Starter Home

You can still here this phrase on the varying HGTV flip shows. How they are still in business in this housing market is beyond me as now with rates over 6% and costs to rehab doubling down I suspect that there will be fewer and fewer of them doing this as a full time business. But then again they were always a bizarre mash of people doing the same home repeatedly and acting as if it was the greatest project ever done. Yes we need more shiplap.

With that there were two articles this weekend about what defines Starter Home. The LA Times says this about the California marketplace:

For decades, the single-family home has been Southern California’s ultimate lure — a chance to live a life of sun and sand from the comfort of your very own property.

Most buyers’ ticket into that life is the starter home. Something modest but not minuscule. Two bedrooms, maybe three. A picket fence in front and a yard out back for the kids and dog to play.

But the starter home has changed. As home prices have soared and higher mortgage interest rates have made everything less affordable, wish lists have become more and more wishful, and buyers have been forced to find something smaller and less practical.

Want two bedrooms? How about one, plus an office that might fit a twin-size bed. Want a backyard? How about a space shared with the rest of the condo complex. Want to paint the exterior of your townhouse? The homeowner association won’t allow it, but feel free to spruce up the inside.

Making compromises has always been a part of house hunting, but in a market where some two-bedroom homes are selling for $1 million or more — often for hundreds of thousands over the asking price — middle-class buyers are forced to take whatever they can get.

So we have over bidding and homes now in the six figures that defines a median or at least an average price in some markets – Seattle, LA, Portland are good examples of how out of control it has been as they are the “it” cities. San Francisco and NYC have always been out of range of many but now that includes the burbs and boroughs that were for years ignored are now equally competitive in the marketplace. Is it really jobs? I doubt it as New York City is facing a massive tax downfall from the pandemic and the offices that have not reopened fully to workers. So with that comes that many of the higher tax bracket did leave and have not returned. As the article states:

The sheer number of people who left in such a short period raises uncertainty about New York City’s competitiveness and economic stability. The top 1 percent of earners, who make more than $804,000 a year, contributed 41 percent of the city’s personal income taxes in 2019.

About one-third of the people who left moved from Manhattan, and had an average income of $214,300. No other large American county had a similar exodus of wealth.

On that note the reality is that many of them never left and with that they are pushing the housing market into untenable reaches as they bid up for rentals the same way one does in purchasing housing. And many who did kept their apartments for pied a tier’s for when they do return and/or visit keeping them vacant and off the market. So who is moving here? I suspect many who dreamed of living here and with that sold homes, cashed out savings and are living off 401Ks and investments the same way I am. The difference is that the market is shit now and with that we are all at risk. Things will not end well I am afraid.

The article goes on to state:

In the years before 2019, the people who left and the people who stayed in New York City had similar average incomes, the IRS data showed. But during the pandemic, the residents who moved had average incomes that were 28 percent higher than the residents who stayed.

Still, New York City collected more tax revenue in both 2020 and 2021 than in 2019, thanks in part to at least $16 billion in federal pandemic aid.

The outlook for this year has become much less certain as the stock market has plummeted in recent months and certain forms of federal aid, like stimulus checks and expanded unemployment benefits, have (long) ended.

Again the current financial state of Manhattan and its environs are at risk in ways not seen since the 80s. And with that I suspect many a newcomer will find themselves wanting to leave, but the costs of leaving are considerably higher and for many it will be akin to a hostage situation. I saw that quite a bit in Nashville during its “it” heydays. People come for jobs, to seek adventure, to find a new life and a tribe. It never works out that way. Sorry folks I know this better than most.

Inside the incredibly shrinking Southern California starter home

By Jack Flemming Staff Writer LA TIMES Sept. 23, 2022

For decades, the single-family home has been Southern California’s ultimate lure — a chance to live a life of sun and sand from the comfort of your very own property.

Most buyers’ ticket into that life is the starter home. Something modest but not minuscule. Two bedrooms, maybe three. A picket fence in front and a yard out back for the kids and dog to play.

But the starter home has changed. As home prices have soared and higher mortgage interest rates have made everything less affordable, wish lists have become more and more wishful, and buyers have been forced to find something smaller and less practical.

Want two bedrooms? How about one, plus an office that might fit a twin-size bed. Want a backyard? How about a space shared with the rest of the condo complex. Want to paint the exterior of your townhouse? The homeowner association won’t allow it, but feel free to spruce up the inside.

Making compromises has always been a part of house hunting, but in a market where some two-bedroom homes are selling for $1 million or more — often for hundreds of thousands over the asking price — middle-class buyers are forced to take whatever they can get

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” said Zach Zyskowski, a TV producer who bought his first home last summer.

His search started with two-bedroom homes in West Hollywood and Mid-City, but he quickly realized that everything was out of his price range.

“Anything under $1 million was hard to find,” he said. “There was nothing that was both nice and unique, and I wanted something that wasn’t cookie-cutter.”

Zyskowski decided to switch strategies. He stopped searching for homes on the market and got creative, asking friends if anyone was planning to sell in their respective condo complexes. He ended up buying a one-bedroom condo directly from a seller in an off-market deal.

