My kingdom for an apartment

Finding a place to live in LA is easy — finding a place you can afford isn't. Blogging.la did a little math that showed you need to make twice the city's median income to afford to buy the city's median-priced house. Which means that those of us who can't afford to buy houses are sucking up a big share of the cheaper rental stock. Leaving poor folks, well, screwed. How screwed?

Take Monday. The Hollywood Community Housing Corporation has affordable housing units available plus safety-net services like ESL and after-school programs at their development at Sunset & Western. They distribute applications on a first-come, first-served basis. All in all, they'll give out 550 applications — for just 55 apartments. That's right, 1 in 10 of those who apply will get a spot.

But there's more. Many of these applications have already been distributed through the mutlicultural service organizations in East Hollywood. On Monday, 55 more applications were to be handed out and 3,000 people showed up to get them.

3,000 people for 55 applications. Of which about 5 will get apartments.

Things got out of hand, the police shut down the distribution, and a more orderly one is planned for Tuesday Feb 22. The LA Times called the crowd "unruly" but it seems to us that they were more likely frustrated. Because they're screwed.