A ruling this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which holds it is unconstitutional to ban homeless people from sleeping on the streets is likely to complicate the attempts to crack down on homelessness problems by local governments in California.

While the ruling involved a 2009 law adopted by Boise, Idaho, it is binding on California, which is one of the states under the 9th appellate court, which is based in San Francisco.

“[J]ust as the state may not criminalize the state of being ‘homeless in public places,’ the state may not ‘criminalize conduct that is an unavoidable consequence of being homeless — namely sitting, lying, or sleeping on the streets,’” Judge Marsha Berzon wrote for a three-judge panel.

The finding that the law is a cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment was welcomed by activists who have long argued that such restrictions make being poor a crime.

Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, told the Idaho Statesman that “criminally punishing homeless people for sleeping on the street when they have nowhere else to go is inhumane, and we applaud the court for holding that it is also unconstitutional.” Her group provided an attorney to the handful of Boise homeless men and women who sued over the city’s law.

If Boise does not appeal the ruling, the 9th Circuit will have expanded on the protections for the homeless that it created in 2007. The appellate panel ruled then that Los Angeles could not ban people from sleeping outside when shelters were full.

Legality of living in cars is next battleground

Meanwhile, the next fight over homeless rights in California has already emerged. It involves regulations in many cities that have the de facto effect of banning people from sleeping in their vehicles, even if the practice is not specifically singled out.

In Los Angeles, for example, a city ordinance that bans overnight parking in residential areas and a growing number of such restrictions in commercial areas have made it increasingly difficult for vehicle dwellers to find anywhere to sleep. This has made life difficult for the estimated 15,000 people who live in their cars, trucks or recreational vehicles in the city. The policy prompted sharp criticism from some quarters this spring over a perception that City Hall was insufficiently sympathetic to those without shelter.

City officials in San Diego and Santa Barbara are going in the opposite direction, starting trial programs in which car dwellers are allowed to use a handful of designated parking lots overnight – so long as they meet a handful of rules meant to preserve public safety and to minimize littering and public defecation and urination.

But San Diego may have to expand its program or develop other new policies as well. Last month, federal Judge Anthony Battaglia issued an injunction banning the city from ticketing people for living in their vehicles.

Unlike in the other high-profile federal cases involving city laws and homelessness, Battaglia’s argument wasn’t based on the idea that penalties which appeared to single out the homeless were cruel and unusual.

Instead, he concluded that “plaintiffs have shown a likelihood of success on the merits of their claim that the ordinance is vague because it fails to alert the public what behavior is lawful and what behavior is prohibited.” He noted that some people were given tickets merely for reading books in their cars.

The injunction is not permanent, but Battaglia indicated he is likely to make it so in coming months.

Members of the California Poor People’s Campaign have been rallying outside the Capitol building weekly for the last month. The most recent protest marked the 50^th anniversary of the Poor People’s Campaign and March, which was organized by Martin Luther King Jr.

“Nothing feels progressive about the way California is run from the top,” Kait Ziegler, co-chair of the California Poor People’s Campaign, told the Sacramento Bee. “So we’re coming from the bottom to mobilize and say we aren’t going to be silent anymore.”

Chief among the concerns of the campaign were the issues of housing, homelessness and workers’ rights. Citing that “8 million Californians pay half or more of their income for rent,” the group demanded the establishment of a “human right to housing.” Additionally, they argue the state should invest more in affordable and low-income housing, as well as rent control and more protections for renters and tenants.

When taking into account the cost of living, California has the highest poverty rate in the country. By the normal metric, the Golden State comes in 35^th.

The Campaign also called for a homeless bill of rights, which, among other things, would safeguard the right of people to sleep in legally parked cars and sleep in public areas. The group also endorsed several bills that would divert some of California’s budget surplus toward affordable housing.

Finally, the group reiterated demands for measures to protect workers’ rights. These measures include Assembly Bill 2946, which would extend the statute of limitations for prosecuting wage theft and AB2293 and SB1412, which would reduce barriers to employment for those with certain prior convictions.

The Poor People’s Campaign expects to be back in action Monday.

This harsh state of affairs was on L.A. voters’ minds in November, when 65 percent approved Measure JJJ, an initiative launched by the L.A. County Federation of Labor that ended up winning a fair amount of business support. It creates an unusually strong affordable housing mandate that affects all projects with 10 or more units that need a zoning change, general plan amendment or height-district change to proceed.