In the end, he sacrificed space for character. His new home is in El Cabrillo, a Spanish-style courtyard complex built by movie mogul Cecil B. DeMille in the 1920s.

It’s a bit small at 800 square feet, and he uses a pull-out sofa in the living room to host guests. But the stylish building, which has been featured in shows such as “Hollywood” and “Chuck” and enjoys a spot on the National Register of Historic Places, more than makes up for it.

“Would I have loved something bigger? Yes, there’s always more you can want,” he said. “But I’d rather have something smaller and nicer than bigger and boring. I was just amazed I could buy a place at all.”

For Elena Amador-French, smaller wasn’t an option. A planetary scientist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, she grew tired of working on the Mars Rover from her dining room table during the pandemic. The newborn baby didn’t help.

She and her husband started house hunting last year and set their sights on Altadena, a community tucked into the San Gabriel Mountains filled with charming Craftsman, English Tudor and Colonial Revival-style homes.

With a budget of $800,000, they wanted a house with character — as long as it had two bedrooms. But their search played out like many others: putting in an offer, watching dozens of other buyers drive up the asking price, and seeing the house sell for hundreds of thousands more than they could afford.

“You just have to laugh at a certain point. We couldn’t get upset because we couldn’t even compete,” she said.

They switched strategies and aimed for a duplex, which didn’t have the appeal of the single-family lifestyle but also didn’t have dozens of buyers swarming every open house.

In the end, they paid $970,000 for an 1,800-square-foot duplex with three bedrooms and three bathrooms in an east Pasadena complex.

“There’s still a piece of me that wants a single-family home that I can truly make my own.”

— Elena Amador-French

It didn’t have the charm of a single-family home, and it didn’t quite check off all the boxes; they couldn’t fit a swing set for their daughter into the outdoor space, and they weren’t able to add any personal touches to the exterior because of HOA regulations that require all houses to be painted the same color.

But it was an easier process that ended with more space for less money.

“There’s still a piece of me that wants a single-family home that I can truly make my own,” she said. “But this was so much less of a battle.”

In today’s market, it makes sense to settle. Homes that check all the boxes — hip neighborhood, plenty of space, interesting architecture — are still attracting plenty of offers and often selling for over the asking price. But for buyers willing to let go of the dream of single-family housing and redefine what a starter home can be, there are plenty of options.

Condos are regularly on the market in L.A. in the $300,000 range, a fraction of what some single-family homes are commanding. Other buyers are opting for tenancy-in-common units, arrangements in which residents share ownership of a building.

As more buyers choose alternatives, condo price increases are outpacing single-family home price increases. In August, the median sale price for L.A. condos was $675,000, a 7.1% jump year over year, according to Redfin. During that same stretch, single-family homes increased 0.4%.

The same is true for townhouse prices, which have increased 6.7% year over year for a median of $700,000.

For many Southern Californians, single-family homes are simply out of reach. The Times has published a “What Money Buys” series for the last five years that highlights homes on the market at certain price points in different neighborhoods. Now, those stories read like a time capsule.

For example, a 2019 piece featured homes on the market for $800,000 in a handful of L.A. neighborhoods including Jefferson Park and Cypress Park. Both areas had a five-bedroom home listed for around $800,000.

The Jefferson Park home ended up selling for $850,000 in 2019. Now, Redfin estimates that the home is worth $1.28 million. The Cypress Park home grew even more valuable, selling for $800,000 in 2019 and now worth an estimated $1.45 million.

Those prices have become standard. In Jefferson Park, there are no five-bedroom single-family homes on the market for less than $1.2 million. The $800,000 price point now buys a two-bedroom home — or a three-bedroom fixer-upper.

The change becomes even more pronounced at lower price points. A 2017 entry in the series explored what $500,000 buys in the L.A. neighborhoods of Van Nuys, Leimert Park and Boyle Heights. Every single home on the list had at least 1,000 square feet, and most had three bedrooms. One had four.

Five years later, Redfin values all the properties on that list at $750,000 or more, with a few valued north of $850,000.

A look at the options currently on the market in those three communities finds no three-bedroom homes for $500,000 or less. The closest thing is a three-bedroom townhouse in Van Nuys asking $550,000 — cash offers only.

For comparison, a 2022 story exploring homes at $500,000 highlighted much smaller options including a 648-square-foot bungalow in East L.A. listed at $485,000 and a one-bedroom condo in downtown L.A. asking $509,000 (plus $813 in monthly HOA dues.)

Spoiler alert: Both homes sold shortly after the article ran, and the East L.A. bungalow sold for $10,000 more than the asking price.

More buyers are settling for two-bedroom homes as a starter, and it’s driving up prices.

In L.A., the median two-bedroom home — the typical size for starter homes — sold for $765,700 in August, a 10.1% increase year over year, according to Rocket Homes. That outpaces one-bedroom homes, which increased 8.8% year over year, and three-bedroom homes, which increased 9.1% year over year.

