Hollywood at a Palisades Rate : MTA should have gotten comparable housing for displaced man

It’s a given in the affairs of public money. Somewhere and sometime, whether through a blunder or through purely humanitarian concerns, taxpayer dollars will be spent to house someone in need. In this case, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority had to pay to house 19 people whose apartments had been damaged by subway construction.

The other given in these matters is simply stated. Someone will always find a way to complain about the temporary housing that has been set up. It will be less convenient. It will be in a less friendly neighborhood. It will have fewer amenities. You know the drill.

So, it behooves the agency or government in question to do it the right way from the start. The MTA did not, and that is why it is again in hot water this week.

It seems that Henry Lee’s unit at the Hillview Apartments at the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and North Hudson Avenue was damaged when the ground sank about 10 inches during construction efforts. There is some dispute over whether this was an actual residence for Lee. Suffice it to say, however, that Lee and others were immediately moved.

The agency wound up paying $52,929.52 in hotel bills, meals and telephone charges for Lee for 17 months. MTA officials recently decided that they would no longer pay these expenses, particularly since they weren’t even sure that Lee was living at the hotel. This, of course, has led to outcries about the inhumanity of the MTA for kicking someone out of a temporary home when the agency was the cause of the original problem.

In truth, this could have been a very simple matter. The whole idea of temporary housing for folks like Lee ought to be based on comparable worth. Find a place relatively close by that rents for about the same amount. That way you don’t wind up paying $3,113.50 a month for one person. (Even figuring in meals, that will get you a nice three-bedroom, two-bath house and a yard, with an ocean view, in Pacific Palisades.) That way, the MTA isn’t embarrassed and compelled to stage an eviction. That way, problems are avoided.