Tag: Shantytown Inc.

Mailer Season

Are you reassured?

There are twenty types of 911 calls LAPD no longer intends to answer. Catalytic converter theft is among them.

Fear not, in the cosplay world of political mailers we still enforce civic order in L.A. and our local candidate is a super heroine bringing the hurt to swarthy criminals lifted from the pages of Nancy Drew.

So says Valley Families for Valley Values, a/k/a LIUNA Local 300, and a quarter million dollar donation.

No candidate has been asked to describe what enforcement measure they would deploy to return law and order to the status quo of 2019. Rick Caruso and Karen Bass weren’t during the Mayoral race and the council candidates aren’t now. That’s just icky and annoying and disrespectful of the Journey We Are All On.

Well, I asked. But who answers? Isaac Kim and Douglas Sierra did.  You don’t get $200K money bombs for answering sensible questions. You get the money bomb in exchange for promises to send city business to groups who cut checks.

There’s no bigger business right now in L.A. than Shantytown, Inc.  Here in the slushy, swampy pleasure pits of civic contracting and million dollar hand jobs, a quiet point of contention has emerged in the CD 6 Special Election to which few are paying attention: ‘By right’ development, wonk-speak for allowing large projects that pass building code to go forward without community input.  Meaning homeless housing near you, like it or not.

Marisa Alcaraz is in favor. As is the Carpenters Union, the IBEW, L.A. Federation of Labor, all of which stand to book lots of business in this way. They’re buying mailers in which Marisa poses with a katana.

She’s foxy fighting! Who’s she fighting? The special interests! Who are they? Bad people! Standing in the way of homeless housing progress. Not Good Valley people like you, whose love for the Homeless Industrial Complex is so abundant you wouldn’t dare turn the mailer over to confirm who or what is paying for it.

To her credit Imelda murmured an encouraging observation at a recent debate. ‘By right’ hasn’t been fleshed out. No kidding. There’s an issue with teeth. She might have run on that point, really leaned into it, but she or her people went with cosplay.

There are four versions of the Super Imelda mailer and she has grown progressively sexier in each one. There’s some compensating going on.

Don’t say MILF vs. Librarian. Don’t. That’s despicable.                               

We embrace fantasy as a cope when the answers to grubby real world problems involve close work and commitment to hard decisions and require the courage to be yelled at by obnoxious people with a vested interest in the status quo.

We love shortcuts. We are a city of enablers with too much money and a supine media. Los Angeles is a self-licking ice cream cone.

I’m thinking of a mailer from homeowners to other homeowners.  It would be two words long: Had enough?  The graphic would be, well pretty much any random footage from the street scape, but with a strategically placed guillotine in the background.

If only I could get someone to pay for that. Are you there, Elon?  It’s me, Van Nuys.

Photo Credit: Mel Melcon, LA Times

When The Phone Doesn’t Ring…

A mere nine thousand people voted in the Special Election…as of yesterday at 10:29 pm.  There is low turnout, and then there is lowwww turnout.  Holy mackerel, this is what a walkaway campaign conducted by the voters looks like.

Keep in mind these are mail-in ballots. All you had to do was bubble in one name, stick it in the envelope and leave it by the door for the mailman.   Ease of voting doesn’t get any lazier than this.

Less than 800 people went to the polls.

Approximately 280,000 reside in Council District 6, 118K are registered. 7.67% of that number partook.

To quote George Jones: when your phone doesn’t ring, it’ll be me.

Imelda Padilla spent in excess of $100 a vote. Marisa Alcaraz nearly that much. Marco Santana, whose IG feed was filled with astroturf images of him “campaigning” with his dog, spent $158 per ballot. Oof.

Let us not forget also the shadowy world of last-minute mailers, where campaign finance laws go to die.

Endorsements didn’t matter.  Santana obtained the Times seal of approval, as well as the Stonewall Democratic Club and the League of Conservation Voters. Nithya Raman, progressive queen bee, endorsed. Jane Fonda herself recorded a personal message. In short, people who had nothing to do with District 6.

Doug Sierra was endorsed by the Daily News. He appeared on local TV news twice.  I thought he might prove a sleeper candidate, but 245 votes is 245 votes.