Earlier this year, Compass agent Allie Altschuler sold a two-bedroom home in the hills of Eagle Rock for $1.442 million — or $293,000 more than the asking price. What it lacked in bedroom count, it made up for with unique features such as a breakfast nook with a built-in booth and a separate structure in the backyard that can be used as an office or studio.

“Younger buyers are OK with buying smaller homes because they know they won’t be in it forever,” she said. “Buying a house and living in it for 30 or 40 years isn’t the case anymore.”

Parking Free?

I joke every day at the bagel store that I live in the dumpster out front, it has a roof deck and gets cleaned weekly. Then last week a moving truck was out front and I said I upgraded to a deluxe suite, it’s mobile and can move quickly should I need to avoid a parking ticket. We have a problem with people getting places to park their homes, as in cars, which is another problem that only further divides the homeless issues plaguing America’s most “desirable” cities. Funny I can’t wait to leave.

But for those who want to stay here and regardless of their state of mind or lack thereof we have few solutions only to make it increasingly more illegal to live without a home. Madison Wisconsin, that brought us former Presidential Candidate, Scott Walker, has made living in the parks adjacent to City Hall illegal. Maybe now that Governor Walker is back in Wisconsin he can tackle the homeless the same way he did the unions of which he is so proud to boast. The homeless have to be way easier than taking on ISIS in the same way.

Los Angeles Puts $100 Million Into Helping Homeless

By JENNIFER MEDINA
The New York Times
SEPT. 22, 2015

LOS ANGELES — Flooded with homeless encampments from its freeway underpasses to the chic sidewalks of Venice Beach, municipal officials here declared a public emergency on Tuesday, making Los Angeles the first city in the nation to take such a drastic step in response to its mounting problem with street dwellers.

The move stems partly from compassion, and in no small part from the rising tide of complaints about the homeless and the public nuisance they create. National experts on homelessness say Los Angeles has had a severe and persistent problem with people living on the streets rather than in shelters — the official estimate is 26,000. The mayor and City Council have pledged a sizable and coordinated response, proposing Tuesday to spend at least $100 million in the next year on housing and other services. They plan, among other things, to increase the length of time shelters are open and provide more rent subsidies to street people and those in shelters.

“Every single day we come to work, we see folks lying on this grass, a symbol of our city’s intense crisis,” Mayor Eric Garcetti said at a news conference at City Hall on Tuesday. “This city has pushed this problem from neighborhood to neighborhood for too long, from bureaucracy to bureaucracy.”

In urban areas, including New York, Washington and San Francisco, rising housing costs and an uneven economic recovery have helped fuel a rise in homelessness. In some cities, officials have focused much of their efforts on enforcement policies to keep people from living in public spaces.

In places known for good weather like Honolulu and Tucson, or for liberal politics — like Madison, Wis. — frustration has prompted crackdowns on large encampments. Some cities, like Seattle, have tried setting aside designated areas for homeless encampments. But to date, no city has claimed to have the perfect solution.

Like other urban mayors, Mr. Garcetti has made promises to end chronic homelessness. Yet the homeless population here has grown about 12 percent since he took office in 2013. He, too, has been criticized for taking a heavy-handed approach to enforcement while doing too little to help people find and pay for housing. City budget officials estimate that Los Angeles already spends more than $100 million, mostly through law enforcement, to deal with issues that stem from people living on the streets.

In New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio has been grappling with a soaring homeless population since he took office nearly two years ago. The number of people occupying homeless shelters peaked around 60,000 last winter and remained stubbornly high — around 57,000 — this week.

Unlike the dispossessed in Los Angeles, the vast majority of the homeless in New York are sheltered. But the presence of the street homeless, highlighted on the front pages of tabloids, has put public pressure on Mr. de Blasio to address the 3,000 unsheltered homeless holding signs on sidewalks, sleeping atop subway grates and huddling in encampments.

“This is the fallout of not having anywhere near the affordable housing that’s needed,” said Megan Hustings, the interim director of the National Coalition for the Homeless, a Washington-based advocacy group.

“It is repeated all over the country: We work to get them emergency food and shelter, but housing continues to be unaffordable, so you see people lingering in emergency services or going to the streets.”

In Los Angeles, rents have soared all over the city and housing vouchers usually cover only a fraction of the rent for a home near public transportation. Efforts to build new housing units have floundered, and the city’s spending on affordable housing has plummeted to $26 million, roughly a quarter of what it was a decade ago.

Neighborhoods that were once considered hubs of relatively inexpensive motels and single-room apartments — Venice Beach, the Downtown Arts District — have been transformed into well-to-do enclaves filled with cupcake emporiums and doggy day care centers.

A census of the homeless in Los Angeles County released in May found that the number of people bedding down in tents, cars and makeshift encampments had grown to 9,535, nearly double the number from two years earlier. More than half of the estimated 44,000 homeless in Los Angeles County live in the city limits, according to the census. And nearly 13,000 in Los Angeles County become homeless each month, according to a recent report from the Economic Roundtable.

