Tag Archives: Homelessness

Los Angeles City Government, Los Angeles County Government

On July 13, 2020 Victor Hinderliter of LAHSA Wrote A Formal Memo To Director Heidi Marston Recommending That Kristy Lovich Be Fired — Here Is A Copy Of The Memo — Hinderliter Had Disciplined Lovich In June — And Here’s A Copy Of That Disciplinary Action Report — And Lovich’s Response To It — Which Reveals That Hinderliter Knew In Advance About Her Fateful All-Staff Email — The One She Was Fired For Sending — And Yet Did Not Advise Her Not To Send It — Hinderliter And Staff From The Mayor’s Office Monitored Lovich’s Social Media Usage — And Cited Posts In The Firing Recommendation — Including The Accusation That She Tweeted About A Post On This Blog!

September 23, 2020 Mike Leave a comment

But first some background! In June 2020 Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority supervisor Kristy Lovich sent an email to all LAHSA employees calling for the agency to stop working with police during homeless encampment sweeps and seeking signatures on a petition. She was screamed at by her bosses over this and they ended up firing her over it in July. I recently obtained a copy of a June disciplinary report filed against Lovich by Victor Hinderliter, her supervisor.

I also obtained a formal memo from Hinderliter to LAHSA Director Heidi Marston from July recommending that Lovich be fired. There’s also a strangely formatted email conversation from June between Lovich and Hinderliter in which she responds to the accusations he would later include in both reports, in part by listing examples of HInderliter supporting her in precisely the kinds of activities he used to advocate that she be fired.

Hinderliter apparently even knew about Lovich’s all-staff email in advance and failed to advise her not to send it, a fact which did not deter him from later listing it as a reason for firing her. One of the most surprising aspects of this fiasco is the extent to which Lovich’s superiors at LAHSA and also random staffers in the Mayor’s office monitored her social media usage, which Hinderliter quoted from extensively in his recommendation. Read on for a transcription of the July memo:
Continue reading On July 13, 2020 Victor Hinderliter of LAHSA Wrote A Formal Memo To Director Heidi Marston Recommending That Kristy Lovich Be Fired — Here Is A Copy Of The Memo — Hinderliter Had Disciplined Lovich In June — And Here’s A Copy Of That Disciplinary Action Report — And Lovich’s Response To It — Which Reveals That Hinderliter Knew In Advance About Her Fateful All-Staff Email — The One She Was Fired For Sending — And Yet Did Not Advise Her Not To Send It — Hinderliter And Staff From The Mayor’s Office Monitored Lovich’s Social Media Usage — And Cited Posts In The Firing Recommendation — Including The Accusation That She Tweeted About A Post On This Blog! →

CD13, LAUSD

In May 2018 Mitch O’Farrell Held Secret Invite-Only Meetings With So-Called “Key Community Stakeholders” To Build Buy-In For Hollywood Bridge Housing — Larchmont Charter School Supreme Commander-For-Life Amy Dresser Held Was Among Those Invited — She Then Helped Orchestrate Community Meetings With Dan Halden To “Clear Up Any Misconceptions” — And Listen To More Made-Up Anti-Homeless Housedweller Grievances — And Hear His Promises Of “Additional Enforcement Tools” Against Homeless Human Beings — In Exchange He Proceeded To Spend Months Doing Special Little Favors For These Whiny And Entitled LCS Privatizers

June 19, 2019 Mike Leave a comment

Readers of this blog surely don’t need me to explain how Prop HHH money, meant to establish so-called bridge housing to help alleviate our crisis of homelessness, has at best been spent far too slowly and too ineffectively and at the worst corruptly and in secret. But despite all that, creepy little CD13 repster Mitch O’Farrell did manage to organize one of these projects in Hollywood.

And his flack Tony Arranaga’s inordinately superficial press release on the subject, touting the only-from-an-inordinately-superficial-perspective success of this project is well worth reading.¹ And of particular interest in that slew/slough of whah-whah-whahwawawa, there is this little number right here:

The office of Councilmember Mitch O’Farrell has championed this project from the start: Councilmember O’Farrell originally introduced the motion which paved the way to build the project on the City-owned parking lot; his office led the community outreach before and during construction; and the office served as the liaison between City departments, partnering agencies, and local stakeholders.

This business about the community outreach and the liaison between City departments, partnering agencies, and local stakeholders is of the utmost interest. I’ve spent a little time looking into the processes by which Los Quince Jefes construct the appearance of community buy-in for their pet projects, most notably as orchestrated by Jose Huizar and by Gil Cedillo in the notorious case of the demolition of Parker Center.

And of course another interesting line of inquiry I’m presently working on is charter schools. I don’t know enough about them yet to narrow² my inquiries, but I’m learning, mostly via my usual technique of reading³ their damn emails. I recently got gigantic set of goodies from Larchmont Charter School, in particular from their supreme commander Amy Dresser Held. These have so far yielded up a couple of really interesting stories.⁴

Like for instance the one about how Amy Dresser Held used her personal connections with high-powered senior staffies of LAUSD school boardie Icky Sticky Nicky Melvoin to get a luxe internship for a family friend or the one about how Amy Dresser Held and the Icky Sticky one had a mutually satisfying comfort sesh about how mean and crazy the charter-haters were being. And today, before your very eye, friends, these different lines of inquiry have merged into one!

