And now: L.A. $5 billion housing plan
Hey, why not? If it all goes sour, they can just line up behind every other failed enterprise and get their bailout. Oh, excuse me. “Workout.”
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa on Monday will unveil a $5-billion, five-year plan to build housing for the poor and middle class. The blueprint, which calls for thousands of new homes along subway and bus lines, and developments with people of all incomes living together, would, according to the mayor’s deputies, alter the look and feel of the city forever.
But the plan, which many City Council members and business and housing groups said they had not yet seen, is being released while the housing market is a shambles, the state is facing a massive budget shortfall and the economy is teetering — challenges that lead some to wonder whether it is feasible.
“I know that budgets are tight . . . credit is almost nonexistent,” Villaraigosa said Saturday to a room full of community and labor groups pushing for more affordable housing. “But we’re going to reject the cynics . . . and build a brighter future for those kids who are in the corner over there.”
The mayor got a standing ovation at the union hall near downtown Los Angeles, and chants of “Si, se puede” (”Yes, we can”) from the dozens of people in matching red T-shirts in his audience…
…Villaraigosa acknowledged that in the current climate of economic uncertainty, some of the money the city is counting on may not come through, but he said he was confident other sources might open up. Federal dollars may flow to the city because of the foreclosure crisis, for example. He said he “sat down with three economists yesterday” and they assured him the plan was sound.
Housing entitlement mindset at work:
“We need a new solution,” Donna Rodriguez said Saturday. The account manager, who lives in Silver Lake, said she makes $42,000 a year and spends half of her take-home pay on the $1,150 rent for her one-bedroom apartment. “Look,” she said, waving copies of her paycheck and rent checks to illustrate the problem. She added that she shares a bed with her 8-year-old daughter, Lily.
“I want bunk beds,” Lily chimed in as her mother smoothed her hair and told her to tell members of the media that she wanted her own bedroom.
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When their is no rich, who will be paying the taxes.
Just like the Chavistas in Venezuela.
Yup, the future looks real bright for my kids.
i dunno who is going to end up paying the bills, cause eventually 95% of the population will be poor if this continues. i just do not see how anyone can think this can go on forever, taxing the middle class out of existence?
Let’s see, my wife & I put 20% down when we bought a house that was based on just my income, since we knew she was going to stop working when the children were born. What fools we were! We should have bought something we couldn’t afford, bought things we didn’t need and then walked away!
So, you know you don’t have the money, or the credit, but you’re going to do it anyway.
Oh, it’s for the kids! Why didn’t you say so. Alrighty then.
Unnatural. Poor people struggling to make a car payment will not maintain their property, making the neighborhood an undesirable place to live for the higher income people.
However, in a UTOPIA, you can make people live where they don’t want to.
Where can I get those magic money seeds like Tony Villar gets?
Yes, we can provide chintzy government-funded sanctuaries for illegals. Yes, we can at last provide Long Beach Congresswomen with houses (note the plural) they can afford. Yes, we can all pay for it. 5 bill? Aw, that’s nothin’.
This is one of the funniest (and pathetic) things I’ve read this morning.
America has lost it’s Soul. What we are seeing is the result of the “Let’s Not keep Score”, “Give Everyone a Trophy” mindset that has fueled the “I demand reward for Failure and Apathy” System we have now.
Does Villaraigosa even live in Los Angeles? One of the reasons I got the hell out of there was that there is no freakin space there!!! People are already stacked on each other like cordwood… where the hell do they think any new building is going to take place?
Nowhere anyone would actually want to live, I’d wager…
Where do you live, Mayor Villaraigosa? Are you ready to put your hiney where your mouth is and live in these Utopian government funded housing projects you are asking taxpayers to pay for?
How does one respond to this? I mean, how is it possible to reason with people who have decided to turn a blind eye to the realities of our country’s economic situation, even though they are confronted by it everyday and in all media outlets, and take LA down the same Freddie-Fannie type housing path that wiped out Wall Street? Does this mayor not get it, or does he just not care because he knows Uncle Sam will be there to bail LA out when the plan heads south?