The spending proposal will need to be approved by the City Council and allocated by its Homelessness and Poverty Committee. The $100 million figure was chosen in part for its symbolism, said Herb J. Wesson Jr., the City Council president, to show county, state and federal officials that the city was willing to make a significant contribution to an urgent problem. “Today, we step away from the insanity of doing the same thing and hoping for different results, and instead chart our way to ending homelessness,” he said.

But many longtime advocates for the homeless here said the City Council’s proposal was not likely to make a big dent in the number of people who are finding themselves on the streets. “Encampments used to be contained to Skid Row, where city officials would try to control or ignore them,” said Gary Blasi, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who has studied homelessness in the region for years. “Plans have been made, and never made it off the paper they’re written on. It’s not clear what will be delivered. And do the math here — it doesn’t amount to much at all.”

“People who would have thought of themselves as homeowners 10 or 15 years ago are renting, and it’s a grim situation in a lot of places,” said Steve Berg, the vice president for programs and policy for the National Alliance to End Homelessness. “A lot of places don’t have a real grip of what the homeless population is in real time, and respond only crisis to crisis. But what we’ve learned about homelessness over many, many years is that you have to provide housing, and criminalizing the homeless doesn’t keep people off the streets at all.”

Earlier this year, the Los Angeles City Council approved an ordinance that lets the police confiscate property and makes it easier for them to clear sidewalks of homeless encampments. Similar legislation has been passed in other cities.

In Honolulu, where the city has spent the last two days shutting down homeless encampments that have irritated residents and frightened tourists, a federal judge on Tuesday denied the American Civil Liberties Union’s request to stop seizing and destroying people’s property during the sweeps.

Mr. Garcetti proposed using $12.6 million this year from unexpected tax revenue for rental subsidies for short-term housing and other services, including $1 million to create centers where the homeless could store belongings and shower. The $100 million, if approved, would be for the 2016 budget.

Some advocates for the homeless here have said that the rising street population has created a public health crisis on Skid Row downtown, where about 5,000 people now live outdoors.

“It’s a humanitarian crisis and a moral shame,” said José Huizar, a council member who represents the area. “It has reached a critical breaking point, that the sea of despair that we witness on the streets of Los Angeles each and every day must end, and it begins with all of us here today.”

4 for $15

We can now add Los Angeles to the mix of 4 cities who have upped the minimum wage. The town/city of Sea-Tac was in the mix earlier than Seattle but it is not mentioned here in the below editorial yet Emeryville was and having lived in Emeryville and am more than familiar to both I am saying that this was an egregious omission. Sea Tac houses an aiport and Emeryville an Ikea and Pixar. Hmm that might have been the deciding factor, the Ikea.

But as again I want to point out this is phased in over 5 years but the one variation is that the rise once fully in effect becomes linked to the inflation index, a factor not included in the other rises. And that is the key as by the time this takes affect the inflation rates may change and true the Times makes a point that it is not the be all end all but it is better than nothing.

But we still have a lot of nothing when it comes to wages. The overall stagnation in the low end sector and the
“middle” range but the executive suite is as sweet as it ever was as I wrote about earlier.

A $15 Minimum Wage Bombshell in Los Angeles
By THE EDITORIAL BOARD
The New York Times
MAY 20, 2015

There are many ways to look at the minimum wage increase in Los Angeles from the current $9 an hour to $15 by 2020 —
some hopeful, some cautionary, all good.

For starters, uncharted territory is rapidly being charted. Los Angeles is the fourth city, and by far the largest, to enact a $15 minimum in the past year. The others are Seattle, San Francisco and Emeryville, Calif. (near San Francisco). A $15 minimum has been proposed in New York City, Washington, D.C., and Kansas City, Mo.

Opponents of higher wages — generally, business groups and their political allies — have raised the same objections in Los Angeles that have been raised since the dawn of the federal minimum wage in 1938: that higher pay will lead to layoffs and business closings or business migration. But experience and research involving actual minimum wage increases indicate otherwise: The added cost of higher wages is offset by savings from lower labor turnover and higher labor productivity.

Higher wages can also be offset by modestly higher prices, which haven’t proved measurably disruptive, in part because minimum wage increases make somewhat higher prices manageable. Wages can also be raised by paying executives and shareholders less. Whatever changes employers may have to make in Los Angeles, the long phase-in of the increase gives them time to adjust.

A challenge will be to ensure that all employers are held to the new higher wage. California is already one of eight states that prohibit the deplorable practice of subminimum wages for tipped workers. So waitresses and waiters in Los Angeles will be eligible for the higher $15 minimum wage along with everyone else. Policy makers at all levels of government should follow California’s lead in outlawing subminimum tipped wages.

The restaurant industry, however, will not go down without a fight. The Los Angeles City Council has pledged to study the potential effect of allowing restaurants to add a service charge to bills to meet the increased costs. It is past time, however, to stop coddling an industry that has come to regard itself as entitled to special dispensation. If restaurants can’t pay their servers the minimum wage, they need to pay higher earners less or raise prices. If restaurants are franchises that can’t afford to pay adequate wages, their corporate parents should share the burden.

