(Editor’s note: This story first appeared in Westside Current on December 30 and is reprinted with permission. Many of the stories McGregor references have a common thread with Pacific Palisades, including LAHSA, the Mansion Tax – Measure ULA, and the building of a massive project in Venice that residents have opposed.)
City Hall overlooks a homeless encampment.
By ANGELA MCGREGOR
One of the central themes of my reporting in 2024 has been to answer a key question in representative government: When it comes to the officials and entities that we elect and fund, is it really our interests that are being addressed?
Whether it’s misspent funds on the homelessness crisis, a City Controller with an axe to grind, a powerful hotel union’s grip on a small city’s government, or a hometown paper beholden to the business interests of its billionaire owner, evidence of misrepresentation abounded in 2024.
Kenneth Mejia
In January, my first, two-part, article of the year was a deep dive into the recent output of City Controller Kenneth Mejia’s office. In 2023, I had reported on his questionable staff picks, which seemed short on auditing experience and heavy on political bias, calling into question whether Mejia’s office could be trusted to conduct the politically neutral, comprehensive audits the City requires.
As I wrote, “A year later, as predicted, the Controller’s office has spewed forth a series of audits based upon sloppily assembled statistics and questionable data apparently focused on generating inflammatory headlines.”
In the year since, the Controller’s audits have focused on LAHSA’s unspent funds and unused shelter beds. This work would be even more convincing if his Director of Homelessness hadn’t been acrimoniously fired from LAHSA shortly before she went to work for Mejia.
Also in January, a Townhall meeting at a Venice church revealed a community enraged by the city’s failure to listen to their concerns. One of the event organizers told us, “Right in front of [this] church and school for over three years people in RVs and other vehicles have been cooking meth, running prostitution…creating unsafe conditions for children going and coming from school.”
CD11 Councilmember Traci Park was on hand to listen and assure them that her office was doing what they could, and, sure enough, within a week the RV’s had been towed.
Streets for All bills itself as an advocacy group for safer streets and has an enormous influence over city politics. In February, I did a deep dive into the main source of funding for their massive push to get Measure HLA (the so-called “safe streets” initiative) passed. It turned out the media blitz for HLA was mainly funded by a small cohort of real estate developers who were likely motivated more by the measure’s promised addition of more transit-oriented density bonuses than a shared love of cycling. The measure passed, so look for more and denser housing with less parking in addition to more dedicated bike and bus lanes.
In September of 2023, I reported that Street’s for All’s proposal to demolish the Marina Freeway in favor of a park, bike path and apartments had received the support of many state and local officials, including Mayor Karen Bass. Public outrage at this revelation from stakeholders who use the 90 regularly (and were never given the chance to weigh in before the Mayor decided they didn’t need the freeway) was fierce. After an online petition from a group called Keep the 90 garnered over 9,000 signatures, Bass publicly rescinded her support. In March, I reported that the Federal Department of Transportation had rejected SFA’s request for $2 million to move forward with the plan, and for now, at least, the 90 freeway appears to be safe.
LAHSA CEO Valecia Adams Kellum and l.A. Mayor Karen Bass believe in housing first.
(X-formerly Twitter)
LAHSA’s shortcomings featured in a number of my 2024 stories. In March, the organization leaked a copy of a report, which it claimed the city was “hiding,” on the failure of 41.18 operations. In fact, the city’s administrator hadn’t released the report because it was based on deeply flawed data.
In July, I pointed out that LAHSA had similarly put forth a series of flawed assertions when it came to crowing about the results of its annual homelessness count. And perhaps the most egregious example of LAHSA’s abuse of the public’s trust came in November, with the release of a blistering audit by the county that may put an end to the organization as we know it.
Perhaps the most stunning revelation of the county’s LAHSA audit was that the organization had distributed tens of millions of dollars to various service providers (including the one which its current CEO managed before coming to LAHSA) without so much as an I.O.U. In September, I took a look at how some of those providers had amassed massive real estate portfolios and, by virtue of their growing political influence, managed to exacerbate the very housing crisis they are purported to be solving.
Since its passage, Measure ULA, the so-called Mansion Tax these organizations championed (and benefit from) has nearly put an end to private development of multi-family housing in the city.
The Ramada in Venice was bought by the city for $10 million to be used for housing the homeless.
One of those service providers/real estate developers was PATH, the owners of the former Ramada Inn on Washington Blvd., in Venice. In May, I looked into why the 33-unit project had been sitting empty since August of 2022, despite the millions of dollars PATH has received in government funding for the development (including a zero-interest mortgage from the city that is required to be paid back in the summer of 2025).
In October I wrote a two-part exploration of the hotel workers’ union Unite Here Local 11’s tight grip on the government of West Hollywood, and how they came to control a majority of the city council. As their agenda has grown well beyond workers’ rights (to include bike lanes, in collaboration with Streets for All), the question isn’t whether Unite Here’s interests are in line with the majority of West Hollywood’s stakeholders. It’s whether the union is, in fact, the only stakeholder being heard.
November brought the Presidential election, and at the city’s paper of record the inherent conflict between a billionaire’s business interests and the free press was the big story behind the headlines.
Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong,
After the LA Times’ editorial board put together a week-long series on why they were endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for President, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, the paper’s owner, quashed it. On X, Nika Soon-Shiong – the publisher’s uber-leftist daughter some claimed had been secretly running the paper for years — insisted that the retraction had been a “family decision” in response to the “apartheid” in Gaza.
But her father subsequently denied this, insisting that his daughter “does not have any role” in running the paper. In fact, it turns out Dr. Soon-Shiong had plenty of more self-serving reasons for declining to endorse Harris: her attempt as California’s Attorney General to control his takeover of several charity-oriented L.A. hospitals, and his apparent desire for a role in the Trump Administration.
As far as their subscribers were concerned, it appeared to me that “The implication of all of this is that if you’re reading the L.A. Times for anything other than to find out what a South African bio-tech billionaire and his cosplaying Socialist daughter would like you to know, you might want to look elsewhere. “
As for what’s to come next year, we know that by January the people of Venice Beach will have a final answer if the massive project now known as Venice/Dell will be built.
This month, both the Transportation Board of Directors and the Coastal Commission weighed in on the development.
Transportation denied Venice Community Housing and Hollywood Community Housing the right to use the parking lots they wish to build on, and the Coastal Committee issued a development permit which they may not be able to use.
It all comes down to the City Council, and if they don’t vote (by at least a 10-5 margin) to overturn Transportation’s decision by mid-January, the eight yearlong saga of “the Monster on the Median” will finally have a resolution.
CD11 Councilmember Park told the LA Times that Transportation’s vote effectively killed the project. The developer has vowed to fight on, and the lawsuit against the city for failing to support the project after their favorite city councilmember [Mike Bonin] had left office, is still ongoing.
Regardless of what the next year brings, I look forward to covering it, and am, as always, grateful to everyone who aided my reporting by trusting me with telling their stories.
Happy New Year.
Predictions for 2025 –
1- Mayor Karen Bass will tell us homelessness has decreased as it continues to increase
2- Governor Newsom will tell us California has saved money when actually CA is broke
3- More “mom and pop” stores will close in the palisades despite the Chamber of Commerce telling us “business is great”
4- Hollywood will never return to Los Angeles
5- home prices and rents will continue to rise due to housing shortages in LA
6- the SM needle exchange program will continue on despite loud vocal opposition to it
I have to leave the Palisades now to find a restaurant as lovely as Draycott…with food as good and prices as reliable. What will close next, causing us another loss of convenience, and comfort of driving such a doable distance for seniors….and there are LOTS of us.