You see, among all those emails sent to me by LCS were well over a hundred between Most High Brigadier-in-charge Amy Dresser Held and Mitch O’Farrell’s chameleonic Hollywood button man, Dan X. Halden.⁵ You can browse through the whole subset here on Archive.Org, and turn the page for transcriptions and discussion, the better to relate the tale so adroitly summarized for you in the headline above!
Continue reading In May 2018 Mitch O’Farrell Held Secret Invite-Only Meetings With So-Called “Key Community Stakeholders” To Build Buy-In For Hollywood Bridge Housing — Larchmont Charter School Supreme Commander-For-Life Amy Dresser Held Was Among Those Invited — She Then Helped Orchestrate Community Meetings With Dan Halden To “Clear Up Any Misconceptions” — And Listen To More Made-Up Anti-Homeless Housedweller Grievances — And Hear His Promises Of “Additional Enforcement Tools” Against Homeless Human Beings — In Exchange He Proceeded To Spend Months Doing Special Little Favors For These Whiny And Entitled LCS Privatizers →

Homeless Issues, Venice

“Firebomb His Van. He’ll Move” — Just Some Psychopathic Venice Housedwellers Musing — In Public No Less — About Murdering A Homeless Human Being Living In A Van By Burning Him To Death — His Sins? — They Feel Scared — They Think He Steals Bikes — He Urinates — He Hangs Laundry On A Tree — Therefore He Must Die

June 11, 2019 Mike 2 Comments

It ought to be easy enough in this City at this moment to get just too used to the casual sadism, the genocidal urge, the unhinged anger, the antihuman racism, the unreasoning relentless violence, directed by sociopathic housedwellers towards our homeless neighbors, including the calls to use starvation as a policy tool. It ought to be easy enough because of the ubiquity of the hatred, the relentless ever-present angry self-pitying rhetoric, but it’s not, it never is, there’s no bottom to this pit and no getting used to its horrors. Just for instance see this post right here on the Venice (California) Facebook page, and here’s a screenshot in case something changes over there.

It seems there’s a person living in a van at Venice and Louella. And the neighbors don’t like it. So Swedish canine-mold-detection specialist Yvonne Sjostrand⁶ posted a rambling cri de coeur about the vandweller and then, just like that, the usual conversation began yet again. Garcetti won’t do anything, cops won’t do anything, stolen bikes, human excrement, unaesthetic laundry, insert facile self-serving cynicism here, blah blah blah. Until things took a decidedly darker turn with the appearance in the conversation of one Joel De Gan, a housedwelling member of the same profession that built the infrastructure of genocide in Nazi Germany, employed by LinkedIn, with a simple plan. Firebomb his van, he’ll move.

And then all the other Facebook warriors were like ummm, Joel, we hate homeless people too but we don’t want to murder them, we just want them to move to Lancaster or Culver City or whatever. Just kidding, none of them said anything about Joel’s suggestion, and five of them took the trouble to click to like or smileyface it. Because not only does murder strike these housedwellers as an appropriate response to a human being living somewhere they don’t want him to live, but it’s an unremarkable response as well.
Continue reading “Firebomb His Van. He’ll Move” — Just Some Psychopathic Venice Housedwellers Musing — In Public No Less — About Murdering A Homeless Human Being Living In A Van By Burning Him To Death — His Sins? — They Feel Scared — They Think He Steals Bikes — He Urinates — He Hangs Laundry On A Tree — Therefore He Must Die →

Los Angeles City Council

Herb Wesson Bows To Irresistible Force And Moves To Rescind Council Office Approval Requirement For Homeless Housing — Something Had To Be Done Cause This Was Recently Outlawed By The State Of California — It’s Obvious He’s A Whiny Little Baby, Though, Cause He Obviously Can’t Resist Having The Last Word — It Means Absolutely Nothing And Everyone Can See That, Herb, So You’re Just Exposing Your Whiny Baby-tude To The Whole Damn World!

October 9, 2018 Mike Leave a comment

UPDATE: This motion has now been assigned Council File number CF 18-0955

So in March 2018 the incomparable Emily Alpert Reyes wrote a blockbuster article exposing yet another cynically corrupt practice well-beloved of our cynically corrupt City Council members. As she put it:

Before a proposed [homeless housing] building can get funding from the housing department through Proposition HHH, the $1.2-billion bond passed by voters, it must have a “letter of acknowledgment” from the local council member. And if a council member simply withholds that letter, a project can be stopped in its tracks.

As you can imagine, various City Council members defended this grant of absolute veto power outside of any democratic process by claiming it was the only way they could have any input into what gets built in their districts. Like it’s obvious somehow that they even should have input into what gets built? Anyway, no one outside of 200 N Spring Street was buying this loco jive, and especially assemblymember David Chiu. Alpert Reyes’s article moved Chiu to introduce AB 829, which flat-out forbade any projects subject to such a requirement from receiving state funding. This passed easily in September and was quickly signed into law by Jerry Brown on September 27.