California does not index its state minimum wage, currently $9, to keep pace with price inflation. But in Los Angeles, the new minimum will be indexed to inflation starting in 2022, when the increase will have been fully phased in for large and small employers alike. An inflation adjustment is better than no adjustment, but it would be better to adjust the minimum wage to wage growth, since wages generally rise somewhat faster than prices.
Perhaps most far-reaching, California is prepared to expose the extent to which low-wage employers get a free ride on taxpayers. When employers pay poorly, workers must rely on public assistance, in the form of Medicaid, food stamps and other programs. Starting in 2016, California will publish the names of employers with more than 100 workers on Medicaid, and how much these companies cost the state in public aid. This could help build and sustain public support for higher wages.

The pay raise in Los Angeles challenges Congress and other states, particularly New York. In Congress, the latest Democratic proposal calls for a federal minimum wage of $12 an hour by 2020. That would be adequate, if a bit on the low side, and a huge improvement from the current $7.25 an hour, the level since 2009. The big problem is Republican opposition to even considering an increase.

On the state level, 21 states that have not raised their minimums in recent years will be forced to face the fact that being a competitive place to do business means ensuring fair pay. Opponents of wage increases often raise the specter of scary “wage islands” caused by businesses decamping to lower-wage areas. The outcome is likely to be just the opposite. Businesses, especially in service industries, would prefer to be where customers have money, and that’s likely to be where wages are rising.

In New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has recently earned well-deserved praise for creating a wage board to help raise the pay of fast-food workers, needs to realize, and quickly, that cities in California have stolen his thunder. Establishing a wage board to look into fast-food pay is a big step in the right direction. But it is no substitute for establishing a separate higher minimum wage of $15 an hour for New York City, and no substitute for going to the mat for a state minimum wage that is higher than the proposal for $10.50 an hour currently on the table.

Workers’ share of the economic pie has been shrinking for decades, as the gains from labor productivity have flowed increasingly to profits rather than pay. A result has been an economy that is less resilient and more unequal. Low-wage workers who have been demonstrating for higher pay are leading politicians where they need to go, and the real leaders among those politicians are following the workers.

Real Problems No Real Answers

I print this article as we often see the Sheriff as some ill educated white bozo. We assume that all of the current climate is based on a single type of white/black racism. And that only white people can be racist. The notion of the “race card” is apparently only held in one color’s hand and only about again white/black issues.

I am tired of the white privilege nonsense leveled at anyone who is white, just in the same manner I am angry with the racist taunts and nonsense that focuses on black Americans particularly male. I find it repugnant that Immigration reform seems to focus on the Mexican and Central Americans who are escaping their own drug war countries and the idea that they are the problem in this country when I in fact actually see the solution to our own countries need for entrepreneurs, families and the whole “hard working” ethic. Frankly any immigrant usually is. But we have many many more coming and they are coming with baggage from very different kind of wars of which we are ill equipped to deal with. When the Syrians arrive I suspect a new Patriot Act will be up and running as ISIS will be the new Al Quedea.

America has never had a good relationship with immigration which is the irony upon irony as this is how we found the country and the real natives are relegated to one step removed from our “nation states” as is Puerto Rico, Guam, America Samoa and so on.

So please remember race is one aspect of why people hate and people can be hateful regardless of race.

And just like this Sheriff in Los Angeles. Now he is the Mayor of a suburb – Gardena. I used to spend time there as a kid, it was beautiful and then it turned not which is the supposed reason why we needed to step up on crime. He is educated, he is Asian. He is an asshole. Well he is not a Lawyer that is a special kind of asshole but law enforcement is a part of that umbrella too. And it has nothing to do with race or gender, it is the job that is the real problem.

And the other problem is that they are seemingly exempt from the same degradation, humiliation and financial hurdles that regular citizens face. Will he have to check the box on his next application too? The two different standards and application of what defines law and order is the other real problem.

So who will find the real solutions to these very real problems?

Once L.A. County Sheriff’s Department star, Paul Tanaka now defined by scandal

Paul Tanaka, shown in 2014, surrendered to authorities Thursday after being indicted by a federal grand jury investigating excessive force and corruption in L.A. County jails.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

By Hailey Branson-Potts 

LA Times

Former Los Angeles County Undersheriff Paul Tanaka’s career became defined by jail abuse scandal

Once considered former L.A. County Sheriff Lee Baca’s heir apparent, Paul Tanaka was a controversial leader

Paul Tanaka, the mayor of Gardena, was once considered the heir apparent to his boss, Sheriff Lee Baca.

But Tanaka’s 31 years with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department came to be increasingly defined by the scandals that plagued the department. The retired undersheriff faced allegations that he played a starring role in the mounting scandals.

In 2012, a blue ribbon commission issued a searing critique of Baca, Tanaka and others, accusing them of fostering a culture in which deputies beat and humiliated inmates, covered up misconduct and formed aggressive deputy cliques in the county jails.

On Thursday, Tanaka, 56, surrendered to authorities after being indicted by a federal grand jury investigating excessive force and corruption in the jails. Also indicted was a retired sheriff’s captain, William “Tom” Carey.