Such projects are required to include construction of below-market-rate rental units — the term some prefer to the more vague “affordable housing.” With single-family housing, duplex and condo projects, developers could be forced to have up to 40 percent of the units be below-market-rate. With apartment projects, the mandate is up to 25 percent of units. Builders have the option of building the cheaper units elsewhere or paying into a city housing trust.

Measure JJJ’s de facto project labor agreement controlling construction pay caused considerable griping in some business circles. But in a city where housing stock has lagged behind population growth for decades — driving the average rent to nearly $2,500 and forcing one-third of residents to pay more than half their income toward housing — its victory was celebrated as progress on a huge issue.

2-year moratorium on planning exceptions called catastrophic

Now, less than four months later, Los Angeles voters are again being asked to vote on a housing proposal — Measure S, the Neighborhood Integrity Initiative — that could negate what Measure JJJ hopes to accomplish.

Its critics say the measure would make the housing crisis in Los Angeles even worse. Defenders say it’s needed to respond to what they depict as shady City Hall approvals of zoning exceptions which allow for construction of large, high-impact projects that aren’t in neighbors’ interest.

If approved in a March 7 vote, it would ban for two years the granting of special project approvals to allow development contrary to what’s now permitted in Los Angeles’ 35 neighborhood planning documents.

No one disagrees that the documents are often badly out of date, reflecting the needs and concerns of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The Measure S moratorium would end if all 35 documents were updated before the two-year ban came to an end.

But city officials say the process of revising the plans is cumbersome and will take years. From Mayor Eric Garcetti on down, they depict Measure S as a disaster for a city with an acute housing shortage. Garcetti has also warned it will make it far more difficult for the city to deal with its homeless crisis.

Local labor unions are also alarmed. “Measure S will block much of the affordable housing that voters just voted for when they approved Proposition JJJ,” Rusty Hicks, executive secretary-treasurer of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, said in a statement issued last week.

Zoning exception / donation link drives corruption argument

Garcetti and other city officials say suggestions of corruption in the way Los Angeles grants exceptions to its neighborhood plans are unfounded. But this argument is countered by the Yes on S campaign pointing to heavy campaign contributions to officeholders from developers who benefited the most from the planning waivers.

The AIDS Healthcare Foundation has been the most prominent face in the Yes on S campaign effort. Founded 30 years ago this month by Michael Weinstein, the foundation has long been active in health care issues, most recently with Proposition 60, the failed November state ballot measure that would have required adult film performers to wear condoms.

Weinstein’s prominence in the Yes on S campaign suggests the Hollywood-based foundation now hopes to make its mark on a broader range of issues.

Photo Credit: ABCnew.com

Californians joined in the country’s fever over an extraordinary Powerball prize, leading the nation in ticket sales — but not without raising conflicting feelings about the lottery.

“In California, about 80 cents of every $2 ticket sold goes toward education,” as the Los Angeles Times reported. “Nationwide, more than $1 billion in Powerball tickets were sold, lottery officials said.”

Playing with fire

But the mind-boggling sum at stake has brought California’s long debate over the virtues and vices of state lotteries back into the spotlight. “Addiction experts are concerned the rising Powerball jackpot could bring those dealing with gambling addictions back into their old habits,” according to CBS Sacramento. “The odds of winning Wednesday’s $1.5 billion drawing [were] 1-in-292 million, but the odds of having a gambling addiction in California are 1-in-25.”

The controversy has extended to the popular practice of office pool purchases in the workplace. “Previous groups of lotto winners have seen their feelings of victory evolve into anger and disputes that ended up in court for years when one buyer claimed there was never a pool, or someone who didn’t pitch in money feels they should still have been included,” as NBC Los Angeles cautioned.

Nationwide, meanwhile, the debate has roped in religious figures as well, with some pastors beginning to publicly question the wisdom of the system, as the Christian Post recently noted.

For years, critics have pointed to analyses that suggest poor lottery players are impacted negatively and disproportionately by the allure of massive paydays. “While approximately half of Americans buy at least one lottery ticket at some point, the vast majority of tickets are purchased by about 20 percent of the population. These high-frequency players tend to be poor and uneducated, which is why critics refer to lotteries as a regressive tax,” as Wired reported in 2011. “In a 2006 survey, 30 percent of people without a high school degree said that playing the lottery was a wealth-building strategy,” the magazine observed. “On average, households that make less than $12,400 a year spend 5 percent of their income on lotteries — a source of hope for just a few bucks a throw.”

