Newsletter: Today: Inside Mexico’s Housing Debacle

Mexico promised affordable housing for all. Instead, it created slums where homeowners scrounge for water, gutters run with raw sewage, streets sink, and sidewalks crumble.

TOP STORIES

Inside Mexico’s Housing Debacle

In 2001, the Mexican government began a massive campaign to raise living standards for its working-class citizens by teaming with private developers to build housing tracts. But the program has devolved into a slow-motion social and financial catastrophe, inflicting daily hardships and hazards on millions in troubled developments across the country, a Los Angeles Times investigation has found. Inside many homes, roofs leak, walls crack and electrical systems short-circuit. Meanwhile, the factory workers, small-business owners, retirees and civil servants who bought the homes got stuck with complex loans. Read the five-part investigation (also available in Spanish) and ask reporter Richard Marosi questions about it here.

Schoolchildren walk along a trash-filled, rutted alley between row houses in the blighted Cañadas del Florido neighborhood in Tijuana.

(Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times )

The Politics of Sexual Harassment Allegations

Allegations of sexual abuse are front and center as Congress returns to Washington after the Thanksgiving break. Longtime Democratic Rep. John Conyers Jr. is stepping down as ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee while facing an ethics investigation into allegations he sexually harassed female staffers. Sen. Al Franken, who has apologized again, also faces an ethics investigation into accusations of unwanted kissing and groping. Meanwhile, President Trump reiterated his support for Republican Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore, who’s been accused of various degrees of sexual harassment, including assault, nearly 40 years ago.

Will the GOP Give a Bitter Pill to Some Red States?

On Congress’ to-do list are a government spending bill by Dec. 8, immigration legislation and a tax overhaul that Trump wants by Christmas. Though House Republicans passed their tax plan, the Senate version is trickier, as it aims to repeal the unpopular Obamacare requirement that Americans carry health coverage. Though it’s hard to say exactly how the Senate GOP tax plan would affect the nation as a whole, a Times data analysis shows that eliminating the health insurance mandate could derail insurance markets in conservative, rural swaths of the country.

More Politics

-- Who is the rightful acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? The deputy director has sued to stop Trump from installing his own appointee as temporary head of the agency.

-- Robert S. Mueller III has been hailed as the ideal lawman. But at 73, Mueller has a record that shows a man of fallible judgment who can be slow to alter his chosen course.

-- How #piegate became another example of the Trump administration’s credibility being called into question.

Out of the Ashes, a Town’s New Identity Arises

In 2003, fire destroyed 287 homes in Harbison Canyon as it tore across San Diego County, claiming 280,000 acres, 2,800 dwellings and 15 lives. Since then, the tightly knit community has rebuilt. What was once a rural, affordable backwater has become more suburban and pricey. “The fire will never not be part of our lives,” says one resident who lived through it. Now, as neighborhoods in Northern California try to move on after October’s wildfires, Harbison Canyon stands as an example of how a place’s identity can change after disaster.

A Final Resting Place for Migrants Lost at Sea

The number of migrants streaming into Europe has decreased dramatically this year, but crossing the Mediterranean has become deadlier. In southern Tunisia, fall is the season when the bodies of those departing from Libya wash ashore. One volunteer in the town of Zarzis has made it his mission to bury hundreds in a cemetery he started on donated land. “I am their family,” he says.

OUR MUST-READS FROM THE WEEKEND

-- Columnist Steve Lopez looks at how rising real estate values have created a “new California gold rush” for homeowners and left renters in the dust.

-- The city of L.A. has no centralized method for tracking sexual harassment complaints by workers, nor are managers required to report such claims to the city’s Personnel Department.

-- Native Americans rewrote the playbook for preserving public land, and Trump is trying to erase it.

-- A renegade environmental activist’s discovery of a rare plant could stop the restoration of the Ballona Wetlands.

-- Columnist Chris Erskine offers a toast to a small morning pleasure, and a toast to you for reading it.

MUST-WATCH VIDEO

-- Generations of family and friends gave thanks to a South L.A. woman known for her generosity.

-- Some turkeys are the Thanksgiving guests of honor at the Farm Sanctuary in Acton.

-- The slot car racing fad of the 1960s is popular again with men in their 60s.

CALIFORNIA

-- A study says L.A.’s annual count of homeless people underestimates the number and reports year-to-year shifts in gender, ethnicity and age breakdowns that are not “plausible.”

-- Gov. Jerry Brown could delay the resumption of executions despite a new law to speed up the death penalty.

-- Conservative headliners are teaming up to challenge Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters in Los Angeles

-- U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Harry Pregerson, one of the most liberal federal appeals court judges in the nation, has died at age 94.

HOLLYWOOD AND THE ARTS

-- How will Kendrick Lamar fare in the Grammy nominations on Tuesday morning? He’s one of the key artists to watch.

-- Pixar’s Día de los Muertos-themed film “Coco” helped bring the box office back from the dead.

-- Music promoters and venue owners are hoping L.A. follows in New York’s footsteps and creates an office of nightlife.

-- John Adams’ new Gold Rush-era opera “Girls of the Gold West” is, according to music critic Mark Swed, “an opera for our time.”

CLASSIC HOLLYWOOD

Carol Burnett will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of her namesake show with a two-hour special this weekend. “It was like a little Broadway show,” she says of the classic series. “I think that’s why it has held up all these years: Funny is funny. “

NATION-WORLD

-- The Supreme Court is set to decide whether corporate whistle-blowers are protected from being fired if they disclose wrongdoing to company officials rather than to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

-- Meet one U.S. Border Patrol agent who is among those with family connections in Mexico, professional loyalty to the United States, and a history that straddles both sides of the border.

-- Hundreds of thousands of people from Central Asia and western China have settled in Turkey. More and more of them are getting caught up in raids by anti-terrorism police.

-- At 55 years old, Seattle’s Space Needle is showing signs of age. It’ll be getting a “space lift” at a cost of up to $100 million.

BUSINESS

-- Magazine publisher and broadcast company Meredith Corp. says it will acquire Time Inc. in a deal valued at $2.8 billion, with financial backing from the billionaire Koch brothers.

-- These start-up companies have a novel solution to online fraud: disposable credit card numbers.

SPORTS

-- The UCLA football team’s recruiting has already received a small boost by hiring Chip Kelly as coach.

-- The Rams showed they are ready for prime time with an impressive victory over the New Orleans Saints.

OPINION

-- It’s time for the Supreme Court to expand the definition of privacy for the cellphone age.

-- Los Angeles drivers are killing pedestrians. They need to be stopped.

WHAT OUR EDITORS ARE READING

-- Merrill Markoe, original head writer and co-creator of “Late Night With David Letterman,” on why comedy is a woman’s art. (Refinery 29)

-- A look back at the life of Mary Adelman, whose shop repaired the typewriters of David Mamet, Erich Maria Remarque, Nora Ephron, Joseph Heller and many others. (New York Times)

-- “My son was mocked for his ‘stinky’ ethnic lunch. Then we fought back.” (NBC News)

ONLY IN L.A.

At West Hollywood Elementary School, the students had a hand in a new mural. Nothing too unusual about that, except that the artwork was designed by the man who did the cover of the Beatles album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” was backed by an arts club co-founded by Charles Dickens in 1863 and was unveiled by actress Gwyneth Paltrow. Not only that, the project ties in with a plan to replace the nearby Hustler Hollywood store with a new building.

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