Peter Wallin, Gardena’s city attorney, said the indictment did not require Tanaka to step down as mayor.

Wallin said he has known Tanaka for years and “he’s been a great mayor.”

But in a statement, the city said that Tanaka was going to ask the Gardena City Council for an “excused leave of absence as he deals with these legal matters.”

Tanaka — who lost by a large margin in the November runoff for sheriff against former Long Beach Police Chief Jim McDonnell — was forced out of the Sheriff’s Department by Baca in 2013 amid criticism over the jail abuse scandal.

It was a stunning reversal for a man once considered Baca’s confidant.

Tanaka decided to go into law enforcement as a student at Loyola Marymount University, where he was required to go on a ride-along for a class. After graduating with an accounting degree, he became an officer in El Segundo before joining the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department.

“I thought the tan and green was the best,” Tanaka said of the huge department’s colors in a November 2012 interview with FBI agents. “I just always had this thing about them.”

Tanaka rose quickly in the department, but not without controversy. As a sergeant, he was assigned in the 1980s to the Lynwood station, which was shadowed by allegations of excessive force. There, he was tattooed as a member of the Vikings, an unsanctioned group of hard-charging deputies.

In 1988, Tanaka was named in a wrongful-death lawsuit after he and four deputies fatally shot an unarmed motorist — a shooting that sparked angry protests. The county paid the dead man’s family almost $1 million to settle.

When Baca first ran for sheriff in 1998, Tanaka broke ranks with the incumbent, Sherman Block, to work on Baca’s campaign. After Baca was elected, Tanaka ascended through the ranks.

Indictment of Paul Tanaka and Tom Carey

Outside the department, Tanaka jumped into politics in Gardena, where he has lived for more than four decades. He won a seat on the Gardena City Council in 1999 and successfully ran for mayor in 2005. He was reelected to four-year terms as mayor in 2009 and 2013.

On the Gardena City Council, he was credited with helping to turn the city’s finances around.
“When he took over, the city was kind of in turmoil. We were in debt,” Gardena Councilwoman Tasha Cerda told the Los Angeles Times last year. “Now we’re in the plus.”

Sheriff’s colleagues and subordinates donated more than $100,000 to his Gardena election campaigns, raising concerns that loyalty to Tanaka was essential to a career in the Sheriff’s Department, according to a county commission.

In 2003, Tanaka drew federal scrutiny for helping funnel hundreds of sheriff’s bulletproof vests to Cambodia through Gardena without declaring them to customs officials. The transaction, which became publicly known only 10 years later, did not result in charges.

Tanaka and Baca’s relationship became strained after the blue ribbon commission released its findings three years ago. The commission recommended that Tanaka be stripped of most of his authority.
Though Tanaka was not directly responsible for overseeing the jails, the commission concluded that he influenced their operations. Tanaka had said previously that he was focused on reducing crime and the department’s budget and wasn’t in the jail system’s chain of command during the period of alleged problems.

In March 2013, Tanaka retired from the Sheriff’s Department under pressure from Baca. Tanaka launched a run for sheriff, planning to compete against his former boss.

Facing a tough battle for reelection amid the growing scandals, Baca announced his retirement in January 2014, a month after federal prosecutors announced criminal charges against numerous low-ranking sheriff’s officials accused of beating inmates and jail visitors, of trying to obstruct the FBI and of other crimes.

Tanaka squeaked into the runoff election for sheriff against McDonnell. In November, McDonnell trounced Tanaka by a wide margin, becoming the first outsider in a century to helm the department.
Jessica Levinson, a Loyola Law School professor who specializes in good governance, said she does not expect Tanaka to step down as mayor.

“In this case, history has indicated that Paul Tanaka is not going to go quietly into the night. My guess is it’s going to take a lot of political pressure for him to step down,” she said, stressing that controversy has not stopped him from seeking public office in the past .

Levinson said that it’s unlikely voters in Gardena, who elected Tanaka even as controversy swirled around him, are unaware of his history. As a result, she said, it remains to be seen whether an indictment would be enough to create a major push among residents to pressure the mayor to step down.

“There have been rumors and discussions and chatter of serious wrongdoing for a very long time, so it cannot be that the voters of Gardena were utterly oblivious to that,” Levinson said. “And they elected him anyway. My guess is that he has a lot of loyal voters who might think he was wronged and might say they want to see the process play out.”

Still, she said, “there is no jurisdiction in the world in which a federal indictment is a political boon. Legally innocent until proven guilty is different than public opinion. Just because he’s not legally guilty of anything doesn’t mean he’s not in a politically very different position.”

Crisis Center

As I have written about in prior posts, the issue of mental health and that jails have become the defacto mental health holding facilities for them is a massive issue. The other is the use of public hospitals as a 72 hour holding facility that has pushed staff and communities to the brink of collapse.

Jail guards versus half prepared, trained and funded hospitals have led to a crisis that fails to truly address the issue of mental health.

As a result the at risk of this is that everyone is at risk.

