The Hardcore Property Rights Activists at Fair Housing Coalition were at it again for the month of April fighting hard for Property Rights in Los Angeles.

HOUSING COMMITTEE MEETING

In April 18, 20 of our members attended a Housing Committee Meeting. The meeting was to discuss the meetings Housing Providers had with LAHD regarding issues with the Rent Stabilization Ordinance. During the meeting several members spoke out regarding the abuse and corruption in the LAHD. We talked especially about the insidious REAP law which confiscates properties from housing providers in LA. We also spoke about are meeting with the LAHD where we felt that they not only didn’t care but that they didn’t like us.

After Public Comment an interesting thing happened.  Councilmen Richard Alarcon and Ed Reyes, who usually are on the opposite side of the rope when it comes to Housing Providers Rights, both speak about their unease regarding REAP. Alarcon admitted he did vote for the REAP law during its inception but felt the way its applied today is not what he envisioned when he voted. He felt that instead of focusing on egregious and really bad Landlords the LAHD is instead citing small mom-and-pop Housing Providers with minor building code violations that can be difficult to fix.

The interim head of the LAHD – Rushmore Cervantes also took questions from the Housing Committee. His responses were shaky and unprepared. In regards to the REAP program Rushmore clearly shined the light on the obvious critical problem within REAP. Rushmore said himself that REAP is a catch-22 since the program was supposedly designed to motivate Housing Providers to fix the problems with the property, instead it takes away their only source of income, puts a substandard lien on the property so they can’t get a loan, then forces them to pay property taxes, mortgage, and upkeep, while fining $50/per unit per month and all the other legal fees and fines.

The Housing Committee meeting did provide some hope that REAP will be eliminated but we are not crossing our fingers, a lot of fighting still must be done.

LAHD “Workshop” Meeting Regarding REAP

The LAHD agreed to hold a meeting with members of the Fair Housing Coalition regarding REAP and other issues within the LAHD. Also present were Deena Eberly of the Eberly Company (A Landlord Outreach Contractor paid by the City ) and Inner City Law Center Representatives (A Tenant Outreach Contractor paid by the City).

Initially there was a surprise visit by Bill Rosendahl – CD 11 in front of our group. The faces of the LAHD members and Outreach Contractors were stunned as he took questions from the audience and expressed his dismay with Section 8 Housing issues and how to encourage Landlords to take in more Section 8 Tenants. He fielded questions from the audience and was genuine and sincere. He left telling us to keep up the work and to continue to express our problems at City Hall.

Then the LAHD began their presentation. The initial words were a slap in our faces. Senior LAHD Official Roya Babazadeh was telling us not to take anything the LAHD does personally, that it is only a business of ours that is being hurt and it is only money, not our lives. Roya Babazadeh clearly lives in an alternate Universe where she is supreme dictator and we are merely her pawns she can play around with. The Fair Housing Coalition mob did not agree with Babazadeh.

Roya Babazadeh told the crowd to calm down and treated us like school children. She kept lecturing us about how to prevent yourself from getting into REAP. It was a convoluted mess of words and nothings that symbolized the corruption and stupidity of the LAHD. We were their not because we don’t know how to maintain and run a good building but because we got into REAP after doing everything by the book!

The crowd of Housing Providers didn’t like the demeaning attitude of the LAHD speakers. Senior Inspector Gregerson even blew his whistle at us for supposedly being too loud. They refused to answer our questions and sounded like corrupt slimy politicians instead. Deena Eberly of the Eberly Company, supposedly a Landlord advocate, wasn’t much better. She had a demeaning attitude towards us and said that REAP was a great program and that more cities should follow it. The Fair Housing Coalition feels that Eberly Company should not be getting paid City Money to run an outreach program for Landlords when they themselves aren’t advocating for our issues.

The Inner City Law Center was their as well with two representatives. They remained quiet most of the time until a member in the crowd revealed that the Inner City Law Center is going around suing Housing Providers with class action lawsuits. The Inner City Law Center is also paid very nicely to keep suing Housing Providers.

Overall, the meeting showed that their is no hope with the current LAHD senior staff and management! They all need to go, especially Roya Babazadeh!

PROTEST OUTSIDE LAHD HEADQUARTERS

On May 1st, 15 Landlords and some tenants showed up to protest abuses going on at the LAHD. We were their for two hours holding our signs and chanting “REAP is RAPE” and “Flush Rushmore”. We also handed out literature to people walking in and out from the LAHD. A bunch of Landlords joined our group and some tenants agreed with our positions. Even LAHD workers told us in whispers that they are just doing their jobs and agree with us that the LAHD Upper Management is corrupt and evil.

