The pachyderm in the City Hall parking lot – rent control – silenced for almost a year, restlessly is getting ready to return to the Culver City center stage, probably on a September agenda of the City Council.
Meet David, a self-conscious middle-aged bachelor who earns a modest living, and even that could evaporate this month. He does not want his last name published. He almost is too shy to step to the microphone before a crowd in Council Chambers and state his true feelings – that he is scared down to his ankles he will be summarily evicted if his present job goes away.
David also owns powerful feelings about the thorny Culver City issue of rent control.
A year ago this month, rent control, seldom previously seen, flared into a hugely contentious blaze when it became known two tenants in separate buildings Downtown adjacent suddenly had died shortly after learning their rents would be massively increase.
City Hall immediately hunkered down into a crouching defensive position, Repeatedly, city officials argued that no one could prove the unexpected deaths and the virtual 100 percent rent jumps were related.
Probably Coincidence?
Technically, City Hall’s well-timed response was correct. Corpses don’t talk, and the coroner doesn’t possess a rent control-verification app.
Soon enough, the crosstalk was drowned out by irresolution in City Hall. The subject of rent control died a quiet, supposedly natural, mid-autumn death.
It is back. So are David and fretting Culver City tenants like him.
David is just as worried – and quietly angry – about the universal aspects of rent control, fairness – in the form of of a percentage cap on rent increases in a year’s time – for all renters.
David only has lived in Culver City for three years. Loves the communal feeling, he says, and does not want to make public enemies. Nor does he want to debate the City Council while the whole town is looking in.
But when the City Council does address rent control, he wants them to do right by all tenants, especially those like him who feel as if they are walking around on stilts, sorely lacking stability.