The other morning on AlJazeera America they profiled the L.A. City Attorney Jackie Lacey and her attempt to change what has become the norm in abnormal – imprisoning the mentally ill.

Why she may be a utter bitch I don’t know or care, what matters is that someone is realizing that there needs to be a better way then the current way.

In push to keep mentally ill out of jail, county to expand crisis centers

By Abby Sewell
LA Now LA Times

L.A. County to expand crisis teams and psychiatric urgent care centers to divert the mentally ill from jail
Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey supports county’s move to beef up psychiatric crisis response teams, centers

At the urging of Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey and others lobbying to keep mentally ill people from being locked up in county jails, Los Angeles County supervisors voted Wednesday to fund several programs for people undergoing psychiatric crises.

The supervisors voted to use $40.9 million in state funding for opening three new 24-hour psychiatric urgent care centers, where police can bring people undergoing mental health crises instead of taking them to overcrowded emergency rooms or jail.

The money would also help pay for an estimated 560 new residential treatment beds and to create 14 new crisis response teams that send mental health workers — sometimes in conjunction with law enforcement — to respond to incidents involving people believed to be mentally ill.

The total cost of the new programs will be an estimated $109.4 million, to be paid for by the new grant money and other state funding programs.

Lacey, who is leading a task force studying diversion of the mentally ill, called the decision “huge.”

“Up until now, jail has been used to stabilize people,” she said.

A consultant report commissioned by Lacey’s task force and released last month called for more crisis response teams and more drop-off centers.

The report found that “it’s often more time-efficient for law enforcement to book an individual into jail on a minor charge … rather than spend many hours waiting in a psychiatric emergency department for the individual to be seen.”

Monterey Park Police Chief Jim Smith, a member of the task force, told supervisors that the expanded crisis centers will enable officers to “complete the intake process and be back on the street in 15 minutes rather than hours.”

Sheriff-elect Jim McDonnell praised Lacey for her “leadership in bringing together county leaders, justice system officials, mental health experts and community voices as we seek to develop a comprehensive plan for how our justice system addresses the challenges and concerns of those suffering from mental illness.”

The task force is expected to come to the board with a comprehensive set of recommendations early next year.

Dozens of advocates spoke in favor of the efforts to increase diversion, although some cautioned that they do not want to see more money going to locked psychiatric facilities or involuntary treatment.

Many of the advocates — as well as Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who retires next month — urged the board to put the brakes on a $2-billion plan to rebuild the dilapidated Men’s Central Jail until they see how many jail beds are freed up by the diversion programs.

Diana Zuniga, representing a coalition of groups opposed to the jail plan, said the number of county jail inmates will also be impacted by the passage of Proposition 47, which will reduce penalties for drug possession and other nonviolent crimes, and the increased use of “split sentencing,” in which inmates are given shorter jail sentences, followed by mandatory probation.

“All of these are not separate from the $2-billion jail plan and will dramatically reduce the amount of people we have incarcerated in Los Angeles County jails,” Zuniga said.

Lacey said she believes the Men’s Central Jail needs to be replaced, but did not take a stance on what the size it should be.

Beat Down

In America the Police are Sheriffs, Municipal Police, Security Agents for Public Transportation, TSA, and Border Patrol and all of them have been responsible for the death/murder,imprisonment and assault of innocent people.

Yesterday a man was executed by the Los Angeles Police as he was fleeing his assailant as well as another man who was injured. The explanation – they were fleeing “agressively.” Really? Running for your life is rather assertive. Ironically or just coincidentally, the NY Times wrote an extensive article that very day discussing the issues of income inequity and the problems it leads to as a result with regards to the decline of Los Angeles. Shocking? No. Add excessive police abuse to the list of results.

And that is just one city with problems, Seattle has been targeted by the Justice Department, New Orleans and now add Albuquerque to the list. Three very different type of cities and yet one consistency, police abuse.

And today the New York Times has this article about a man whose unpaid fines led him to be shot and jailed. Pay those parking tickets people!

I frequently hear from others that dependent upon the source this information is selective, innacurate or utterly false, regardless of the number of “legitimate” sources one cites, this convenient explanation somehow oddly justifies their equally biased and discriminatory source; which oddly they never provide when asked to document a supporting alternative to the theory, that would actually require having one.

I read Radley Balko daily. And I am no fan of many of his “sources” particularly ReasonTV but I begin with Radley and then go from there to find other sources of information that further elaborates and or corroborates his version. It takes time, reading and well reading.

So when I read his story about abuse by Border Patrol it was not the first nor I suspect the last when it comes to abuse by those minding the borders. There are many tales of horror from all kinds of people regardless of the border, the nationality and the type of query. 9/11 opened the door to this and it is both sides that have become overwhelmingly insistent that it is necessary to protect their country from terrorists.

This video below is from “Need to Know” a PBS news program. Take it from the source or not. Dismiss fact and knowledge or realize we have a Police State Nation that is no different than North Korea frankly. But at least they don’t have to have the Kim Jong Un haircut. A silver lining no doubt.

Need to Know – Crossing the Line.