MONTH IN REVIEW

The month of April was busy for the Fair Housing Coalition. Our ranks are growing and so is our enthusiasm and support. We need more members and Landlords to show up at the events. Especially important are the events at City Hall in front of the City Councilmembers making new legislation. We need as many people as we can at these meetings. It makes a huge difference. The legislation in the pipeline is devastating for Landlords. Although we delayed the ACE program, Paul Koretz is still pushing it through with minor modifications. This is unacceptable. ACE must be laid to rest forever! Paul Koretz is also planning a new enforcement unit! This time within the Planning Department. It is called the Conditional Compliance Unit. We must fight this as well but the only way to do this is to come to the meetings, make your phone calls and write your letters and emails!

THE “DIVINE RIGHTS” of CARMEN TRUTANICH

By

Carol Knapp

Apparently Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich…”NUCH”* to friends…feels he has the “divine right of kings” when it comes to the law.

Property owners have been getting das boot from der city for years with outrageous “fees, fines and surcharges”, criminal liability for tenant destruction, Kangaroo Court “administrative hearings”…and even rent confiscation for missing building permits. Historically, “das boot” was reserved for “mom and pop” housing providers while home owners and renters…the largest voting blocs…were exempt. However, I am happy to announce that the joy of das boot- in-the-ass will be shared with the homeowners, too. How? Listen up:

Houseguest Squatters’ Rights

I was recently informed by “L.A.’s finest” that if a houseguest stays for 10 consecutive days your guest morphs into a “tenant” replete with all perks of real tenants, i.e. the ones who pay rent. You can’t just lock the freeloaders out, according to the officer, you must evict them! That means about 3 months from start to finish while your “guest” lays about the patio sipping Piῆa Coladas.

Upon my request for a code section (my new mantra), the officer hemmed and hawed and finally admitted that it’s not really a law but rather a policy decided by “NUCH”. Nice to know that now, rather than a nation of “laws”, we are a nation of “policies”. Hmmmm….equal protection under the policy? How about, “Perry Mason, attorney-at-policy”? Or, my favorite T.V. show, “Policy and Order”?

A.C.E. – Administrative Code Enforcement

The “NUCH Squad” got worried about their pension funds, so The Big Guy came up with A.C.E., which by-passes judges and courts and “notice and opportunity to cure”…and dives headlong into our pockets without all the “fuss and muss” of due process. ACE goons will issue “tickets” for alleged “code violations”…e.g. cracks in the sidewalk…that will now be homeowners’ responsibility…and fine you

before you get the chance to fix or fight it. If this thing passes, I’ve vowed to cordon off the sidewalk in front of my house, thereby forcing passers-by to pass-by in the street. After all, what if they trip on the sidewalk? Now I’m liable instead of the city, although sidewalk repair is the city’s responsibility.

Pronounced “Nuke” as in “nuclear threat”.

Ignoring Court Orders

Some owners have sued the city and won judgments in their favor. However, NUCH’s band of merry scheisters…with full approval by their boss…could care less!

Property owners David and Barbara Darwish petitioned the court (L.A. Superior) for a “writ of mandate” to enjoin LAHD and the NUCHsters from criminally prosecuting the couple because they owned a 3-unit, which the city irrationally insisted was only a 2-unit, and ordered them to “return it to 2-units”. According to former Judge David Yaffe, the Housing Department’s job was to ensure habitability…not jail folks because the Department of B.S. lost the permits. The Housing Department even published a brochure for owners, “Preparing Residential Housing for Habitability Inspections” (“google” it), which lists the code sections for which owners must comply. Building permits…or lack thereof…were not listed as “habitability” issues.

Never ones to turn down a chance to pick our pockets while dispensing das boot, LAHD and the NUCHian ambulance-chasers continue to cite and prosecute owners for these bogus “violations” outside the scope of their authority as they are not habitability issues. While trial court decisions are not legally precedential, the local judge’s opinion about the very milieu in which he exists, should count for something, no?

NUCH’S decision to ignore this judgment in favor of providing crony developer with ample bargain-basement-priced real estate says it all.