Rose Grigoryan was the sleeper.  The Armenian bloc showed up for her. She may yet edge Alcaraz for the run off.  The lower the turnout, the more tribal politics are forefronted.

Another thing that didn’t matter: panderfest forums (non-debate “debates”) hosted by advocacy organizations where everyone agrees to agree the Overton window should remain right where progressives are pointing.

So what’s going on here?  I’ll translate: the peasantry of the San Fernando Valley have an annoying habit of preferring order over chaos. Of wanting dedicated sales taxes to maintain roadways used for that purpose. Of not wanting to inhale meth pipe fumes on the Red Line on the commute to work. They tire of watching thieves walk out of stores with armloads of merchandise and no consequences. They tire of fixable problems being declared off-limits for discussion by rich assholes on the Westside.  They have little patience for alternatives to incarceration. Their portion of the urban pie may be modest and come with rough edges, but they invest between 120-160 hours per week, per household, to maintain the finger hold they have in the city. They would prefer not seeing the equity they built at the mercy of the Pig Trough Professionals downtown. They are compassionate people, not idiots, this Silent Tribe.

Three years on San Fernando Road, and counting…

Aspiring politicians who do not speak to these needs, requirements of civilization if you will -the basics- are going to be ignored.  One righteously aggrieved homeowner with a megaphone could have changed this election. Seven people were fighting over the progressive lane and the rest of the playing field was wide open. Homer Simpson could have bagged 2000 votes.

Which begs the question, why didn’t I run?  That’s what I’m asking myself today.

Seeking Balance with Isaac Kim

The special election to replace La Nury is in full swing and UpintheValley has reached out to all the campaigns. First to respond is Issac Kim, small business owner, Columbia University graduate, political first-timer, and as it turns out, a neighbor.  He joined me at MacLeod for some cheerful talk about purpose-driven politics. Isaac is relentlessly cheerful. We got substantive and he was open about the evolution of his thinking and the elusiveness of certainty in policy questions.

What has surprised you the most so far?
The importance of fundraising. How many people have you heard say “if I were on the council I would do this and I would do that,” but no one actually steps up. No one does it. Now that I am running I understand why. I thought with the short four month window it wouldn’t be as important. But I’ve been blessed to have a lot of volunteers of successful campaigns including from Kenneth Mejias campaign for instance. They came up with the logo of the phoenix encapsulating the rebirth of our district, a fresh start. I don’t want to be for just Asian people.

I want to gain the trust of our community by doing the small things right.

That’s one that rarely gets attended to because the districts are so big.
I would love to expand the number of council seats. To be honest its very hard for one person to help 200-300,000 people, let alone fight corruption.
If you could give us your three policy objectives.
My three tiered platform is to redefine the role of council member. To be less political, more of a good and helpful neighbor. The second would be to regain the trust of the community. That’s as simple as having a virtual town hall once a week. Where people don’t want to use the Windows 95 service portal, or their emails aren’t getting a response, they can log in on Thursday evening and speak directly to me about their issues and I will be honest with them.
To be clear, a weekly availability to the constituents online?
Yes. The third thing would be to restore the health and well being of the district, that everything from public transportation to climate. If you look around the district, the majority of bus stops don’t have shade. People who take the bus are more vulnerable, frequently older. We can put some shades up at bus stops for them. That’s a low bar. We also should subsidize Wi/FI accessibility for low income people.
Do you support ending the eviction moratorium?
A tough one. I did support the one that just passed, in terms of extending it a bit further. But it can’t go on forever. This is the last warning, the last buffer. Its a band aid solution for a lot of people who might have been in trouble.
Does someone have the right to get off the bus from Ohio, pitch a tent on the sidewalk, declare residency, start collecting county benefits?
Another tough one. I would have to say yes, but only because I don’t think homelessness is a crime. There may be one off cases, but no one really want to be on the streets. Or they are just different. For the vast, vast majority, they don’t want to be there. Even if they say differently in the moment. Or they tried getting services before and the system let them down. Those might be the people saying they are refusing help at this exact moment. In general no one wants to be on the streets.
We built Tiny Home Villages to be compliant with the Boise decision. But they are not being utilized. Can we compel any homeless camper within half a mile radius to accept shelter? 
Yes. I would do everything we can to compel them short of forcing them.
If carrots aren’t working, what is the stick?
I just don’t think we can force someone into something they just don’t want. On the other other hand there are situations, troublemakers, people doing something totally illegal or causing a lot of trouble . I don’t think you’re going to get them into a tiny home. The more realistic situation is they are taken to a program, a clinic, some mental health facility.