Thousands and thousands of homes -EMPTY- is SoCal, particularly LA and Riverside County and he’s dropping $5 billion on a real estate project?
I hope all you tax paying folks in SoCal are feeling more generous than usual. Because it going to get even more expensive to live out there soon.
Thank you for defining Modern Liberalism… which is synonymous with Socialism.
Is there any doubt a communist revolution is going on in this country? Complete with central planning? The federal government is working on a way to nationalize the finance industry — should be done by Wednesday, with Bush anxious to sign the paperwork. Others in trouble who are “too big to fail” are lining up, some of them waiting until The Messiah is elected, and that looks like a depressingly likely disaster. Bush is getting his legacy a few months early: despoiler of the conservative revolution, an honor he’ll share with Republicans who forgot why they ran for office in the first place. And apart from national security, and two very decent Supreme Court justices, what was Bush all about, anyway? I’m disgusted with politics. Every conservative ought to read Liberal Fascism, because it’s a great picture of what we’ve allowed to happen before and what we’re about to let happen again. Get ready to kiss talk radio good-bye. Better be prepared to depend the Internet against political correctness, because blogs will be next.
Headline in MY RAG today… Terrorism not a big issue in election… Guess what else is not a big ISSUE, ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION… Indeed Si se pueda!!!
The mayor said:
I’ll bet two of them were Marx and Engels.
Look folks, it’s over. The DemLibs have won.
Today it’s mayor Tony VillaLaRaza shaking down “the rich” to pay for other people’s homes; tomorrow it will be Obama doing more of the same on a national scale.
This morning on the way to work, I saw an LA City bus with a brand new advertisment on it, sponsored by the FHA (Federal Housing Administration), bragging about what a success the agency has been, because it has “enabled” millions of people (all happy & smiling of course) to attain their “right” to “affordable” housing.
Guvmint puts us another $700 billion in the hole, yet a federal agency that is one of the primary culprits of the housing meltdown still has enough of a desperation budget to pay for bus ads to tell us how wonderful they are.
Time to move to Havanna for a sense of freedom.
I want to know what the DemokRATS definition of middle class is and what is the top wage they define as middle class also. Considering 50% or just a little less of the people in this country do not pay taxes anyway, I just want to know. As for all people of all classes living together, Yea I’ll just bet the upper crust in Belair and Hollywood want to rub shoulders with a crack dealer.
Amen. Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism s/b required reading in all college campuses.
After being translated into Spanish, of course.
It’ll save the burglars on subway fare and gas money.
I dont get what this problem is. I am a single dad. I pay more for my rent than Ms Rodriguez does. I sleep on an air mattress in what should be my dining room (so that my daughter CAN have her own becdroom) while my youngest daughter sleeps on my mattress in her room. And we are perfectly happy.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that Ms Rodriguez has available to her tons of state/federal benefits to help her out, that I do not have aceess to.
I bet she doesnt have to pay child support either…
Modification for clarity.
I gave my youngest daughter my real mattress and my bedroom, while I sleep on an air mattress in the dining room of our one bedroom apartment.
LOL. My furniture we do have is 50 yr old bargain basement furniture (with nothing to sit on) from my grandparents 2nd extra bedroom. Divorce from psychotic people is a b!$@h. however my kids and I are happier now than we were before.
Gee!?!? We have the latest MOAB (mother of all bailouts, for those of you inside the Beltway) being put forth on Capitol Hill and along comes LA with this housing proposal. Why are we not instead looking to improve education and educational opportunities? Many (pubic) schools are failing to teach their students with the powerful teachers unions often preventing any really meaningful changes in how the students are taught.
Why not change the system to have the taxes that support the schools go with the students to the school they actually attend? This would bring genuine competition to the education system, increase educational opportunities for students to get a better education, get good paying jobs, buy nice homes without needing to get subprime mortgage loans, protect the financial sector from having to take on risky debt, and…oh never mind!