The cost of winning

Even those who beat the odds have sometimes found themselves more cursed than blessed by riches. “The sad truth of lottery winners is that their lives don’t always end up as idyllic as they might imagine, many of them becoming not only the target of a massive tax burden and low-level scam artists, but also a magnet for their own vices,” as Jared Keller wrote at Pacific Standard.

“Suzanne Mullins won the Virginia lottery in 1993 and ended up paying out a $154 million settlement to a loan company after going deeply into debt; Evelyn Adams gambled away $5.4 million in Atlantic City; Willie Hurt blew $3.1 million on a crack addiction. Even Pentecostal preacher Billy Bob Harrell Jr.’s generosity after winning a $31 million jackpot in 1997 became his undoing — he simply couldn’t say no when people asked for a handout, and ended up killing himself after his money (and wife) ran out.”

Assuming a Californian winner preserved his or her fortunes in other ways, both good and bad news remain on the tax front. “In this 44-state contest it may be advantageous to win in California, which is one of 10 states where the lottery winner will not be required to pay state taxes,” the Orange County Register surmised. “Still, the federal tax bite is fairly big, leaving a lump-sum winner with $524 million.”

Impacting schools

Despite the commotion and concern, California education advocates have insisted that Powerball was making even more of a positive impact than usual. “Last year, on average, Powerball pulled in about $7 million in gross revenue in California each week, which means a not-so-whopping 42 cents or so was allocated to each of the state’s 6.2 million students,” as the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “Last week, though, as the jackpot climbed into the stratosphere, people dreamed of buying jets and yachts and sports franchises. The state sold $267.5 million in Powerball tickets, or about $16 per kid.”

It’s not even 2016 yet, but the first debate over a probable initiative on the November 2016 ballot took place in Dana Point Monday when former Board of Equalization member Conway Collis squared off with Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association president Jon Coupal over the Lifting Children and Families Out of Poverty Act. The debate was hosted by the California Alliance of Taxpayer Advocates.

The measure, backed by charity organizations dedicated to reducing poverty, would raise property taxes on residential and commercial property valued at $3 million and more. The money would be deposited in anti-poverty programs outside the General Fund.

Collis argued that the initiative was a way for government to help relieve 2.4 million California children living below the poverty line. He said there was a moral and financial reason to do so. Leaving one-quarter of California’s children in poverty was an immoral position for the state. Lifting 50 percent of those suffering from poverty in 20 years — the goal of the initiative proponents — would reduce the dollars required for welfare programs and prisons while adding taxpayers to the rolls.

Coupal saw the measure as a direct attack on Proposition 13’s property tax protections. He asked: “Aren’t taxes high enough?” listing the state’s high tax rates in different tax categories. Coupal said voters were willing to support the Proposition 30 tax increases when the state budget was in crisis. There is no crisis now, he asserted, with the state sitting on a surplus of anywhere from $1 billion to $10 billion.

To Collis, a tax that touched only 1 percent of the taxpayers was worth the investment in attempting to save money in welfare programs while aiding those in poverty. He said business had a legitimate concern in annual reassessments on property (as proposed in a legislative bill to split the property tax roll) but that this plan “protects and builds” on the Proposition 13 framework and would preserve property tax predictability.

But Coupal said the economy and businesses would suffer, with more businesses packing to leave the state, especially because the great portion of the properties affected by the proposed tax increase would be commercial properties.

While Collis said the initiative has fail-safes to control programming that did not work to reduce poverty, Coupal countered that 30 programs are already in place to deal with poverty and that many suffer from fraud and abuse with recipients spending taxpayer-sponsored income in Hawaiian resorts and Las Vegas casinos.

Collis said his initiative would not simply help the poor but would boost all Californians. He said that the growing number of poor would “swallow the state budget” unless corrective measures are taken.

Collis insisted that polling and focus groups prove that voters understand that the tax was only on expensive property and would affect few taxpayers. He said signature gatherers were asking voters if they owned property over $3 million and if they answered “no” then they were told the measure would interest them. Collis said voters readily signed.

However, Coupal had a message for those voters should the initiative qualify for the ballot. The initiative breaks Proposition 13 by going after residential property. Once that door is opened other tax increase activists will want to charge through and all residential property owners would be at risk. That message will not be lost on voters, Coupal said. It is a concern that would be expressed in a political campaign.

The campaign messages are already being shaped and a long political campaign season has unofficially begun.

(Disclosure: I am associated with the committee that opposes the Lifting Children and Families Out of Poverty Act.)

The fact that about 23 percent of state residents are barely getting by has helped fuel the push for a much higher minimum wage and prompted renewed interest in affordable housing programs. It’s also put the focus on regional economic disparities, especially the fact that Silicon Valley and San Francisco are the primary engine of state prosperity.