Burn This

I saw this yesterday and was not fully sure if this was truly the issue.  When a home is built there are more than the Divatecht’s behind the construction. At some point the Builder, a Sub Contractor and more importantly the City planning and permitting department has some culpability in a final project.

But this does render a discussion on the issue on the idea of capitulating on a build and design that smart heads should rule and reign in any design or element that could ultimately lead to the builds failure.

I miss construction more and more every day and I read this and wonder if I do.  This is more about a systemic problem with regards to the issue of money and fame and the ability of those in positions of authority and power to turn a blind eye and the failure of our municipalities to hire and demand accountability.

That jail cell should frankly be larger.

Architect’s Sentence in Death of Firefighter Angers Fire Crews

By IAN LOVETT
Published: January 3, 2014

LOS ANGELES — The blaze broke out in an opulent new Hollywood Hills home that was scheduled to be the set for a television series, “Germany’s Next Top Model,” just a few days later. Flames escaped from a fireplace — designed for outdoor use, but installed indoors in violation of the fire code on the home’s top floor by Gerhard Albert Becker, a wealthy German architect.

Mr. Becker, who built the home and had recently moved in, fled with his girlfriend on that night in February 2011. By the time firefighters arrived, the entire attic was engulfed in flames.

Working frantically to break through the ceiling and extinguish the blaze, firefighters heard a loud crack. The roof collapsed on top of them, seriously injuring several firefighters and killing Glenn Allen, 61, a veteran of 36 years with the Los Angeles Fire Department.

On Friday, Mr. Becker, 49, pleaded no contest to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to one year in jail. He is likely to serve six months, far less than the maximum of four years that prosecutors had sought, and will be deported to Germany upon his release.

The sentence outraged Los Angeles firefighters, who are bearing the personal cost of a disregard for safety regulations, said Kevin Mulvehill, a former Los Angeles fire captain who was in charge of Mr. Allen’s company the night of the fire. He said they had hoped a tougher sentence would send a message to contractors and homeowners.

“I take it very personally that he can walk under some technicality,” said Mr. Mulvehill, who was in court along with about 30 firefighters in uniform, asking for the maximum sentence. “It sends the wrong message to contractors that they can get away with shoddy construction, make their money and move on.”

At the sentencing, Judge Robert Perry of Superior Court said he was concerned that responsibility for the fire could be shared, because safety inspectors had failed to find the illegally installed fireplaces.

Mr. Becker’s lawyer, Donald Re, declined to comment about the case, saying only that he believed the sentence was appropriate.

A resident of Mallorca, Spain, Mr. Becker was an architect and contractor of luxury homes around the world. The Hollywood Hills house was his first project in the United States, and he hoped to market it for television and film production. He stood to make $100,000 for the six-week shoot of “Germany’s Next Top Model,” according to the prosecutors.

Prosecutions of architects in house fires are rare. But Sean Carney, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case, said Mr. Becker not only installed four fireplaces, but also repeatedly misled safety inspectors.

In an email to his real estate agent after the fire, Mr. Becker wrote that he had removed sprinklers from the balconies after the final inspection when the house was built, according to court documents shared with The New York Times by prosecutors.

“When you had seen the house in February, I had deinstalled it after the final of the house,” he wrote.

Mr. Carney said, “The whole issue with this guy’s construction was that he was so incredibly arrogant, he hated that building and safety inspectors had any say.”

Firefighters had other factors working against them the night of the fire. Because of city budget cuts, the firefighter company that was closest to Mr. Becker’s house, and would normally have responded to the fire, had been closed.

“It was a perfect storm, with the budget cuts and an architect who cut corners, and ultimately one of our firefighters paid the price,” said Frank Lima, the president of United Firefighters of Los Angeles City-I.A.F.F. Local 112. “This is one of the most dangerous professions. We want to go in there aggressively to save lives, but we expect things to be built right.”

Two other fire companies were already at the house when Mr. Allen, 61, and his company arrived. They worked to break through walls and helped extinguish some of the fire. But in part because of the height of the ceiling, they had trouble breaking through it to the top floor, where the flames were concentrated.

Just as the firefighters began to make headway, the roof gave in. Hundreds of pounds of material collapsed onto them. Mr. Allen was pinned underneath, along with several others. He died two days later.

Mr. Mulvehill, who has since retired, said many of the firefighters continue to suffer physically and emotionally from their injuries that night.

“Some still have some traumatic effects, memory loss, ongoing neck pain; some have nightmares,” he said. “This is going to be an ongoing thing for all of us.”

Mr. Carney said that, even once the fireplaces had been installed, Mr. Becker also failed to install fire stops, which could have slowed the spread of the fire by at least an hour.

About 450 firefighters, their families and other members of the community wrote to the judge, asking him to give Mr. Becker the maximum sentence, according to Mr. Lima, who helped organize the campaign.

Mr. Allen’s widow, Melanie K. Allen, read a statement in court before the sentencing. She spoke of Mr. Allen’s excitement at the news that he was expecting a grandson.

“So many, many people’s lives have been touched with tragedy because of what appears to have been a conscious and deliberate choice to violate the rules,” she said.