Mother Teresa doesn’t charge you by the hour
I read Ms. Ryder’s column stating that with rent control, the next
step is pricing control on homes in Glendale. This was followed by
Mr. Gustavson’s article the next day asking for the control of home
prices in Glendale.
Is this a surprise to homeowners of the city? This is the natural
progression of their Iron Curtain/welfare state beliefs. Where was
Ms. Ryder when interest rates were 17% to 18% and homeowners had to
take the risks? Where is she now, when insurance rates on homes and
apartments are going up by 30% to 40%?
I remember Mr. Carlson standing in front of the Homeowners Assn.,
claiming rent control will help them. Now it is apparent that the
next push to their movement is price control of the value of said
homeowners’ property.
It really comes down to your basic thoughts on welfare, and how
far you believe you should go in supporting the people in society.
You pay income taxes, property taxes, sales tax, and gas taxes, and
now they want to further charge you to subsidize their living
expenses and damage the price of your home?
Enough is enough. I am a big believer in personal responsibility.
I do believe it is a privilege to live in this community, not a right
(according to Ms. Ryder), otherwise, the people who live in Pacoima
and Tujunga should just come in and take her apartment, because
according to her thinking, they have the same rights to it as she
does.
This is not Omaha. This is not Riverside. You choose to live in
Glendale, so realize with that choice comes a price premium. Let me
know if this is a right, as I would like to assert my “right” to a
beach house in Malibu. It’s like going into the Mercedes dealership
and demanding to pay Ford prices. You enjoy living in the middle of
Los Angeles with numerous amenities, yet you want to pay Riverside
prices.
I had to laugh when watching the recent City Council meeting, and
Councilman Gomez asked Mr. Carlson about a rent board in his
proposal. He said they would not have one, yet in every other
rent-controlled city, they do. Even Mr. Gomez and the rest of the
City Council looked perplexed. Has Mr. Carlson magically created a
no-cost ordinance? No! What he has created is a way for his cohorts
to make the citizens -- all citizens in Glendale -- pay for his plan,
hoping you don’t read too far into it.
Ms. Gutierrez talks about being conned. Well, there it is. It
costs Santa Monica $4 million plus a year (Santa Monica has 20,000
units; in Glendale it would be 40,000) to run rent control, other
cities far more than that. What does this mean for citizens of
Glendale? Higher taxes and less services, because your existing tax
dollars are going to protect an inherently broken proposal. All
residents will pay this liberal tax, taking away from all other civic
services such as police, fire department, schools, bus lines, etc.
Rent-control advocates believe rent control will create more
housing for the poor. This is false. In a case study of Santa Monica,
where rent control was enacted in 1980, there were 38,000 rental
units. By 1990 (10 years later) there were 28,000, and now there are
approximately 20,000. Many owners converted them to condominiums, or
the rent payments could not meet annual costs, so the owners moved
into their own properties (Tierra Properties, 1999).
In a study conducted by the Real Estate Land Use Institute at Cal
State University-Chico, it was found from the time rent control was
implemented in Santa Monica to 10 years later, apartment units fell
26%, while in non-rent-controlled Los Angeles it grew 10% over that
same time period. Recently the city of Burbank completed a study of
rent control and concluded it does not achieve the goal of providing
more housing for the poor, and will in fact have the opposite effect.
Someone compared Mr. Carlson to Mother Teresa, Abraham Lincoln
and Martin Luther King. That is blasphemous. Mother Teresa never
charged you by the hour to hear your problems. Mother Teresa didn’t
have a financial interest like Mr. Carlson does.
FRED FAN
Glendale