While the tech boom and the vast increase in housing prices it has triggered in the Bay Area are national news, prompting think pieces and thoughtful analyses, the poverty picture in the state’s largest population center isn’t covered nearly as fully. Although the fact is plain in Census Bureau data, it’s not commonly understood that Los Angeles County is the capital of U.S. poverty. A 2013 study by the Public Policy Institute of California and the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality based on 2011 data found 27 percent of the county’s 10 million residents were impoverished, the highest figure in the state and the highest of any large metro area in the U.S. The study questioned long-held assumptions about poverty being worst in rural areas.

But there are reasons to think the rate in Los Angeles County is significantly higher than the 27 percent reported in 2013.

The first is that many surveys of poverty struggle to account for undocumented immigrants, who often work for cash and don’t show up in wage surveys. The Pew Research Service in 2009 estimated that undocumented individuals face poverty rates “nearly double” those of Americans in general. Los Angeles County has by far the most undocumented immigrants, estimated by PPIC to be 815,000 in 2013.

The second is that the cost of housing has surged in Los Angeles County over the past four years even as wages have stagnated. The average rent of an apartment countywide is expected to be $1,800 by year’s end, with the biggest percentage jump in poorer communities in the San Fernando Valley.

Poverty-related stress takes heavy toll

A summer report by Southern California Public Radio laid out a grim picture of the toll this mass poverty takes on the young.

New research shows the mere fact of being poor can affect kids’ brains, making it difficult for them to succeed in school.

 

Los Angeles public schools — where more than 80 percent of students live in poverty — illustrate the challenges for these students. …

 

Children living in poor neighborhoods are more likely to suffer traumatic incidents, like witnessing or being the victims of shootings, parental neglect or abuse. They also struggle with pernicious daily stressors, including food or housing insecurity, overcrowding and overworked or underemployed, stressed-out parents.

 

Untreated, researchers have found these events compound, affecting many parts of the body. Studies show chronic stress can change the chemical and physical structures of the brain.

 

“You see deficits in your ability to regulate emotions in adaptive ways as a result of stress,” said Dr. Cara Wellman, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at Indiana University.

 

Dendrites, which look like microscopic fingers, stretch off each brain cell to catch information.  Wellman’s studies in mice show that chronic stress causes these fingers to shrink, changing the way the brain works. She found deficiencies in the pre-frontal cortex – the part of the brain needed to solve problems, which is crucial to learning.

 

Other researchers link chronic stress to a host of cognitive effects, including trouble with attention, concentration, memory and creativity.

SCPR had a follow-up report that showed Los Angeles schools simply didn’t have the resources to help affected students in a comprehensive way.

But two developments raise questions about whether assumptions about a stable, content senior cohort are still true in California.

The latest came in a Field Poll released last week. Here’s part of KQED’s account:

Nearly half of low-income elderly Californians have opted out of a statewide managed care experiment because they feared losing their doctors and were reluctant to make any changes to their health care, according to survey data released Tuesday by the Field Poll.

 

California is in the middle of a three-year pilot project aimed at nearly 500,000 of the state’s most costly patients — so-called dual eligibles. The beneficiaries receive both Medicare, the health insurance program for seniors and the disabled, and Medicaid, called Medi-Cal in California, which provides coverage for the poor.

 

The state program, known as Cal MediConnect, has had a high rate of people opting out — about 47 percent, according to the state Department of Health Care Services. …

The account noted that many seniors have been automatically enrolled in the new program without being aware of the change. That produced sharp criticism from William Averill, a cardiologist in Torrance.

“The most vulnerable people were the ones who weren’t in a position to understand their choices,” he said. “I think the whole thing is going to collapse under its own weight.”

Many state seniors struggle to make ends meet

Given the details of a report released in September by UCLA, California seniors’ anxiety about changes in their medical care is understandable. As CalWatchdog reported, the study concluded that 1.11 million of the 4 million adults in California who are 65 or older struggle to make ends meet. That’s equal to a poverty rate of 28 percent, more than triple previous federal estimates for the Golden State.

KPCC, the Pasadena-based NPR affiliate, took a closer look at the numbers in this report:

More than 770,000 seniors in California aren’t making enough to get by but aren’t considered poor by the federal government, according to a UCLA health policy study that is challenging the definition of poverty.

 

According to the study, about 340,000 Californians 65 years or older are considered poor based on the Federal Poverty Level, which makes them eligible for public assistance programs.