Violation of Due Process

Santa Monica attorney, Thomas Nitti, has represented owners more than once because LAHD sent the Notices to Comply to wrong addresses, after the compliance date, or not at all.

Nevertheless, LAHD continues to violate this most basic due process right…NOTICE AND AN OPPORTUNITY TO BE HEARD….with impunity. So why should NUCH and company care if the city gets sued over and over again? It’s not their money slipping down the rabbit hole…it’s YOURS!

Fraud Upon the Court

Attorney Darian Bojeaux, prosecuted by NUCH’s henchwoman, SERENA CHRISTION, finally got a judge, the Hon. Henry Barela, to agree that LAHD and the C.A. Office were charging unconstitutional “costs” to defendants. Of course Attorney Christion vowed to appeal this decision, apparently hoping to get a crony judge to agree with her.

Angelenos, haven’t you had enough? Are you going to let NUCH continue to “nuke” the Bill of Rights? He wants to be District Attorney so his tyranny “under color of law”,,,err…”POLICY”… can spread to the entire county.

Please, “JUST SAY, “NO” TO CORRUPT POLITICIANS and other infectious diseases.

Lest the reader be misled to think that “Nuch” is a one-man show, rest assured he’s but a cog in the wheel…or better said…a glob of grease on the chin…of that bubbling cesspool of corruption called The City of Los Angeles. L.A. has been dubbed the “Second Most Corrupt City in the Nation” (after Chicago) by the L.A. Times.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/12/carmen-trutanich-la-district-attorney_n_1327217.html

http://thetruthfacts.com

http://blogs.laweekly.com/informer/2012/03/carmen_trutanich_chief_prosecu.php

With the steady stream of properties entering the REAP program and rent money being confiscated by the city, the Fair Housing Coalition is wondering if there is a quota system in the LA Housing Department in regards to inspections. The City has lost a huge court case, the Judge issued an order stating the City cannot be citing matters of building code, they have no jurisdisction. Now the city is ignoring that order and pretending like it doesn’t exist. The sociopathic alternate reality of the LAHD high command will only make things worse. We are determined to stop REAP and the illegal inspections of the LAHD. If you have an inspection coming up let us know we’d love to film it.

A landlord in NYC is fighting Rent Control and taking the case to the US Supreme Court. This could have wide ramifications for landlords all across the US, including Los Angeles. Let’s support James Harmon in his fight against Rent Control.

Article Taken From New York Times:

By ANEMONA HARTOCOLLIS
Published: December 19, 2011

James D. Harmon Jr. learned the value of a house as a child, shoveling coal into the furnace of one of two Upper West Side buildings owned by his grandfather, a French immigrant who worked as a waiter. “Jimmy, you take care of your building and your building will take care of you,” his grandfather told him.

“But the word he used in French wasn’t building” Mr. Harmon recalled the other day. “The word he used in French was ‘maison,’ which means home.”

Now Mr. Harmon, 68, who grew up in one of those buildings — a bow-fronted town house on West 76th Street near Central Park — has gone to the United States Supreme Court contending that New York City’s rent laws constitute a “taking” of his property without just compensation, a violation of his constitutional rights.

The regulations are meant to support the government’s goal of maintaining affordable housing for its citizens. Instead, he says, the laws have forced him and his family to shoulder the government’s burden and extend what is essentially “privatized welfare” to rent-stabilized tenants who are paying rent 59 percent below market rates and who have rights of succession to their lodgings in his house.

“Put yourself in our position,” Mr. Harmon, a former federal prosecutor, said of himself and his wife, Jeanne. “Suppose somebody told you, you’ve got an extra bedroom, we’d like to put someone in there for as long as they want to stay, and you have to take care of them for the rest of their lives and the rest of your life. That’s really what this is like.”

Read the Whole Article – Click Here.

Housing Providers Ready Your Lawsuits — Superior Court Judge Jaffe crushes the LAHD in latest Ruling

The case is Barbara Darwoush vs. City of Los Angeles – 10/06/2011

A recent ruling by Judge Yaffe may lay the groundwork for many lawsuits by discriminated Housing Provicers in the city of Los Angeles. The judge effectively stated that the LAHD is overstepping its legislative authority by citing matters relating to building code. In this lawsuit the LAHD wanted a landlord to reduce the amount of legal units from 4 to 2. The judge ruled that the LAHD has no authority telling a landlord how many units his building can legally operate since they do not have this authority under the existing law! As long as the landlord pays the rental registration fees and provides an emergency number the LAHD has no business in judging the amount of legal units a building has.

