One of our priorities this summer has been our lawsuit to block the Permanent Supportive Housing (“PSH”) Ordinance, which exempts homeless housing projects in Venice and elsewhere from the rules – and environmental / community impact (“CEQA”) review – applicable to market rate housing developments.
City Hall did not like the way the lawsuit was going, so they introduced a bill in the California Assembly, AB 1197, that would essentially supersede the PSH Ordinance and exempt homeless housing projects in Los Angeles only from CEQA review as a matter of state law.
But that was not enough to kill our lawsuit.
So just last Friday – when it became clear that we were about to compel the City to turn over hundreds of emails exposing its misdeeds – they amended the bill to retroactively exempt the PSH Ordinance itself from legal challenge.
In other words – true to form – the City is cheating … and trampling our rights in the process.
AB 1197 just passed the Assembly and is heading for a vote in the Senate as early as Friday.
We hope you will send this one-click email telling our elected representatives at the state level, city level and Venice level that we don’t approve of cheating … and that we deserve the same legal protections as the rest of the state.
Also, we wanted you to know that all of the Prop HHH money is gone.
That means the overwhelming majority of many new homeless housing projects in Venice – including the massive Monster on the Median itself – will be funded through Prop 2’s “No Place Like Home Fund.”
Adults with serious mental illness, or children with severe emotional disorders and their families and persons who require or are at risk of requiring acute psychiatric inpatient care, residential treatment, or outpatient crisis intervention because of a mental disorder with symptoms of psychosis, suicidality or violence and who are homeless, chronically homeless, or at risk of chronic homelessness.
The Venice Community Housing Corporation says this will be good for Venice, and that “artists” will still want to live in the other units.
We don’t believe that. And neither should you.
In short, it really is wartime in Venice. If we don’t stand up for ourselves now, we will be steamrolled.