 

But in an analysis of 2009-2011 U.S. Census data, the researchers concluded that about 772,000 more seniors in the state could use the help but aren’t considered poor enough. She calls this group the “hidden poor.”

 

“They don’t have enough income to meet a minimally decent standard of living,” said study lead author Imelda Padilla-Frausto, a graduate student researcher at the Center for Health Policy Research.

The single state policy that most protects the finances of the elderly is arguably Proposition 13, the 1978 law preventing property taxes from going up more than 2 percent a year. This has insulated people who have owned their homes for decades from the effects of the massive increase in housing prices. Many homes in built-out communities with older stock sell for more than 10 times their original, mid-20th century purchase price.

Other states that have seen housing costs surge have adopted property tax relief for seniors on fixed incomes in recent years; this New Jersey program is typical.

One of the studies — by author David Shulman, a senior economist with the UCLA Anderson Forecast project — notes that California is at the start of a relative boom in construction of housing units:

After a long, hard slog, housing starts (both single- and multi-family) are poised to approach the long-term average (1959-2014) of just under 1.5 million units in 2016. Specifically we are forecasting housing starts of 1.14 million units this year and 1.42 million units and 1.44 million units in 2016 and 2017, respectively. This level of activity is well above 1.00 million units recorded in 2014 and the 2009 low of 0.55 million units.

This would seem to be unalloyed good news. Critics of the standard local government affordable-housing practice of building a relative handful of units say that such policies can never produce enough housing stock to make rents and sale prices go down. So a sharp increase in building would seem to move us toward a place where supply and demand affects costs.

More housing stock — but also much more demand

But another UCLA study says that’s a fantasy, as the rebounding California economy pushes more potential buyers into the market. This is from a City News Service story about UCLA’s research in the Los Angeles Daily News:

Housing in California — already considered unaffordable to many — will become even less affordable over the next two years, with construction unable to keep up with demand, according to a UCLA economic forecast released Monday.

 

UCLA Anderson Forecast Senior Economist Jerry Nickelsburg wrote in his forecast that government agencies need to reconsider their policies surrounding affordable housing if they hope to make a dent in the problem.

 

“The economics are clear,” he wrote. “When affordable housing is provided, say by requiring developers to have a fixed percentage of their new units ‘affordable,’ then the demand for that housing will be in excess of the supply.” …

 

Nickelsburg said the typical response of “just build more housing” is unrealistic since such a move would require major changes in zoning codes, environmental requirements and building regulations.

This has been the standard argument from many analysts. But Nickelsburg suggests a new approach that seems certain to be controversial, per the Daily News:

Nickelsburg added that “the policy itself recognizes that building constraints — natural or regulatory — will not permit a sufficient number of new homes to be built to satisfy the demand at affordable levels.

 

“This being the case, affordable housing policy needs to be explicit about who the housing is for,” he wrote. “For example, one might advocate affordable housing so that teachers in public schools can purchase housing that would otherwise be difficult for them to acquire.”

But teachers are not the face of poverty in California — it’s Latinos and African Americans without much education. Nearly 50 percent of these two groups are either in poverty or near poverty, according to a study by the United Way.

As of last year, the average pay of a full-teacher in California was more than $84,000, per data from Transparent California.

Now a new UCLA study finds that of the 4 million adults in California who are 65 or older, 1.11 million struggle to make ends meet — an effective poverty rate of 28 percent. That’s more than triple the number of California elderly who were considered impoverished under standard federal measures. This is from the KPCC/PBS report:

More than 770,000 seniors in California aren’t making enough to get by but aren’t considered poor by the federal government, according to a UCLA health policy study that is challenging the definition of poverty. …

 

According to the study, about 340,000 Californians 65 years or older are considered poor based on the Federal Poverty Level, which makes them eligible for public assistance programs.

 

But in an analysis of 2009-2011 U.S. Census data, the researchers concluded that about 772,000 more seniors in the state could use the help but aren’t considered poor enough. She calls this group the “hidden poor.”

 

“They don’t have enough income to meet a minimally decent standard of living,” said study lead author Imelda Padilla-Frausto, a graduate student researcher at the Center for Health Policy Research.

