EDITORIAL; SLUMLORDS WELCOME CITY'S PROGRAM TO ELIMINATE SUBSTANDARD HOUSING IS A SHAM.Wanted: Slumlords. Welcome to L.A. Good location to do business. No government intervention. Profits aplenty a·plen·ty adj. In plentiful supply; abundant: "There were warning signs aplenty for their candidates as well" Michael Gelb. . Three years ago, Mayor Richard Riordan Richard J. Riordan (born May 1, 1930) is a Republican politician from California, U.S. who served as the California Secretary of Education from 2003–2005 and as Mayor of Los Angeles from 1993–2001. Riordan ran for Governor of California unsuccessfully in 2002. and the City Council initiated a program to rid the city of slum housing and granny flats where whole families are shoehorned into converted garages that have one light bulb swinging from a frayed extension cord and no heat. Sometimes, the firetraps killed whole families. Oftentimes, the slum conditions killed whole neighborhoods. Now we learn the city's much ballyhooed program to eradicate slum housing in L.A. just meant the mayor and the council pulled down a shade to hide the ugly problem from the public's prying pry·ing adj. Insistently or impertinently curious or inquisitive: ignored the prying journalists' questions. pry eyes. The failure to hire enough inspectors, as the Daily News reported last week, means the city's three-year plan The Three-Year Plan of Reconstructing the Economy (Polish: Trzyletni Plan Odbudowy Gospodarki) was a centralized plan created by the Polish communist government to rebuild Poland after the devastation of the Second World War. will theoretically take six, but only if the mayor and the council include more money in the budget to get the job done. Fat chance anything will happen now, with the city facing a budgetary crisis over the Rampart police scandal. No wonder city leaders are creating diversions and calling each other names. There would be chaos if the public really got wind of what's in store. L.A. stands poised to be the country's first Third World nation -- a city teeming teem 1 v. teemed, teem·ing, teems v.intr. 1. To be full of things; abound or swarm: A drop of water teems with microorganisms. 2. with tenements, poverty and squalor squal·or n. A filthy and wretched condition or quality. [Latin squ  lor, from squ . A city
incapable of housing its poor, treating its sick, caring for its
elderly. A city where its leaders live in gated enclaves, isolated from
reality and only come down from the mountain to hold fund-raisers for
their next elected offices.
L.A.'s lack of passion in enforcing its own program is the direct result of its elected leaders having no coherent vision for the city in the 21st century. Their ineptitude Ineptitude See also Awkwardness. Brown, Charlie meek hero unable to kick a football, fly a kite, or win a baseball game. [Comics: “Peanuts” in Horn, 543] Capt. Queeg incompetent commander of the minesweeper Caine. in dealing with the problems at hand leaves no hope that the future will be any better. The privileged city rulers could care less what happens to the quality of life of ordinary people, or whether they are forced to flee as so many have in the past two decades. But it's not too late to fight back and demand better. Term limits are driving this generation of leaders from office and creating a chance for a new breed. Let's hope these new leaders will actually put the interests of the city ahead of their own careers and the greed of their cronies. |
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