Papa Government and Property

However, before I delve into that topic, I’m going to wait for Steven Gourley’s forthcoming article on redevelopment agencies and eminent domain. I think it would be useful to get an insider’s view of the matter before issuing sweeping condemnations, especially since the city’s Redevelopment Plan expressly states that “Generally, personal property shall not be acquired. However, where necessary in the execution of this Plan, the Agency is authorized to acquire personal property in the Project area by any lawful means except eminent domain.” In the meantime, despite my continued suspicion of the city’s behavior and the intrigue surrounding Mr. Surfas’ property, I’ll just wait for the article while I laugh over Mr. Gourley calling Ari Noonan an “anarchist editor.” If it weren’t so patently silly, it would be enough to make real anarchists bristle and Mr. Noonan prefer to be called a liberal.

What’s Missing?

But Mr. Gourley’s last article (“Surfas Should Not Despair of a Solution, Says Ex-Councilman Gourley”) did raise some interesting issues, although I think he jumps the gun in defending the Redevelopment Agency’s work as a whole from a critique essentially centered on Mr. Surfas’ property. In any case, the Agency certainly has done much good in making Culver City what it is today, and the projects Mr. Gourley lists are worthy examples of good work. (Of course, as Mr. Noonan pointed out in a response to Mr. Gourley, a hefty price might have been paid for these good projects. For all we know, there might be metaphorical bodies in the concrete foundations. But I prefer to be charitable and give credit where credit is due unless something comes along to raise doubt.)

One Overlooked Point

However, missing from his list is affordable housing. And by affordable housing, I don’t mean those monstrosities called “the projects” that recall communist East Germany’s architecture. I mean housing that normal people, i.e. people who don’t have six-figure incomes or greater, can afford. With median house prices exceeding half a million dollars — and for tiny little things to boot, too — owning a house here in L.A. is becoming a pipe dream. And as a recent Yahoo!News article points, with people shut out of the housing market turning to renting property, rents are getting higher, too.

Where’s a Deceased Rich Uncle When You Need One?

What I’d like to know is, what has the Culver City Redevelopment Agency done to help alleviate this housing problem? The senior citizen housing is a good start. But what about everyone else? It seems that no matter where I drive, I see luxury condos going up. It’s bad enough that most of them are rather ugly. One particular specimen, on Centinela south of Venice, looks like one of two things happened: the contractor switched back and forth between imperial and metric measurements throughout the whole project, or the architect forgot that misaligning windows isn’t the same as deliberate and artistic asymmetrical design. Worse, however, is that they’re priced beyond too many people.

So where are the brainstorming sessions for architects, contractors, developers, and city officials, to come up with creative housing design schemes? Why isn’t there a public discussion going on? It’s nice that the city wants to improve itself, although how it goes about it is entirely debatable. But I worry that for all the talk of mixed-use developments, the residential aspect will once again go the high-end route. I also worry that Culver City will follow in the footsteps of Santa Monica’s self-inflicted yuppification, as represented by the transformed Third Street Promenade. I can see it now: the new Metro-oriented Culver City development favoring big retail chains instead of small businesses, just as it would favor residents with lots of money instead of the modest middle class.

But ,hey, it’s still early. I might just be a big ol’ pessimist in trying to sort out a redevelopment plot more convoluted than a Gordian knot. We’ll see.