Oct. 2, 2025 7 AM PT
To the editor: Workers author Roger Vincent’s current article on why builders aren’t constructing in Los Angeles misses the true subject (“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 maintain doubling down on the very insurance policies that created it: lease management, countless eviction bans, extreme pink tape, peak restrictions and now the ULA tax that makes tasks financially infeasible. Then they act stunned when nothing will get constructed.
In actual fact, 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 apparent answer is to interchange crumbling rent-controlled buildings with taller flats in multifamily zones. As a substitute, the Metropolis Council clings to “anti-displacement” rhetoric that preserves blight whereas bulldozing single-family neighborhoods. Hire management plus eviction bans equals everlasting decay.
Another issue usually ignored: condominiums. Builders keep away from them in California due to 10-year defect liability laws that invite countless 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Till these failed insurance policies are repealed, Los Angeles will keep caught in decline.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
