shall be subject to ex post facto judicial and legislative action for the good of the public. What do you think?