Today’s Headlines

  • Must Read for L.A. Voters: Candidates Go on Record About Subways/Bikes/Sidewalks/Big Digs/Parking/Buses (LAT)
  • Don’t Forget to Check Out Our Interview with the Mayoral Candidates (StreetsTube)
  • I-10 Express Lanes Are Open (LAT, The Source, Curbed, Fox, Daily Bruin)
  • Digital Billboard Company Issues Threat to L.A. (LAT)
  • 405 Widening Won’t Finish Until 2014. Project Still Totally Worth It! (The Source)
  • Central Valley Landowners Drop Suit Against High Speed Rail (Fresno Bee)
  • CHP Plans Crackdown on Group Bike Rides in Santa Monica Mountains (Biking in L.A.)
  • NBC Universal Project Plans Big Payment to Burbank for Traffic Impacts (Leader via Curbed)
  • Gov. Brown Out of Touch on Affordable Housing (Rooflines)
  • Success for CICLE’s “Wild West Chatworth Ride” (Patch)
  • Redondo Beach Makes Progressive Street Plans (Easy Reader)
  • More Responses to L.A. Observed’s Stupid Anti-Bike Screed (Examined Spoke, Boy on a Bike)

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

  • Anonymous

    Brown is out of touch on affordable housing if he thinks that living in the Central Valley and paying an arm and a leg to commute via HSR is a realistic option, but the person who wrote that Rooflines article is even worse. Living in Merced and working in Mountain View may be improbable, but it’s at least plausible.

    Inclusionary zoning and mandating that some housing units be rent-controlled, on the other hand, doesn’t do anything to ensure that the region as a whole is more affordable. It creates two separate markets – one for low-income people that is controlled by the government, in which the number of units supplied, and therefore the number of low-income people that will be allowed to live in the region, is determined by the government. That helps the low-income people who happen to live in the region already, but is incredibly unfair to low-income people who might want to move to the region.

    The second market, for everyone who doesn’t qualify as low-income, gets distorted by the first market. Every unit that is put in the first market by the government is one unit that is not available for the second market. That drives up housing prices for everyone else, including other lower and middle income people. This is not hard to understand. If I decree that we are going to sell apples to low-income people at low cost, everyone who doesn’t qualify as low-income is going to pay more for apples.

    It’s interesting to think about things like the Wyvernwood protest in this context. If current residents succeed in stopping the development, that might be good for them, but it’s bad for other low and middle income residents of Boyle Heights, because it puts more development pressure on the rest of the neighborhood. It’s also bad for low and middle income people who don’t live in Boyle Heights but might want to move there. You can’t legislate away the desire of people to live in a certain area. A win for those few residents is a loss for Los Angeles as a whole.