Do you support care courts? The parallel legal system for mental health?
I would have to look into the specifics of that.
Theres a local measure to ban sleeping or drug consumption on the Metro system. 
I definitely support no drugs or sleeping. I believe the police budget just for the Metro is more than the Metro’s revenue so if they are not enforcing that, if that still an issue, we need to revise that whole budget because its not working.
On the issue of crime. Shoplifting up to $950 being de facto legal…
Wow. I didn’t know that. I’ll be honest that is something I never thought of.
They go into stores and fill their carts and security lets them walk out. You can’t call the police, they no longer enforce misdemeanors.  Would you lower the felony trigger to say, $100?
Yes. Definitely. You can’t stay in business and take a thousand dollar loss every day. We need to set a precedent. People can’t always think that is always okay. That they will always get away with that. It’s a fine balance. We can’t have public safety without the public’s trust. Whether its the police, or whoever it is. we all have to act with reasonability. And if something is unreasonable, like stealing at that level we need to confront that. That will also increase the public’s trust.
What is your response to people who would say you are supporting the police, the carceral state. It’s crypto-racist…
I have friends who are cops. They are good people. Do we have shitty examples of bad policing? Definitely. The phrase “de-funding the police” is terrible marketing. I hate even saying the words. I’m not about either expanding or retracting the budget. Like any business, the budget needs a review. A real business will do that to find efficiencies.
People like Antoinette Scully want to de-fund.

If you really think you are going to defund the police in the next five years, you’re crazy.

If that’s the headline, is that going to hurt you?
Maybe. But it’s the truth. For people who are reasonable and logical are like: “that’s not happening, that’s not realistic.”
Unchallenged rhetoric can have a discretionary effect on policing even if the laws remain the same. Police can just stop enforcing things.
Yes, but I think a lot people who were saying defund the police have changed their rhetoric. For example Eunisses Hernandez, who used to be an abolitionist. She’s changed to lets re-invest. Lets reimagine.
Let’s pretend there is a guy standing in the street with his shopping cart, no shirt, no shoes, speaking in tongues, holding a crowbar, blocking traffic. Do you think it’s viable to send a psychological team, rather than the police? Unarmed officials without handcuffs or police powers?
A crowbar could be a weapon, so no. If there is nothing in his hand, then yes. This is one of those things that is discretionary. I’m not saying in all situations don’t send guns.


Looking at the candidates, I see six people sharing the progressive lane, broadly defined. The person who claims the angry homeowner lane is going to take a big chunk of the vote by default. The public is tired of being scorned for expressing normal impulses about disorder. 
I understand that. That’s a fair feeling. I think a lot of people do.
I see an opportunity for someone who wants to go down that road. But I don’t want to influence you. (laughter)
I think a lot of my stances are semi-geared towards that, but at the same time not. What has surprised me as well is having to re-examine and come to understand what my views really are.
Is there anything you’ve changed your mind on since getting in the race?
This might bite me in the butt but I put my foot down on (Ordinance) 41.18. The tag line being homeless people can’t be within 500 feet of the school. Of course its much more overarching than that, but thats what sounds really bad, if you explain it that way.
Are you in favor or opposed?
As written now, it’s not allowed. I would actually repeal and replace 41.18, and this is the biggest surprise to myself as well.

I’ve been yelled at by both sides, including my parents, but to be honest, at the end of the day I don’t believe Jesus would kick homeless people off the streets because they are 500 feet from a school.