Yup, the Chavistas have their man in City Hall. Of course, they will pay him back when they get the millions of illegals to vote fraudulently for him in his next election.
“But we’re going to reject the cynics . . . and build a brighter future for those
kidsillegals who are in the corner over there.”Geez! How good is the weather in California? Why else would anyone want to live there? This plan, and most California revolutionary plans, are one more brick in the road to collapse, ala the Soviet Union. We will all live side-by-side in perfect harmony in state provided housing!
Sunny days are nice, but anyone with a work ethic and brain ought to say adios to the Peoples Republic of California.
“Villaraigosa acknowledged that in the current climate of economic uncertainty, some of the money the city is counting on may not come through, but he said he was confident other sources might open up.”
Other sources, eh? How do you say “mau-mauing” in Spanish?
We could use Gort right about now, aiming his lense directly at Capitol Hill!
And no “Declento Brosco” command from his boss either; he has to finish off the entire cadre of socialists inside first.
#22, if you make $42 grand, you won’t get jack for assistance.
First of all, every single do-gooder plan to have “all incomes live together” over the years has been made of epic FAIL. Why is that? Nobody with the means to choose otherwise wants to live in a crime-ridden, ugly neighborhood which is what you’ll get if you put a bunch of poor folks on your block. People don’t magically change their attitudes if they live in a palace and as someone else pointed out, if you don’t have the means to even make a car payment, you probably don’t have the means to maintain your curb appeal. The morons who always come up with these schemes live in their own lovely gated communities and can afford to live far from the riff raff.
The reasons why housing is so damn expensive here? Taxes and overregulation. But it’s a lot easier to mau mau for government-guaranteed housing than it is to demand it lowers your taxes so you can keep more of what you earn.
I would differ on that point…. Single mother who is a minority.
I’m not talking about housing assistance or welfare. She can get government grants, contracts, education benefits and preferences that I have ZERO access to.
For the record, I am not jealous of what she has access to either… but she shouldnt complain about things. If she wants to up her lifestyle and social standing then she should send her daughter to live with the father. (Bet she wont…. becasue we are all deadbeats)
High in the low 90’s to day. Palm trees, swimming pool right outside the door.
I attribute much of Californias’ current problems to an invasion of parasitic illegal aliens. I believe a Texan in the White House has left the borders wide open the last eight years.
Frank, Reid, Kennedy, McCain, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Paulsen, Bernanke, Greenspan…California doesn’t have a monopoly on poor leadership.
Its like being a weatherperson in San Diego: Morning cloudiness with afternoon sun. High of 75 degrees.
Not surprisingly, when video of this was shown on the LA television news a few of the folks in the audience wearing the red teeshirts were filmed and printed on the front of the shirts was - GASP - the ACORN logo. ACORN is like a metasticized cancer in this nation.
Throughout all the shouts from the Dems last week that the Republicans were sabotouging the nation’s only hope to avoid a depression, not once did I read in the MSM or see in TV reports that the Dems were using the bailout to fund ACORN and La Raza to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. It was almost like the press collectively decided to portray the Republicans as being unpatriotic in this run-up to the election. Sigh…
Simple math here:
1150/month rent = 13800/year
if 13800/rear = 1/2 of takehome pay, then takehome pay = 27,600/year
either A) she’s lying by neglecting to mention the FAT rebate check she gets every year as a single mother who has 35% of her paycheck witheld in taxes
or B) she’s an idiot for supporting new socialized spending programs which will make her after-tax income even worse.
hmmm maybe she’s contributing to her 401k and Flex Spending accounts. in which case she’s not so dumb after all..
my ex claims she’s 100% disabled BUT owns a bar and dances on top of it whenever she pleases. (if she doesnt do it, I will go ahead and thank everyone out there for her, because you support her, not me) THANKS!!!!
At that point, Los Angeles will resemble Bangladesh. The next sound you hear wll be doors slamming shut on empty houses, stores and office builidngs as vans move the belongings of businesses and the rich, with the skyline of Los Angeles quickly shrinking their rear vier mirrors, out of the city and state.