Empty RSO Housing, Public Corruption, and Fire: Hell Is Other People

That accountability does not exist in Los Angeles, I cannot deny.

That my whole being cries out for accountability, I cannot forget.

(Jean-Paul Sartre and his Existentialist pals would have a #@*&ing field day with modern Los Angeles, but that's a subject for another time.)

Let's touch upon one of the most jointly corrupt couples (probably) in Los Angeles: Curren Price and current wife Del Richardson Price.

Price, a longtime City Council member, is facing charges of embezzlement, perjury, and conflict of interest. This, in and of itself, shouldn't surprise anyone too much - after all, he's a member of the Los Angeles City Council, just like José Huizar, Mitch Englander, and Mark Ridley-Thomas were.

An LA Times investigation found that Price had voted on development projects in which he - and now-wife Del Richardson Price - had financial interests. (He also obtained medical benefits for Del while he was still legally married to his previous wife. An amateur couldn't make this up.)

As the Times states, "The charges come four years after a Times investigation found Price had repeatedly cast votes that affected housing developers and other firms listed as clients of his wife’s consulting company."

Tsk tsk.

Del Richardson Price is arguably no better than her husband.

Last year, the LA Public Press (which you should be reading) ran an article on the business of "tenant relocation", which is all too often a euphemism for the monstrous practice of harassing low-income renters out of their rent-stabilized homes. (As a former property manager: if you don't like RSO tenants, don't own an RSO property. It's that simple.)

In part:

Tenants at the Yucca Argyle Apartments in Hollywood say they faced a relocation campaign led by Del Richardson, wife of L.A City Councilmember Curren Price, who is charged with corruption for voting on real estate projects of developers that hired his wife as a consultant.

Yucca Argyle’s owners were trying to evict tenants through the Ellis Act to redevelop the property, but the tenant union there won a right to return to the property at their original rent-controlled rates, once it is redeveloped.

Tenant Shauna Johnson says Del Richardson acted like no such agreement existed when she visited her last fall.

“She started asking me if I was interested in a buyout,” Johnson recalls. “I said no, I’m interested in a right of return, and she laughed at me. She said, ‘where did you get that [from]?’”

Del Richardson did not respond to a request for comment.

Do I even need to comment, or does everyone get the picture?

Anyway, the Yucca-Argyle Apartments were technically not Ellis Acted because of the right-of-return agreement, but they were still sitting empty for a prolonged period of time.

Were. Past tense. In the wee hours of June 8, one of the buildings burned in a knockdown fire. Which is bad enough, but also means you, the taxpayer, are going to be covering the cost of LAFD having to tear down the building.

This isn't the hometown four generations of my family has known and loved - this is hell.

If my examination of questionable practices (and even more questionable people) in Los Angeles makes me some kind of minor demon, GOOD.

I'm off to go sharpen my pitchfork; don't wait up.

1765 Vista Del Mar Avenue, Hollywood.

Join the discussion!