At the end of the day the data doesn’t support that there is necessarily so much violence and terrible things happening to children due to proximity of encampments. I’ll be honest, it’s the hardest choice I’ve had to make.
Los Angeles has had a very fossilized politics for decades. Suddenly this year a DSA breakthrough in the party machine: Hernandez, Hugo Soto-Martinez, and Kenneth Mejia. My question is: are we going Venezuela?
No. I would not say so.
What is the reassurance to the middle of the road voter who is wondering what the hell is going on? Why doesn’t it matter that DSA people are winning?
Why doesn’t it matter? For starters I don’t consider myself DSA at all. I’m a small business owner. Walking into some of these union endorsements, I’m like, “well I’m not getting this one. I’m walking into hostile territory but I’m here.” The left and the right, it’s just emotional.  You say one thing that might make sense and they hate you for being you. I thought I was a moderate Democrat,  but when I reflect on it issue by issue it turns out I’m positioned as progressive, and to be fair, that sort of comes as as surprise to me. It’s a process of self-discovery. We need to chill the f— out. Build relationships. Talk to people who don’t agree with you.  You might surprise yourself. That’s the attitude we all need to move toward, especially now.

No One is Coming

The unintentional cruelty of civility

Correction. These two are coming. The Hack and the Billionaire. The people who have always been here, scratching one another’s back.

With everything that’s befallen Los Angeles in the past two years, local media allotted exactly one hour for a single mayoral debate and it was not entirely edifying.

Rick Caruso: We need to get people inside.
Karen Bass: Get them in.
Caruso: We need an Ethics czar at City Hall.
Bass: He stole my plan.
Caruso: The City is in crisis.
Bass: I agree. Crisis.
Caruso: Leadership starts with setting the tone.
Bass: We need bold and decisive leadership.
Caruso: The LAPD staffing level should be raised to 11,000.
Bass: It should remain at 9,700

Me: If we’re not arresting people for looting, what difference does it make? If there is no bail for felonious assault, what have we gained?

Caruso: I’ll build 30,000 tiny home pods in the first year.
Bass: I believe we need to work together to get people housed.

Me: We have already imposed Tiny Home compounds in neighborhoods and they are at 30% capacity. Encampments bloom unabated and un-policed on the next block.

At this point, the debate panelists might ask: if there is no enforcement mechanism, no restraining principle, of what tangible use are the billions we have allocated to Shantytown, Inc.?  Tis not the nature of L.A. media to ask the obvious, only to curate the boundaries of the narrative, which do not include discomforting those feeding at the giant tit of service provision.

Do I really need to say this? Safety is the first social justice. Los Angeles is coasting on the civilizational assumptions of 2019, and it’s beginning to dawn on us the guardrails we took for granted are no longer in place. A man fires up a meth pipe on the Red Line then assaults a woman and people record it on their phones but no one intervenes.  We are backstopped by police, in theory, but we know better.

You can count on one hand the people in this city with the resources, name recognition and institutional standing to break with the Homeless Industrial Complex and tie policy to some kind of enforcement, any kind of stick to offset the innumerable carrots on offer. Rick Caruso, developer of The Grove, is one of them.

Does he make even a gesture in that direction? He does not.

In a truly surreal moment he criticizes Ron DeSantis for sending 50 migrants to Martha’s Vineyard. Like it was a bad thing. Like this was his ticket to the Latino vote. Does he actually believe this sort of pandering works on people who commute to work on the Red Line, or is he obeying memos from Aisle 518 Strategies, the progressive firm he hired to advise his campaign?

For two years DeSantis stood on principle against vaccine mandates, school closures and Covid lockdowns and was reviled for it. Murderer, they called him. DeathSantis. To say events have vindicated him would be an understatement. He did right by the people of Florida and pulled the politics of the state in his direction.  He’s the most effective politician in America, and beloved of Republican voters, who are 26% of the electorate in L.A.  Which is to say, half the Caruso coalition in any victory scenario.

So Caruso’s plan, if we can call it that, is to denounce the hero of the one group without whom he has no chance of winning. Pro tip: don’t do that.

Want to reach Latinos, Rick?  I mean, really? Do something for Melanie Ramos’ grieving family. Do something for the next 100 unsuspecting young people who are going to do a fentanyl laced bump in the bathroom cause its Saturday night or pop a tainted Percocet handed to them from a classmate who got it from the open air drug market down the street because L.A. is lawless now.  Stop pandering to the people who have an interest in keeping it that way and don’t have daughters in public school.

