To the editor: Workers author Roger Vincent’s current article on why builders aren’t constructing in Los Angeles misses the true challenge (“Nearly nobody is constructing new residences in Los Angeles. Right here’s why,” Oct. 1). Let’s cease pretending most of our flesh pressers care about fixing the housing disaster. They preserve doubling down on the very insurance policies that created it: hire management, countless eviction bans, extreme crimson tape, top restrictions and now the ULA tax that makes tasks financially infeasible. Then they act stunned when nothing will get constructed.
In reality, hire management can even have destructive results for renters, discouraging builders from constructing to satisfy provide and demand. This isn’t a housing disaster, it’s a coverage disaster.
The apparent resolution is to switch crumbling rent-controlled buildings with taller residences in multifamily zones. As a substitute, the Metropolis Council clings to “anti-displacement” rhetoric that preserves blight whereas bulldozing single-family neighborhoods. Hire management plus eviction bans equals everlasting decay.
Yet one more issue typically neglected: condominiums. Builders keep away from them in California due to 10-year defect legal responsibility legal guidelines that invite countless lawsuits. That’s why nearly nobody builds condos right here, additional choking possession alternatives.
Till these failed insurance policies are repealed, Los Angeles will keep caught in decline.
George Papanikolas, Los Angeles
