Today's paper has another article, this one focusing on the (lack of) construction of "affordable housing" that the Redevelopment Act is supposed to require.
I suppose it's no news that, besides the Senior Housing projects of several decades ago, Rosemead did nothing for years. More recently (meaning, after the election of the short-lived progressive majority on the city council), the city did purchase and renovate a few houses for affordable housing, which is better than nothing, but obviously isn't doing anything to significantly affect housing affordability or availability in the city.
Night reader's comment on the mobile home park on Garvey and San Gabriel bears further examination. THAT'S blight, and that's what redevelopment dollars ought to be remediating. A new track for Rosemead High School? The Dinsmoor House? They shouldn't even be on the "long list" of potential useful projects for city redevelopment dollars. That's not what the Redevelopment Act intended.
Here's a link to Rosemead's
Here's a link to Rosemead's stats on the Times site:
http://projects.latimes.com/redevelopment/rosemead/
The problem with just giving money to deal with that blight at the corner of San Gabriel and Garvey is that the blight was created by the property owner.
In that situation, the property should be seized as penalty for breaking the law, and creating blight. It would send a message to land speculators not to mess with Rosemead.
Then the land should be sold to a residential developer on the open market, but with some legal stipulation that affordable units be created because dozens of low-income units were demolished.
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Rosemead, though, already has a lot of inexpensive units because it lets a barrio exist south of the 10 freeway. Economically, some parts look like East LA. I'm guessing that some Chinese and Vietnamese people being gentrified out of Chinatown are moving here (they'd probably get a subsidy).
The point of "affordable housing" or the other buzzword "workforce housing" is to make units available to people with stagnant wages facing a tide of rising housing prices. The effect should be to create a mix of low, moderate, and market rate units in a community.
The situation I see is that there are a lot of cheap units, but they are going to become tenements if they aren't already. The landlords aren't maintaining them at an acceptable level. House prices are still dropping.
I don't know the laws that govern dealing with that situation.
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Ideally, there would be a mix of incomes on that blighted site at SG and G, and the number of low-income units in other areas would be renovated so they could be rented out or sold at a higher price.
Displaced residents could be relocated into new subsidized units.
It's not the ideal system, but it could fix some problems related to deteriorating housing stock.
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I think one problem with these redevelopment agencies is that they're not operated by "socialist" type people. Look at TELACU. The bosses there drive expensive cars. They set up Tamayo restaurant so they could have a nice place to eat. Sheesh. No comment on CRA. Ugh.
What you want is someone who is more of a nerd, who actually likes the idea of mixed income communities, who likes poor people, and who can live on a modest salary. A "socialist" type person like Dorothy Day, or a "George Bailey" type person like Ralph Nader.