No one is coming.

Melanie Ramos, 15, DOA at Bernstein High

Carusovilles and Keith

“I will build 30,000 temporary housing units in the first year. If anyone knows how to build I know how to build. If I don’t get it done vote me out.  I know I can get that done. I’ve talked to the manufacturer.”

So said mayoral candidate Rick Caruso last week, walking through Skid Row for the benefit of local TV news. If you don’t know, Caruso is on the right, displaying the Hand Gesture of Progress.

“The minute we have good, warm, clean bed and food, then people need to move off the streets. No more encampments. You have to enforce the law. We may offer a bed once, we may offer a bed twice. But the third time we are going to have to say I’m sorry but you’ve broken the law.”

I agree with him but this is wishful thinking as policy.

After the third refusal to self-house, then what? Jail? Imagine the headlines. Billionaire Puts Paupers Behind Bars. It’s a moot point. In 2020 Los Angeles County voted to close the Twin Towers facility to felons.

Fines? They’ll never pay. Penalties will accrue. Years hence, upon a hypothetical sobriety, the chains of Dickensian debt will prevent them from re-integrating and we can’t have that.

The pillory?  If this were colonial Virginia we could parade them in Shrews Fiddles through downtown with signs saying Sloth. If only!

“Sorry, but you have broken the law and we have no place to put you” is not exactly a deterrence.

To distill to a sentence our cognitive dissonance around the army of dispossessed who squat and hunker among us, if would be difficult to improve upon a good, warm, clean bed and food.  A solution few have asked for, and when offered, fewer takers.

In a contest between civic good intentions and the unrestrained id, human nature wins in a blowout.

Man is first a social animal. Hunter gatherers roam the urban landscape, forming street families and alliances. From the detritus of the city all can be foraged:  plywood and tarps and cast off tents, couches, old rugs and bikes. Electricity can be purloined from any light pole. Run a cable across the sidewalk, fire up the flat screen and the hibachi and smoke what needs to be smoked with the satisfaction hunter-gatherers have enjoyed at sundown since we first left the caves.

There is a raison d’être to be found in this, even pride, irritating though that might be for the rest of us.

Add EBT, free phones, free health care, pro bono legal representation and the crucial license to steal™ and most of Maslow’s Needs are well met. The weather is glorious.

Sitting in a clean, Boise decision-approved Tiny Home, with a bookshelf and a lock and showers and rules about drugs and smoking? This appeals to taxpayers.  This is what we would do if we were in their shoes, between filling out job applications, and learning to code.

If you were hoping Caruso would do for the armies of dereliction in L.A. what Elon Musk is poised to do for free speech by purchasing Twitter, you may be disappointed.  He accepts the operative premise of Shantytown, Inc., the massively funded bureaucracy of service providers:  we can build our way out of this.

We can’t. This is the fatal flaw of his candidacy: I’m a developer. I will deliver more units per year. 

Too bad, because he’s wealthy enough not to need the local machine to fund his campaign. He doesn’t owe anybody.

For those who think Housing First policy is working, I would remind readers we are running a real-time experiment in the efficacy of Tiny Home villages in Venice and Van Nuys and North Hollywood, and not only are they utilized at about one-third capacity they continue to be surrounded by encampments, thriving uncontested.

The stars come out for Housing Now! 1989

Take a good look at this picture. Lakers coach Pat Riley. Jon Voight. Bea Arthur. Edith Bunker. Casey Kassem.  The great and good coming together to address the terrible blight of Skid Row. They mean well. They’ve opened their checkbooks. In 1989 camping on the sidewalk in Los Angeles was confined to fifty square blocks downtown. To deal with this, the City had a line item in the budget totaling…millions.

For 2022, the City will spend $1 Billion on Homeless, Inc. The County spent half a billion, the State $7.2 billion, 40% of which came here. I have no idea what the Federal government sends us, but it ain’t zero.  Like a well watered garden, the army of addicts and freeloaders have grown ten-fold, from San Pedro to Granada Hills.

Let us not despair, there remains a fourth alternative…smiling at us from the branches like the Cheshire Cat, villainous and coy.

Stop subsidizing it. All of it. Lean into human nature.

