Things to read from the past week:
L.A. County won’t expand program to shelter homeless people in hotels "As of late last month, the county was renting 12 hotels with 1,350 rooms through a program known as Project Roomkey, according to a county report on the program released this week. It plans to keep 11 of those 12 sites open through September, at the latest....The majority of these sites were slated to close by March, but a change in how the federal government reimburses the costs associated with the hotels meant the county could keep them open longer. Under the Trump administration, the federal government reimbursed 75% of the costs; the Biden administration has raised that to 100% through September....The change, though, still left municipalities looking for cash to front the cost of using the hotels while waiting to get reimbursed by the federal government." (LA Times)
Mask dispensers now available on Metro buses and trains "To make it easier for riders who may have forgotten or misplaced their masks, Metro will be installing more than 2,000 mask dispensers on board our trains and buses, Metro Micro vehicles and at Metro Rail stations. Five hundred dispensers are being installed this week and another 500 in the week to come." (The Source)
Illustrated view of the Promenade 2035 development, which is owned by Unibail-Rodamco-WestfieldIan Espinoza Associates
Mall Operator URW Plans to Sell All US Properties "Local Westfield properties are Westfield Century City, Westfield Culver City, Fashion Square in Sherman Oaks, Santa Anita in Arcadia, Topanga & The Village in Canoga Park and Valencia Town Center." (LA Business Journal)
Tour Santa Monica’s once-vibrant Black neighborhoods, nearly erased by racism and ‘progress’ "The street named Belmar Place doesn’t even exist anymore — it ran north and south between Pico Boulevard and Main Street and is now covered by Santa Monica’s south Civic Center area — and many of the buildings where African Americans lived and worked are gone, such as the Black-owned business La Bonita. A lodge and bathhouse, La Bonita provided rooms, a restaurant, a tennis court, “hot and cold” showers, and even “a complete line of bathing suits and accessories” to its clientele between 1914 and the early 1930s, Jefferson said, when such accommodations were not readily available to Black travelers." (LA Times)
How Biden is betting on Buttigieg to drive a new era of racial equity "A central plank in President Joe Biden's agenda of improving racial equity requires dismantling or reimagining parts of America's transportation system, which has long stacked the odds against people who most rely on it to climb up the economic ladder....Reversing the most harmful of those decades worth of decisions about how America's transportation system is designed falls to Buttigieg, Biden and a team determined to power a multi-trillion dollar infrastructure plan through Congress, transform the policies that underpin America's arterials of commerce and blunt the worst effects of climate change. Those lofty goals require turning buzzwords and pledges into real change that tackles systemic, ingrained ways of doing business." (Politico)
Photos: An uncomfortable look at homelessness during the pandemic "The 2020 Greater Los Angeles Homeless Count indicated that more than 66,000 people in Los Angeles County were experiencing homelessness. Some are living on the streets of L.A., hunkered down in dilapidated campers, tents, or makeshift hovels of cardboard, wooden pallets and plastic tarps." (LA Times)
Exterior view of an ADU design by LA Más.LA Más
Well-designed rentals L.A. can afford. That’s the mission of the Backyard Homes Project "The premise of the Backyard Homes Project is to create a one-stop shop: Homeowners like Guevara and her husband promise to rent their ADU to a Section 8 voucher holder for a minimum of five years. In exchange, the homeowners receive affordable design and construction, free project management and favorable financing." (LA Times)
'You Never Need to Walk Into a Showroom': Electric Vehicles Are Forcing Car Companies to Rethink Retail California's move toward electric vehicles is eliminating the need for massive car dealerships - and opening up opportunities for redevelopment in certain corners of Los Angeles (dot LA)
Studies underway to find best route for railroad tunnel as San Diego County bluffs crumble "The new route would have a number of advantages in addition to avoiding the crumbling coast....Trains could go faster because there are no crossings or other obstacles. The route would be shorter and straighter, which also would reduce travel time....And a second set of tracks will be built, which will increase the railroad’s capacity and allow trains to pass each other in that area." (LA Times)
Regional Inter-County Jockeying for COVID Transit Stimulus Monies "The need is clearly great in more highly-urbanized more transit-rich areas. L.A. County needs get somewhat short shrift in a six-county SCAG region that ends up skewing more suburban. Unfortunately Metro hasn’t helped its case; the agency has neglected some of its transit operation responsibilities during the pandemic. Metro’s justification that funds are needed 'to maintain critical transit services' ring a bit hollow in light of how the agency has cut service and delayed restoring service back to pre-pandemic levels, despite close to $2 billion in stimulus funding designed to bolster transit operations (and more very likely on the way)." (Streetsblog LA)
Aerial view of Los Angeles Union StationHunter Kerhart Architectural Photography
Oscars Eyeing Union Station In Los Angeles As Venue For 93rd Academy Awards Each year, the Academy Awards bring prolonged street closures and disruptions to bus and subway service in and around Hollywood/Highland Station. Even with ridership halved during the COVID-19 pandemic - and on a Sunday to boot - what would impacts be from a ceremony at one of the central transit hubs for all of Southern California? (Deadline)
California will recover from the pandemic faster than the U.S., forecast says "California, buoyed by high-earning technology and professional sectors that shifted to at-home work during the pandemic, will recover somewhat faster than the U.S., even though a full rebound in the tourist-dependent leisure and hospitality businesses will lag." (LA Times)
Renting Is Terrible. Owning Is Worse "In some U.S. cities, middle-class households are paying $30,000 in annual rent and have nothing to show for it but the prospect of paying $31,000 next year and $32,000 the year after that. This is why people buy suburban homes even when they’d prefer to stay in the city. Spending so much on a rental feels wasteful—irresponsible, even—when you could pay a similar price on a mortgage, at a constant level for the next 30 years, while also building substantial wealth. America’s challenge is to create comparable opportunities in cities, and to make them accessible to people who can’t save $100,000 or more for a down payment....A public-ownership rental option might solve this problem, at least in part. The foundation of the program would be quite simple: public ownership of housing, acquired or built with government loans—though run by local for-profit or nonprofit property managers—and rented at market prices. No saving for a down payment (or being given one by family) and no qualifying for a mortgage. The only requirements for participation in the public-ownership option would be (1) move in, and (2) pay rent." (The Atlantic)
What could come next for Bruce’s Beach? Manhattan Beach task force presents recommendations "The Bruce family owned the land, near the city’s shoreline, for years, but was ultimately pushed out through eminent domain proceedings, which, the historical record shows, had racist motivations; city staff presented that history at the meeting where the council first formed the task force." (Daily Breeze)