The basis summary of the ruling is that the LAHD is greatly overstepping its ministerial duties and is not allowed to use provisions of the RSO to cite matters relating to building code.  The only department that can cite matters of the building code is the LADBS (Los Angeles Department of Building and Safety), not the LAHD. The judge’s mandate says that the LAHD cannot cite matters relating to building code since that is not part of the Rent Stabilization Ordinance.  The judge goes even further and says the Building Department itself has adequate enforcement provisions.

“The City does not authorize its Housing Department to use the ministerial provisions of the Rent Stabilization Ordinance to force a landlord to comply with the city’s building code. The building code is to be enforced by utilizing the enforcement provisions contained in that code.”

The judge also added more salt to the open festering wound that is the LAHD. The city contends it can cite illegal units because the authority derives from a memorandum issued by the General Manager of the Building Department and the General Manager of the Housing Department issued to their staffs on December 1, 1999 stating that the Housing Department henceforth will enforce building code provisions as they pertain to multi-family housing.

Here is the Judge’s Response:

“The contention has no merit because the two general managers who issued the memorandum do not have the authority to repeal or amend a county ordinance duly adopted by the City Council, the legislative body of the City. ”

Judge Yaffe is basically stating the LAHD had no authority since December  1, 1999 to cite matters relating to building code.

This is a bombshell ruling! Since that time tens of thousands of properties have been placed into REAP due to supposed building code infractions cited by non-authorized LAHD inspectors. Hundreds of Millions of Dollars have been confiscated from Landlords since December 1, 1999 because of matters relating to building code violations once again cited by non-authorized LAHD inspectors. Thousands of people have lost their properties illegally. The city has confiscated their property with no citing authority that was never law!

The SCEP Inspections run by the LAHD on multi-family properties all cite matters related to building code.  For the past 12 years the LAHD has been doing this illegally. Tens of thousands of properties since that time have been placed into REAP. Hundreds of Millions of Dollars, perhaps Billions of Dollars have been illegally confiscated by the LAHD. We can now say this with a straight face since the Judge basically has mandated what Housing Providers have been saying all along: The LAHD  has no business whatsoever citing building code. Not only should the city be sued for billions, perhaps even individual inspectors should be sued for causing immense amount of pain and suffering to Housing Providers, many of whom have died from the stress caused by the LAHD.

Shouldn’t the city return the money it has stolen over false pretenses over that past 12 years? Imagine all the people who lost their livelihood and property due to the LAHD overstepping its ministerial authority.  They should all be compensated for loss of property, pain and suffering.

This settlement should be in the billions of dollars.

We need top-notch attorneys ready to fight the city of Los Angeles so housing providers can get our rights back and just compensation.  We need attorneys who know how to navigate the LA County Superior Court system and avoid the tactics and tricks used by the City Attorney’s office. We now have many members willing to help out financially to fight this war.

Please email contact@fairhousingcoalition.com if you can help us.

Click here to download a copy of the actual case and Judge’s Mandate and Order.

The Fair Housing Coalition utilizes the media again by going in the newspapers. The Los Angeles Business Journal interviewed a number of Landlords, including many from the Fair Housing Coalition. We expressed our explicit opposition to the ACE ordinance in its entirety! We want ACE to FAIL! It will be a disaster for our city and it will definitely cause immense harm to the Housing Providers and Businesses in Los Angeles!

Click here to download the Article.

On October 3, the Budget and Finance Committe took up consideration of the ACE Ordinance (Administrative Code Enforcement). This Ordinance will give unlimited power to every city inspector to fine you on the spot with no court hearing and no due process. It will allow all LAHD Inspectors to cite you for every small little thing and fine you Thousands of Dollars on the spot with an “Administrative Hearing” (We know what that means). The Ordinance also gives huge powers to the LADBS to fine and cite homeowners with ease and push neighbor on neighbor citations. It also gives Police Officers the ability to cite and fine almost everything in the Los Angeles Municipal Code. This ordinance is being pushed hard by City Attorney Carmen Trutanich and City Councilmember Paul Koretz. It will be used in addition to Criminal Prosecution! A tactic the City Attorney’s office is using is saying that this Ordinance will replace Criminal Prosecution. This is a lie. In fact it will be used in addition to Criminal Prosecution. Imagine as a housing provider dealing with SCEP, LAHD, REAP, Health Department, LAFD, and now ACE. This will kill the industry and destroy LA.

