Affordable Housing

Federal aid? Tax credits? New construction? Yes, these are all strategies for coping with the severe overcrowding and homelessness. But we must not forget the most rational and least costly strategy: preserving the housing we already have.

I live in a complex of 800 rental units that are affordable, thanks to rent control, to a rich mixture of very-low to moderate-income tenants. Yet the owner proposes to demolish our sturdy, well-designed, 40-year-old complex in favor of building new luxury townhouses.

We tenants, assisted by a nonprofit developer, have been organizing to buy the housing from the owner so we can stabilize the rents and preserve our community. Many public officials have been helpful and encouraging; others have said, “The housing is his property; we can’t tell him how to dispose of it.” Right?

Wrong. The Los Angeles City Council is able, indeed honor-bound, to immediately enact a moratorium on the demolition of affordable rental units.

Let’s stop paying lip service to the need for affordable housing while we avert our eyes from its daily destruction so that a few wealthy speculators can maximize their profits at the public’s expense.

SHEILA BERNARD

Venice