It never occurred to us—Carol Massie, Lady Macbeth…hmmm…
As anyone who’s awake in this city knows, the City of LA is considering a comprehensive strategy for dealing with homelessness. At Tuesday’s CHC Board of Directors meeting, the incomparably executive directrix Kerry Morrison, in her inimitably Board-by-the-nose-leading manner, told the Board of Directors that what they wanted to do about that right now was precisely nothing, and she’d get back to them next month to let them know if they wanted to do anything later. She also passed around a letter from the Fashion District as an example (although, in keeping with the zillionaire elite’s weirdly commie ethic with respect to the content of their public comments, the whole thing is essentially plagiarized from Carol Schatz’s letter on behalf of the Central City Association; why these people aren’t ashamed to show their faces in public we are never gone understand…) You can read a transcription after the break along with what we humbly hope are some entertaining observations.
Continue reading The Myth of the Young Violent Crazy Housing-Resistant Hollywood Hobo Strikes Again as Central Hollywood Coalition BID-Boardies Brian Folb and Carol Massie Misunderstand Pretty Much Everything about the City’s New Comprehensive Homeless Strategy
![Assistant Chief Jorge Villegas, LAPD: "As you know [homelessness] is an extremely complex issue to address. It is not as simple as simply making an arrest. As you know, we cannot arrest [our] way out of this complex social issue."](https://michaelkohlhaas.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Villegas-DC.jpg)
However, there’s also been some action in the LA Catholic Worker/LACAN v. City of LA/CCEA case. You may recall that the plaintiffs called for a hearing on January 11, 2016 over a motion to compel the City of Los Angeles to stop being so damned recalcitrant about handing over discovery material, and everybody seems super-tense about everything and mad at one another in a way that one doesn’t usually see with actual professional lawyers. Anyway, yesterday the plaintiffs filed a supplemental memorandum of law in support of their motion to compel, which makes for some interesting reading in the run-up to the hearing on the 11th.
TL;DR is that the plaintiffs accuse the City of LA of abusing the rule requiring parties to “meet and confer” over discovery matters by providing irrelevant material and so on in order to run out the clock on discovery. I’m convinced by their arguments, but obviously I’m biased. There’s also a hyper-meta discussion on whether the fact that an attorney directs the discovery process makes the documents used to coordinate the process into privileged attorney work-product. I’m sure I missed all the fine points, but I’m definitely convinced. These people will claim privilege for anything. Shameless. Find curated selections from the pleading after the break.
Continue reading Quick Updates on Two Federal Lawsuits
The City of LA, in this pleading, asked for an extension of fewer than 30 days, which evidently is granted automatically. With this motion the City is due to respond by January 19, 2016.
On the other hand, the Fashion District BID, in this pleading, with the concurrence (stipulation) of the plaintiffs, asked for more than 30 days to respond. Evidently this requires the approval of the court, so they have to give reasons:
Continue reading Street Vending Lawsuit Defendants City of LA and Fashion District BID File Requests in Federal Court Yesterday Asking for Extension to January to Respond to Initial Complaint, FDBID and Plaintiffs Intend Attempt to Resolve Informally
… but what’s the role for BIDs? I mean, so many of our BID officers are front line on the street. I met with Central City East BID, this BID, there was another BID, um, I forgot, but, you know, there was another BID that we’ve just been talking to, and the spike in violence, spike in substance abuse, the spike in, um, families, so it’s people with children that are out on the street in these encampments and often are abandoned, sometimes if their parents are active substance abusers, just the spike in the number of people, the spike in, the sense of permanency, I would say, with encampments, when before they’ve been, you know, none of this is [unintelligible], but someone may have been in a sleeping bag at the bus stop, but now, those coming in [unintelligible], they’re out in San Pedro, there was like a block-long encampment, that was pretty sturdy, you wouldn’t just be able to go in and take it down, you know, at some point, there was carpentry skills keeping it up, so it’s, it’s, how do we, how do we, adjust this, and what are, what do you guys see, and what’s, how can we empower BIDs so that, that information that they’re seeing and that experience that they’re having is fed back into us as policy-makers and we can together come [unintelligible] a solution.
Continue reading Garcetti Aide Alisa Orduna at the SVBID Part 2, in which she Proposes to “Empower” BIDs (Including the Freaking CCEA?!?!) to Deal with Homelessness and, No Joke, to Pay Homeless People’s Parents to Let them Move Back In