During the meeting, 15 Fair Housing Coalition members along with other landlord advocates showed up. We spoke our mind, stomped our feet, and clapped our hands. At the end of the day the ordinance was chewed up and spat upon by CM Bill Rosendahl. Others including Mitch Englander and Bernie Parks felt uncomfortable about it as well. This bill allow neighbors to cite other neighbors and further increase tensions in the city. ACE is something we don’t need, EVER. The ordinance was pushed back another 30 days for a new hearing. We must prepare again to fight even harder. Please contact the Following Councilmembers to express you opposition to the ACE ordinance. Please call and email your opposition. Make sure to Contact Paul Koretz and give him an earful as he is still very much supportive of ACE.

Paul Koretz, District 5 (213) 473-7005 paul.koretz@lacity.org
Bernard Parks, District 8 (213) 473-7008 Councilmember.Parks@lacity.org
Tony Cardenas, District 6 (213) 473-7006 Councilmember.Cardenas@lacity.org
Mitchell Englander, District 12 (213) 473-7012 Councilmember.Englander@lacity.org
Bill Rosendahl, District 11 (213) 473-7011 Councilmember.Rosendahl@lacity.org

Click here to download a copy of the ordinance.

Here Is Your Big Wake-Up Call

Near the end of August 2011, I spoke at a meeting of the Housing Commissioners at the main office of the Los Angeles Housing Department. I gave a speech about the corrupt nature of REAP and the unfair polices of the LAHD towards landlords in Los Angeles.

After I was finished speaking, the president of the board suggested to me, in a polite way, that I should go and speak before the Housing Committee (a group of six City Council members who oversee the LAHD) and also the full City Council. So, two weeks later, I showed up at City Hall, at 8:30 AM, on a Wednesday morning to address the members of the Los Angeles City Council who sit on the board of the Housing Committee.

I arrived a few minutes early and while I was waiting for the meeting to begin, a well-dressed woman came up to me and asked to speak with me privately. We left the room, walked up the hallway and what she told me really opened by eyes. She told me that the upper management of the LAHD along with some elected officials decided to turn the LAHD into LA’s biggest landlord. Last year in 2010, the LAHD acquired 1,000 rental units that they are now using for low-income tenants. Since she and I only spoke for about two minutes, I was not able to ask her twenty questions.
This information is too important to ignore. So, we need to do some research this and find the answers to the following questions:

1. Are any of the rental units that the LAHD acquired last year formerly buildings that that had been in REAP?

2. Is it possible that the LAHD is putting buildings in REAP and then after the landlord loses hi/her building in foreclosure because they have no income to pay the mortgage, after the bank forecloses on the property, has the City bought any of these properties from the banks for pennies on the dollar?

3. Is the CRA involved in any of this?

From what I was told, the LAHD wants to increase its annual acquisition of rental units. Are we suppose to wait until the City starts to acquire 2,000, 3,000 or 5,000 units a year from landlords they have driven out of business? We must start doing some research and find out where these new acquisitions are located and who owned these properties previously.
Based on national news reports that I’ve read, the City of Los Angeles has a reputation as the worst run big city in the USA. The city is also the worst landlord in the city. Just take a look at the projects the City owns; shootings, murders and violent crime are commonplace. If any private landlord operated his/her buildings the way the City of Los Angeles operates its rental properties, that landlord would have been sent to prison years ago.

So now we have another question… Most likely every low-income rental unit that the City owns loses money. When you consider the low rent the tenants pay and what it costs to operate public housing, the City is in a losing cash flow. So who pays the difference? Answer: the taxpayers.

There is so much crime associated with public housing that the City must maintain a private police force just to regulate what goes on. Then you have City officials who oversee the operation. They have salaries and one day will be collect hefty pensions.

On top of that, you have contractors who come in to do repairs who often charge the City up to five times the going rate for the repairs they do. So, if the City is losing money on every rental unit that is owns, why does it want to expand a losing operation? I believe that answer is that government bureaucrats see themselves superior to the public, they don’t respect taxpayer funds and they embrace more of a socialist view of the world than a free market economy. Welcome to the new Los Angeles.

When the government becomes a landlord, across the country, it usually does a bad job of managing the properties, criminals and gangs often move in. Considering how its costs the City to be in the landlord business, this causes a colossal waste of taxpayer’s funds.

