Valley Secession and Rent Control

I have been reading a lot about secession. As a retiree on a fixed income, I have many worries about how this will affect my finances. Specifically, if this goes through and I wind up in a new Valley city, there will be no rent-control law to cover the building in which I have lived for 14 years. Even if the new Valley City Council soon moves to implement an identical (or similar) law, there will be a period when landlords can raise their rents any amount they want to. Many retirees in a similar financial situation who live in the Valley may suddenly find themselves unable to afford their new rents and will be in no position to move to new quarters.

I wonder if LAFCO has taken into account how secession will affect those of us in the Valley who are only hanging on to our housing because we are under the city of Los Angeles rent control law?

Marty Cantor

North Hollywood

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Gale Holland (Opinion, May 19) finds it a “howler” to suggest that the government of an independent Valley would be smaller, more efficient and responsive. While the Valley would replace Phoenix as the sixth-largest city in the country, the remaining Los Angeles would still have almost twice the population of the Valley. It has been statistically proven that smaller (not smallest) can be better, and that bigger, in many government services, simply is not.

Pauline Tallent

Winnetka