beyondchron.org

Los Angeles’s problem has been the enormous political clout of two constituencies that benefit from rising housing prices: Big Real Estate and homeowner groups. Landlord groups have kept Los Angeles’s rent control and rental housing protection laws much weaker than in San Francisco. Homeowner groups have stopped the city from building the rental units Los Angeles needs to meet rising population and job growth. Despite its extreme affordability crisis, I see a brighter housing future for Los Angeles for two reasons: a rising urbanist consciousness—reflected in groups like Abundant Housing and strong labor backing for housing—- and the vast availability of buildable land.

In other words, the supervisors want to continue the city’s practice of forcing tens of thousands of people into three hour round trip greenhouse gas creating car trips rather than allowing apartments to be built in most San Francisco neighborhoods. My problem is when they deny housing opportunities to a new generation of working and middle-class residents by maintaining zoning laws that allow new mansions in most of the city but not new apartments. San Francisco supervisors have no real strategy for housing the future middle-class in San Francisco. A middle-class family can only afford to move to Fewer’s district in two ways: by being selected for an inclusionary housing unit or if they can afford to buy a new condo in a newly built multi-unit building.

Fortunately, several familiar venues such as the Castro Theatre, the Roxie Theatre, the Pacific Film Archive, and the Creativity Theatre have made their spaces available for patrons to enjoy this year’s festival offerings. Things get off to a roaring start with the Opening Night Film, the hotly anticipated “Armistead Maupin’s Tales Of The City. ”; “Q Ball” (Golden State Warriors player Kevin Durant will appear in person as a co-producer on this documentary about the San Quentin Warriors basketball team, whose members include promising basketball players with careers derailed by felony convictions); and “Claire Denis: Tribute & ‘High Life’ In the 1960s, this black documentary filmmaker broke several industry paths such as being the first American-born black woman to produce and direct a television documentary film.

We’ve closed the polls on some earlier matchups, with Houston narrowly defeating Boston, Pittsburgh also squeaking by Portland, and Providence absolutely destroying Austin (we suppose that happens when an entire city is completely reimagined rather than just a developer building a nice building on a former parking crater). Here goes: This entry comes from Friend of Streetsblog Maren Hill, who told us about the development of Pike & Rose, a new mixed-use neighborhood on the Rockville Pike in the DC suburb of Montgomery County: The area now includes condos and apartments, bars, restaurants, and retail (both chain and local), and offices, The building architecture is all unique so it doesn’t look like some creepy model city project, it looks like an attractive walkable neighborhood. The additions include a transit center, a 28-story residential tower with a grocery store, apartments attached to the side of what was a single-use parking garage, and other mixed-use developments,” Gibble said.