Still, the LAHD wants to acquire more units and generate a bigger loss for the taxpayers.
This is insanity. Maybe it is the next level up of political correctness?
Who is going to be living in public housing? Will it be people who are permanently on welfare? Will the city allow undocumented people to move in? Will these units contained people with criminal records or will families of gang members be allowed to move in?

You can’t change human nature. When government gives away housing or money, it destroys the desire to succeed in the people who are living off the government. Unfortunately people who sit home watching TV and collecting welfare most times end up creating offspring who will follow in their footsteps.

When it comes to landlords, this is so extremely unfair… The Los Angeles Housing Department is a city agency that regulates landlords and at the same time this agency is also in competition with landlords, this is truly a conflict of interest to the tenth power. If we can prove that some REAP properties or the real estate they sit on, have ended up being owned by the City and turned into public housing, we can create a national scandal in the media.

This is just not unfair to landlords; it is unfair to everyone who pays taxes. What about the millions of average working people in Los Angeles who are struggling to pay rent or pay a mortgage without a government handout, how do you think they’re going to feel when the City of Los Angeles supplies rental units at very low rent to those who on welfare or not here legally? This is slap in the face to all decent people who are playing by the rules.

How would the average person feel if the City acquired an apartment building in a stable neighborhood and started bringing in families that have gang members or people with criminal backgrounds? Can you imagine how some parents might feel who have wholesome teenager daughters and then some hoodlum wants to get to know her better because he lives up the street from her?
What I find mind-boggling is the culture, the mindset within the Los Angeles Housing Department that landlords are evil. Many of the people at the LAHD believe that landlords are people who exploit poor people because making a profit from renting apartments is a form of oppression against the poor. These idiots see themselves as heroes when they drive a landlord into bankruptcy, acquire the property from the bank and then create more low-income housing at the taxpayer’s expense.

Let’s look at the concept of “low-income housing”. The LAHD employees hundreds of people that one day will be collecting millions of dollars in pension retirement funds. If the government really wants to help poor people who can’t afford to rent an apartment at fair market value, then the government should give that money to poor people in the form of rental credits and then poor people can pay their landlord directly. We can put a stop to the millions of dollars being wasted by the City because the City does a terrible job at operating public housing. This money can be used to help more people in the areas of job training so they can rise up above their situation. Some of the money could also go to landlords and more poor people could end up in well-run apartment buildings. If the majority of this money that is now being used to acquire more rental units by the city went directly into paying rent for poor people, the taxpayers would get the most bang for the buck and more landlords would be able to remain in business.

The City of Los Angeles is in debt to the tune of more than three hundred million dollars. We all know that jobs are leaving LA. As the years go by, this is going to reduce the amount of money the city collects in business taxes. As the City of Los Angeles goes deeper and deeper in debt, they still want to acquire more and more rental units that will cost more and more tax funds to sustain these units. In business, when one is losing money, one must do everything possible to cut one’s loses. Here the City wants to own more rental units that will eat up more taxpayer dollars. Every apartment that the City of Los Angeles owns loses money because the rent income does not cover the cost of maintaining the property. Are we going nuts here? Maybe some of these bureaucrats are possessed by the Devil or they did a deal with the Devil?

As landlords we have been an easy target by politicians, they blame us for the high cost of rent in Los Angeles. We know that in the past, the general public is not concerned with our legal problems or if the LAHD treats us unfairly. This new information should appeal to business owners, homeowners and most of the general public. This info could be our “silver bullet”. If we have to present it in a way to cause public outrage, we will. Now, we have a chance to fight back and do some real damage. We can go public and make the general public realize how badly their tax dollars are being wasted. We must create a really strong scandal to waking up the business community because whenever the City starts to run low on money, it raise taxes on the business community first and then on the general public secondly.

Government has a responsibility to provide specific services to the public. Being in the landlord business is not one of them. This is much room for improvement in other areas. The City of Los Angeles does a terrible job of repairing the streets. Because the city is so deep in the red financially, the City of LA is talking about closing down fire stations and cutting back on some city services. Public tax funds should go into providing traditional city services and not into expanding public housing. After decades of failure and huge financial loses, why is the City of Los Angeles in the landlord business at all? The City has proven itself to be a terrible landlord. That job is best left to the private sector.

Also… I heard a rumor that tens of million of dollars of Federal grant money has been given to LA to help solve housing problems but instead of helping mom and pop landlords with grants, the city has kept that money for itself.

