AM news: play ball, housing, poverty

First and foremost, the Final Four battle is on today beginning at 3pm on CBS (pregame starts at 1:00). Keep an eye out for a little team called UCLA.

Irvine plans to establish permanent low-cost housing with a land trust for affordable housing. With this model, public and foundation funds are used to buy the land and build homes; homebuyers own only the buildings and not the property. Home prices can be lower and low-income people can build (a little) equity. For what it's worth, it seems to be working in Vermont.

The LA Homeless Blog comes up with some scary numbers on poverty in LA County, and they're scary. For example, the top 6% of county wage earners took home 29% of the total county income — almost a third of our earnings went to 6% of our workers. At the other end of the totem pole, the bottom 17% of county wage earners received just 2% of total county income. Talk about the working poor.