Wait, what? Are you serious? Yes. But, but…we can’t! It’s monstrous! Think of the case workers! The administrators and lobbyists! How will they eat? How will those checks make it home to Pasadena?

While we’re at it, re-criminalize theft. I know of no civilization which has survived the abolition of a principle as basic as this.

Here’s Keith from Pennsylvania to explain it.

*btw, this video is eleven years old and this guy was still here as of 2020.

People By the Freeway Cook With Gas

Thin orange line behind Orion Street

Biking home from the gym yesterday, great plumes of black smoke near the 405 announced another homeless fire, or the launch of encampment fire season, as we now know it in the Valley.

Technically this isn’t true, the season got off to a running start on Friday with a one acre burn in the Sepulveda Basin that was doused by helicopter.

But the Basin is always burning. At any hour of the day, butane is igniting. Meth pipes are roasting like s’mores. Cigarettes and blunts are sucked down to the nubby entrails and tossed to the winds. Ramen noodles boil over campstoves.  Disputes and debts are settled flammably.  It’s only a question of how much brush gets involved.

In this case the unhoused have squeezed into the narrow no mans land between the sound abatement wall of the 405 and the back fences of the people who live on Orion Street.   They don’t get away with that in Midvale Estates, but in the sweaty flatlands of working class Latino North Hills with its own portion of unpermitted backyard structures people are less inclined to go to the authorities.

When the only thing separating the feral from the domesticated is a kindling line of sun-scorched lacquered wood the tragedy of the commons is waiting. The flames licked their way across the fictional divide of public and private space to what LAFD delicately referred to in the incident report as “outbuildings”, destroying several before being extinguished. All credit to the Fire Dept. for saving the houses proper.

Not half a mile from here sits the former Panorama Motel, recently purchased by the City for conversion to interim housing for people sleeping within 500 feet of a freeway.  It is one of ten motel purchases under Project Homekey.  Cost: $105 million. Total served: 536. At $195,895 per head, it is more expensive than the $130K/unit Tiny Home Villages, but a bargain next to the perpetually-in-the-near-future $700K homeless condos downtown.

My question is this: in the fall, after the Panorama Motel is retrofitted transitional housing, will there be more people living by the 405, or less? Will I no longer see people clustered on the off-ramp?  If the number remains unchanged or worse, wouldn’t that be a refutation of the “housing first” policy?  This will be our acid test.

Maybe it will work. I hope it does.

Four years after passing Props. H and HHH, the homeless population has increased by a third.  The fires however, are daily. That’s a new wrinkle.

For dollar value may I suggest the very un-flammable quonset hut? It was good enough for Gomer Pyle…

At the Crossroads

Things we’ve been told are true and cannot be questioned:
The solution to drug addiction and mental illness is free housing.Homeless housing cannot be a Quonset hut. It must cost $500K per unit.
Looting is speech.
Not putting handcuffs on black people will lead to better outcomes for the black community.
State mandated inactivity will protect you from the Wuhan virus.
Every infectious disease from Lyme to Ebola is named for its geographic origin, but Wuhan must be called Covid, because racism.
Also, disagreeing with the CCP is racist.
Disagreeing with the diktats of corporations wishing to do business with the CCP…extra racist.
You can catch the Wuhan virus walking by yourself outdoors in the sunshine without a mask.
You can catch it from door knobs. Everything must be de-sanitized multiple times a day.
Everyone must stand six feet apart, masked and mute. No large public gatherings.
Unless it’s a BLM rally. Or looting. Then the science doesn’t apply.
The first cases emerged from inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology, but a lab leak hypothesis is a conspiracy theory.
Only crazy Trump people would say such a thing. De-platform them all.
Dr. Fauci would never fund gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab.
Okay, so he did. It would have been a “dereliction of duty” to have not done so.
But Ivermectin is unsafe as a prophylaxis against Wuhan.
If you say otherwise in Senate testimony YouTube will de-platform you. Because Merck.
The limits of free speech should be proscribed by organizations and unelected bodies outside U.S soil.  Also, corporations.
Merck administered 4 billion doses of Ivermectin globally while under patent. Now in the public domain, it is ‘unsafe’.
Taiwan is not a nation but a rogue province of China.
Just ask John Cena.

