To the editor: Employees author Roger Vincent’s current article on why builders aren’t constructing in Los Angeles misses the true problem (“Almost no one is building new apartments in Los Angeles. Here’s why,” Oct. 1). Let’s cease pretending most of our legislators care about fixing the housing disaster. They preserve doubling down on the very insurance policies that created it: lease management, limitless eviction bans, extreme purple tape, peak restrictions and now the ULA tax that makes initiatives financially infeasible. Then they act stunned when nothing will get constructed.
In truth, lease management can even have negative effects for renters, discouraging builders from constructing to satisfy provide and demand. This isn’t a housing disaster, it’s a coverage disaster.
The plain answer is to interchange crumbling rent-controlled buildings with taller residences in multifamily zones. As a substitute, the Metropolis Council clings to “anti-displacement” rhetoric that preserves blight whereas bulldozing single-family neighborhoods. Lease management plus eviction bans equals everlasting decay.
Yet one more issue typically missed: condominiums. Builders keep away from them in California due to 10-year defect liability laws that invite limitless lawsuits. That’s why just about nobody builds condos right here, additional choking possession alternatives.
Till these failed insurance policies are repealed, Los Angeles will keep caught in decline.
George Papanikolas, Los Angeles