Obviously the City can’t afford to give up all that state money, so it became incumbent on them to rescind the requirement as soon as possible. Thus did Council president Herb Wesson introduce this morning in Council a motion recommending said rescission. But Herb Wesson, famously a whiny baby even in the gang of world class whiny babies among whom he works, couldn’t just leave it at that. He ended his motion with a whiny baby last word move which, as far as I can see, has no great effect other than to expose his whiny baby attitude even more to the world than it already has been exposed:

I FURTHER MOVE that the Housing Department be directed to report with recommendations on ways that a Council office and neighborhood council of the area can provide meaningful input on proposed City financing of a housing development in the Council district, and in a manner consistent with the new state law.

Boo freaking hoo hoo hoo, Herb Wesson! Anyway, turn the page for the entire text of the motion, if you dare!
Continue reading Herb Wesson Bows To Irresistible Force And Moves To Rescind Council Office Approval Requirement For Homeless Housing — Something Had To Be Done Cause This Was Recently Outlawed By The State Of California — It’s Obvious He’s A Whiny Little Baby, Though, Cause He Obviously Can’t Resist Having The Last Word — It Means Absolutely Nothing And Everyone Can See That, Herb, So You’re Just Exposing Your Whiny Baby-tude To The Whole Damn World! →

Announcements, Business Improvement Districts

New Documents: Palisades BID Bylaws, Gateway To LA BID Homeless Outreach Collaboration With Heirs Of Sister Aimee In Venice, And Beaucoup De Minutes From North Hollywood, Figueroa Corridor, and East Hollywood

March 25, 2017 Mike Leave a comment

So much new stuff! Here’s the list, friends:

2015 Homeless outreach with the GTLA BID, Venice Four Square Church, and LAPD — These are a few records from a brief 2015 collaboration between the Gateway to LA BID and others to provide homeless outreach
Bylaws of the Palisades BID — Given how damned much trouble it is to coax thing one out of the PPBID and given that they’re evidently willing to spend thousands of dollars fighting my requests rather than just complying with them, it’s always a pleasant surprise to get anything at all out of these people. Of course, these are really the bylaws of the property owners’ association which administers the Palisades BID. Unlike seemingly every other BID in Los Angeles, these people named their POA the same thing as their BID, which makes the confusion even more complete than it usually is. This is probably because something else was already called the Pacific Palisades Property Owners Association.

And turn the page for minutes, minutes, minutes, and more minutes. Hours worth of minutes!
Continue reading New Documents: Palisades BID Bylaws, Gateway To LA BID Homeless Outreach Collaboration With Heirs Of Sister Aimee In Venice, And Beaucoup De Minutes From North Hollywood, Figueroa Corridor, and East Hollywood →

Hypocrisy

Kerry Morrison Says That Sheila Kuehl Blames Supervisors’ Complete Failure to Deal With L.A. County Homelessness On The Brown Act’s Open Meeting Requirements: We Can’t Solve Problems When People Are Watching

August 10, 2016 kohlhaas Leave a comment

If only we didn't have to follow the LAW we would have solved this whole homelessness crisis long ago. — If only we didn’t have to follow the LAW we would have solved this whole homelessness crisis long ago.

Watch and listen here as Kerry Morrison quotes Sheila Kuehl blaming the L.A. County Supervisors’ utter failure to solve our homelessness problem on the fact that the Brown Act requires them to hold open meetings and conduct their deliberations in public (full transcript after the break as always). The message essentially is that the Supervisors can’t get anything done if they have to do it when people are watching. This kind of attitude is, of course, the reason we have to have a Brown Act in the first place. Kerry Morrison’s statements are hearsay, and it’s just as likely that Kerry Morrison, in the throes of her fever dreams of a Hollywood Reich, delusionally attributed this sentiment to Kuehl. We’ll never know at this point.

Readers of this blog are probably pretty familiar with the Brown Act’s requirements. They essentially say that the Supervisors can’t discuss legislative action in secret. They have to do it in public meetings.⁷ The law doesn’t restrict the kinds of things they can talk about, it doesn’t restrict the kinds of deals they can make with one another or with third parties. It only requires them to conduct their deliberations and decision-making in public.

So Kerry Morrison’s version of Sheila Kuehl’s position is disconcerting. She claims that Kuehl claims that the Brown Act prevents the Supervisors from eliminating homelessness because “…they can’t converse with each other. You can’t horse-trade votes. … You know, so you can’t collaborate, you know, can we all agree on what we’re all gonna…you have to do it all in open session, and it’s very cumbersome…” The idea seems to be that the supervisors can’t have an honest discussion in public, so they can’t have any discussion at all.

Kerry Morrison doesn’t elaborate, probably because the authoritarian world-view inherent in this statement is so comforting, so familiar to her. If you’re one of those who think that it’s more important that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth than it is to have the goddamned Red Line running on time you may have trouble following the argument, though.
Continue reading Kerry Morrison Says That Sheila Kuehl Blames Supervisors’ Complete Failure to Deal With L.A. County Homelessness On The Brown Act’s Open Meeting Requirements: We Can’t Solve Problems When People Are Watching →