There are three things we must do.

First – Since I am an army of one, we must raise some money and hire an investigate reporter to work for us. We only need this person for about a month. There are bound to be several people living in LA who have worked for a newspaper or a TV station in that position. We need to find out for sure if buildings that were put in REAP by the LAHD somehow ended up being owned by the City of Los Angeles.

Secondly – Once all the facts are in, if we have the makings of a true scandal, if we uncover some hard-hitting corruption, we must go public. We must reveal everything on our web site and ten advertise in the media so the public starts going to our web site for the entire story.

Thirdly – Once we have all the facts, we must send a package to every member of the Senate and Congress in Washington, DC. Maybe we will find one person to hold hearings to weed out the criminals in LA government. We must also file a civil rights complaint with the Department of Justice. How can any landlord compete with a government agency that has the power to confiscate his/her rent money?

Isn’t this how the government confiscated all private property in Russia during the 1930’s?
At the present time our coalition has 93 members. My e-mail database contains 1,400+ landlords who I’ve been sending out updates to for two years now. For those of you who claim to be too busy to get involved, you need to reset your priorities. If things keep going the way they are in Los Angeles more and more properties will end up in REAP. Or, the CRA might come along and take your property away from you.

Unless we work together to bring about change, the quality of life in Los Angeles will continue to deteriorate and the value of your properties will decline. We need to expose the evil LAHD master plan and help people get elected to public office who understand that government is a business. I’m not against helping poor help who live in Los Angeles but the way the City going about it there is just too much overhead. At this time, for all the money it takes to one person into affordable housing, if all the money that is being wasted were paid directly to landlords five to ten times more people could be helped Landlords would need to be paid a rent amount that is inline with fair market value so they will have the funds to properly maintain their buildings because we all now that rent control creates slums.
If you agree or disagree with me, please don’t write me back a long letter, that won’t solve anything. Instead get involved, come to our meetings and donate a little money so we can continue going forward. For more than two years, we’ve been struggling to find that one piece of information that will open up Pandora’s box and now we have it. We must not allow this opportunity to be wasted.

Bill Hooey

Last Thursday, Fair Housing Coalition Members attended a meeting of the Los Angeles Housing Department Commissioners. This group meets twice a month, on Thursday to discuss the internal matters of the LAHD and also to set new policies.

Most landlords and renters have never heard of this group. These are public meetings where anyone can fill out a speaker card and offer up suggestions and opinions.

The e-mail blast that I send out last week inspired ten landlords to show up. Ten out of 1,500 is not a good turn out. If we’re going to bring about change and create a better climate in LA for landlords, more of us need to become involved. Anyway… one of the commissioners made a comment that this was the first time she had seen a group of landlords attend this meeting.

After we were all finished speaking (public comment). One commissioner suggested that we also start attending LA City Council meetings and Housing Committee meetings and speak up there too.
As I was leaving, the head commissioner spoke to me directly and suggested that I write a proposal of the changes that I feel are needed at the LAHD and if the commissioners agreed, they will take it to the full City Council for a vote and changes in the law. That was a surprise. I told him that I would return in two weeks at their next meeting with a proposal. Then as I approached the door, to exit the room, the same commissioner said to me “I heard you on the radio on Tuesday”.

This is good because we now have many people inside the LAHD listening in when I go on the radio. We have their attention so it is important to keep showing up at meetings and pointing out all the unfair laws against landlords in Los Angeles and all the unfair policies of the LAHD.

I’ve heard through the pipeline that many inspectors want to see change where landlords and renters are treated equally under the law. They want us to keep pushing for that.
At the same time, many in upper management at the LAHD, those who create the unfair policies towards landlords are nervous that if we generate public outrage, the Mayor will be forced to fire those who have created the problem and then their heads will be on the chopping block. That is good too. I will be sending out an e-mail blast about five days before the commissioners next meeting so you can adjust your schedule and attend. We will also be posting the schedule on the website. We NEED more Landlords to show up. One meeting a Month is not too much to ask for your investments.

Bill Hooey on KFWB 980 AM with Bob McCormick! Exposing LAHD and REAP! Fighting for Housing Providers!

The Fair Housing Coalition goes national again with Bill Hooey as he exposes the nefarious and evil tactics of LAHD. Landlords in LA are still having there properties confiscated and money stolen. Only the Fair Housing Coalition has the courage to expose this to the Media and start fighting back!