LA did it! Solved the California Housing Crisis!!

[Daniel Y.]

How do we build more affordable housing in California? I mean we put in ten thousand layers of policies and bureaucracy for "safety reasons" and to "create jobs," but now there's no cost effective way to create/build housing for everyone. Whatever shall the California government do? *insert sad face gif*

WAIT! I KNOW!! BY THE POWER VESTED TO THE GOVERNMENT BY THE GOVERNMENT...I, the government, enact eminent domain.

Los Angeles city officials are considering a plan to force landlords

to sell their buildings in an effort to keep rents low in key
neighborhoods.

Councilman Gil Cedillo last week said he was asking the

Board of Public Works to consider using its eminent domain power to take
over a 124-unit Chinatown apartment building from a landlord who wants
to convert the building into market-rate.

"We will use all of the resources of the city, both legal and fiscal,

to protect these tenants," Cedillo told the Los Angeles Times. "The
city is in crisis … with respect to housing and affordability."

The landlord, Thomas Botz, said that the owners would never have

agreed to make the units affordable had they known the city would do an
about-face.

"If the city goes and expropriates buildings from private developers

like us — who have made their 30-year deal and kept their end of the
deal — just to have the building taken away at the end, no private
developer would build another unit of housing in cooperation with the
city of L.A. ever again," Botz told the newspaper.

The property, dubbed Hillside Villa, was built in 1986 with $5.45

million in loans from the city, in exchange for a commitment from the
landlord to keep the units affordable for 30 years. Since that agreement
lapsed in 2018, Botz is legally permitted to raise the rents to market
rates.

But Cedillo wants the city to intervene to keep 59 units of

affordable housing inside the building after attempts to reach a deal
with Botz’s company, NHP LLC, failed. Residents were informed that the
rents would go by an average of 50 percent starting in September. Rent
in one three-bedroom unit is set to jump from $889 to $2,500.

It's like the state of California is having a pissing contest with itself to see who is worse. Two weeks ago NorCal threw down with this:

"The Oakland City Council on Tuesday approved an ordinance that would prohibit landlords from asking about a potential tenant's criminal history or rejecting them out of hand for having a record"

This week, SoCal said, "Hold my kombucha..." and replied with the above.

[Brian Garlington]

Just when you think it can't get any more creative,,,,