‘Hidden poor’ in trailer parks fight for rent control

As with the jump in overall poverty rates in the 2012 alternative Census Bureau statistical review, elderly poverty rates are much higher than previously thought because of the high cost of living. UCLA explains its approach in its study:

Economic security requires that older adults have sufficient income to pay for basic housing, food, transportation, health care, and other necessary expenses. The Elder Index is an evidence-based approach that identifies the actual costs of those basic needs at the county level for renters, homeowners with a mortgage, and homeowners without a mortgage. …

 

Of the 4 million older adults age 65 and over in California in 2011, one out of three (38.4 percent) was part of an older couple living alone, one out of four (27 percent) was a single elder living alone, one out of 20 (5.5 percent) was part of an older couple housing adult children, one out of 30 (3.6 percent) was a single elder housing adult children, and less than 1 percent were grandparents raising grandchildren without the parents present.

A primary cause of economic insecurity among the elderly is their reliance on fixed incomes that can’t handle sudden increases in housing costs. This explains why trailer park communities with rent controls — and many renters among the “hidden poor” — are often involved in intense political fights in local governments.

California has nearly 5,000 trailer parks with nearly 1 million residents, according to a 2011 TIME report about trailer park owners’ war on what cities call “rent stabilization agreements.”

According to a website that offers resources to trailer-park residents in disputes with their landlords, 97 local governments around California put limits on how much rates can go up each year, from Alameda County to Yucaipa.

Elderly trailer-park voters are often eagerly courted by local politicians. They vote at higher rates than younger residents and form coalitions with other groups that have lost favor with city hall. In Oceanside, for example, trailer park residents and public safety unions have long fought with business interests and conservative Republicans for control of the City Council.

Los Angeles is a city facing economic decline, weighed down by poverty, strangled by traffic and suffering from a crisis of leadership, according to a report released Wednesday by a 13-member panel of influential civic leaders.

The Los Angeles 2020 Commission offered a harsh assessment of government decision-making, warning that the nation’s second-largest city is heading to a future where it can no longer afford to provide public services. Among a litany of problems highlighted in the report are underfunded retirement programs for City Hall employees, slower police and fire response times, and government spending that is growing faster than revenue. …

Among the challenges highlighted by the panel: a poverty rate higher than many other American cities; city revenue that has remained flat since 2009; a shrinking middle class; and “wishful” responses to a “continued economic decline.”

Garcetti focuses on public safety, building standards

But Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti, elected in May 2013, continues to focus on other issues and not take on what the commission depicts as the causes of his city’s broad decline. That was evident Tuesday in his second State of the City address, as reported by the L.A. Times:

[New] public safety initiatives … headlined the mayor’s second State of the City speech, delivered at Cal State Northridge. During the broad-ranging address, which lasted nearly an hour, Garcetti recounted accomplishments of his first two years in office and elements of his agenda he is still pursuing.

Among the ongoing initiatives the mayor cited is a proposal to raise the city’s minimum wage and mandate the strengthening of buildings that could collapse in a major earthquake. In the San Fernando Valley, where Garcetti chose to deliver his speech, the latter topic has special resonance for residents who suffered the worst effects of the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

He said he hopes a major earthquake “will not happen during my time as mayor, and God willing, not in our lifetimes. But it will happen. It’s overdue.”

The mayor announced new technology-related policy proposals that could prove controversial: Collecting taxes from the vacation-rental company Airbnb and allowing the ride-share services Uber and Lyft to pick up customers at Los Angeles International Airport. (Currently, the app-based ride services can only pick up limited numbers of passengers at LAX.)

On a more pedestrian note, Garcetti pledged to place 5,000 new trash cans in the city to help remedy what he called “dirty streets lined with broken TVs and abandoned couches.”

40 percent of city’s residents live in poverty

The Times also noted the mayor emphasized his accountability by saying “as long as I’m your mayor, I won’t duck bad news. I’m going to own it.”

Bruce Bialosky, a Los Angeles writer, doesn’t agree. This is from his sad take on his home city on Townhall.com last year:

Eight percent of Los Angelenos earn poverty pay. If you include those out of work, they state 40 percent of residents live in misery.

Los Angeles is the only one of seven major metropolitan areas in the country to have a net decline in employment over the last decade.

Major industries are leaving; none are moving here. Twelve companies on the Fortune 500 used to call Los Angeles home, and now just four do.

The school system graduates just 60 percent of its students from high school and only 32 percent are qualified for either the UC or Cal State University systems.

The pension system has set aside only 10 percent of the future needs of city workers.

The “Time for Truth” report can be read here.

It is not the only grim look at Los Angeles’ economy. According to a UCLA Anderson report issued last year, L.A. saw a 3 percent decline in payroll jobs from 1990 to 2013. During that span, L.A.’s population went up 11 percent, from 3.49 million to 3.85 million.