A little something YouTube will not be taking down.
They’re the experts on truth. Not you.

This diminution of citizenship has crept up on us quickly, if imperceptibly. Our willingness to defer to authority for the benefit of all has been weaponized by forces that recognize no limiting principle. Ask yourself: why are you being told to apologize all the time now? Why are the parameters of acceptable speech disqualifying what was the majority opinion day before yesterday? Who is doing this? Why have we ceded that authority? The slippery slope pundits referenced when American politics was vanilla and operated within recognizable 20 yard lines? Yeah, that’s gone now. We’re at the bottom of the ice crevice, with a bump on our head, looking up at a sliver of sky, but we can’t find purchase.  The only way out is through.

What does “through” mean, in this post-Constitutional moment? I’m not sure. The picture at the top of the page I took in Mendocino county, walking near the Eel River on a road with less than hundred people in an area as large as the San Fernando Valley. This Little Free Library stood at a crossroads between the river and a field, an artifact of Jeffersonian America.  I thought of all the Little Free Libraries around Los Angeles, and the universal desire to share knowledge with strangers.  Therein perhaps is a path forward. To be anti-fragile as a nation begins with personal anti-fragility.  Thinking for oneself, the way the Founders intended. De-coupling one’s understanding of Truth from one’s curated feed. Of no longer being a prisoner to an algorithm.  Returning to paper, if you will.

Shantytown, Inc.

There is nothing quite so permanent as a temporary solution, to quote a friend of mine.

Ad hoc structures sprout like fungi across the cityscape, cobbled together by the People of the Favela from found materials. Kiewit/Shea and the Army Corps of Engineers have nothing on the 77th MethHead Mobile Assembly Brigade.  They get it done overnight.

These domiciles cost the public nothing except sanitation, aesthetics, fire safety, petty crime, our collective dignity and quality of life, i.e., property values.

So what would we pay to rid ourselves of eyesores?

Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News

How would you feel about $8,600? That’s the price of a two-person Pallet house in a Tiny Home Village. Considering the alternative: $700,000 “transitional housing” apartments with granite countertops and a ten-year horizon line, this a bargain.  Sounds good to me.

Fonda Rosing/Hope of the Valley

On Monday the first Tiny House hamlet in L.A. opened on Chandler Blvd in NoHo.  Forty 8×8 cabins, each with its own A/C unit and WiFi. Communal showers and support services for 75 people.  A second Village is due to open this spring, adjacent to the 170 freeway near Valley Plaza.

There are numerous publically-owned slivers of ground like this, many tucked in enticingly out of the way locations across the county.  The Pallet houses can be trucked in and carted away as needed, allowing for flexibility and, crucially, impermanence. Call it Ad Hoc Plus.

But…
You knew this was coming, right?
You’re living in Mayor Garbageciti’s City.
Where the public trough has no bottom.
Where Shantyown, Inc. is King.

The true price of these Pallet houses, to the taxpayer: $130,000.

Scratching your head on this one?  Let the Times summarize for us:

A breakdown provided by the Los Angeles Bureau of Engineering shows that the contract provides $1.5 million just to prepare the site.

It also includes $122,000 for underground utilities, $253,000 for concrete pads (one for each shelter), $312,000 for an administrative office and staff restroom, $1.1 million for mechanical, electrical and fire alarms and $280,000 for permits and fees.

Additionally, the city has budgeted $651,000 to connect to the street sewer line and $546,000 in design, project management and inspection costs.

The key phrase is concrete pad. The houses were designed to be dropped off on pallets, or any manner of wooden support, and relocated when circumstances desired, much like a job site Porta-Potty. Impermanence is their nature.   Anchoring it to concrete is making a temporary solution an ever-lasting one.

I have the calculator out, running the numbers, and coming up with $73,446 per unit.  Into whose pocket is the other $56,554 going?  The Times is incurious on this point.

The City of Riverside erected an identical village in December, same manufacturer, for $21,ooo a house.  In Washington and Oregon, they’re getting them up for $12,000.

The journey from $12K to $130K is the distance between necessity and avarice, between a city that works and one that doesn’t.