An introduction to the pro-development YIMBYs of LA, a look at how small spaces can ease the housing crunch in Southern California, and Senator Kamala Harris backs Bernie Sanders' "Medicare-for-all" plan
Living in tight spaces might address SoCal's housing crunch
The cost to live in L.A. has been rising, and people are trying to find solutions.
One of them could be on residents to live more like "Aladdin's" Genie in an...
Solving the housing crisis might take cramming all of L.A.'s greatness into smaller homes like micro-units, which can be less than 400 square feet.
"It would certainly help," said architect Alice Kimm. "You can imagine that if you had many, many, many more of those on the market for rent, many more people can afford to live in the city."
The price of land in Los Angeles can get very high, and cramming more units onto a single plot can lower the cost for every individual unit.
"But how can you adequately provide a unit that can house somebody comfortably in that amount of space? That's a real design challenge," said Kimm.
There are ways, however.
Inside a unit, there could be modular walls that can pulled in or pushed out of the way. They may hide a Murphy bed or even a full kitchen set-up.
"It's all about flexibility and modularity," she said.
High ceilings and large windows can also create the illusion of spaciousness, not to mention the technology on the horizon that might also do that, too.
"In the future, alternate reality and virtual reality – the Google Glasses and all of those things – are commonplace," she said. "The outer wall of your unit, you can touch it and be in the outer wilds somewhere in Africa."
It's an idea you might remember from "Back to the Future II."
The common areas of a building become really important, too, so residents can still enjoy large, open spaces.
"There's the idea of pulling out the kitchen and creating communal kitchens," said Kimm, "and starting to remove things that can be shared by more than one family. That way you can downsize the multi-family unit."
Courtyards and pools can also be vital amenities that allow people to get away from their micro-unit.
"It also puts a lot of pressure on the cities to really begin to look at their public spaces and infrastructure a little more carefully," she added.
That means if more buildings with micro-units go up, parks and public spaces need to be built near them, too.
"You know, the idea of the stoop magnified many times," said Kimm.
All this may seems foreign or repelling to people who moved to LA. to live like Angelenos, not New Yorkers.
"The traditional Angeleno does expect space or does think about their city in that way," she says, "but I don't know if that's so true of the up-and-coming generations. Millennials and people moving to the city now have a different conception of the city – one that is more urban and more walkable and more vertical."
What amenities would you want in your dream home if it had to be small? Tell us in the comments.
Sen. Harris throws support behind single-payer bill
California's junior senator is joining forces with Bernie Sanders.
At a town hall Wednesday, Senator Kamala Harris announced that she would co-sponsor a single-payer health care bill championed by the Vermont Senator.
It marks break with several of Harris' Democratic colleagues, including California's senior Senator, Dianne Feinstein.
For more, Take Two spoke to Chad Terhune, senior correspondent for California Healthline and Kaiser Health News.
Press the blue play button above to hear the full interview.
Vision Zero heads to South LA to engage the community in street safety
It’s been two years since LA Mayor Eric Garcetti adopted Vision Zero — a radical plan to eliminate traffic deaths in the city by 2025. It’s no small task. LA has double the traffic fatalities per capita as New York and far fewer funds to combat an issue the LA Department of Transportation now considers a public heath crisis; 260 people died on LA roads in 2016.
The city is now taking action. It’s prioritized 40 corridors for safety improvements where traffic deaths and injuries are most severe for pedestrians and bicyclists. One of them is Crenshaw Blvd. in South LA. Take Two's motor critic Sue Carpenter met with one of Vision Zero’s newest weapons in its war against roadway crashes. Her name is Destiny Thomas.
Officially, Thomas is a transportation planning associate with the LADOT. In other words, "I am sort of the department's champion for effective community engagement," she says.
Thomas lives in South LA, in a neighborhood "affectionately known as the jungles, behind Crenshaw mall," she says. The idea is that because she's a member of the community, she's better able to communicate the message of Vision Zero to the people who stand the most to gain from it. And also to get their input on the changes they’d most like to see to make the streets more pedestrian and bicycle friendly.
"We want this to be a completely participatory process, and we know that that’s not always possible as a government entity, but that’s the ideal situation, so one opportunity that we saw was that really the community is the best advocate for safety enhancements in the neighborhood," she says. "That means the ideas have to come from them."
People like Minister David Price, who, until Tuesday, didn’t even know Vision Zero existed.
Price is a young adult minister at First AME church of South Los Angeles. One of his congregation members told him about Vision Zero and introduced him to Thomas, whom he met just this week to stroll Crenshaw Blvd. and give his ideas on how the street might be improved.
Central-South LA ranks 14th when it comes to the per-capita number of pedestrians and cyclists who are killed or severely injured in the city each year, according to the LADOT.
"It’s not that characteristically the people in South LA are not safe or that they’re making it unsafe," Thomas says. "Where we’re seeing a lot of fatalities happen is people plain and simply driving too fast. In those instances, we need to reorganize the street so regardless of whether somebody’s obeying the signs, it’s physically not possible for them to make those types of choices, so it’s not that we’re marking South LA as generally unsafe. We’re as a city saying there’s major implications in making South LA safer."
Thomas is a pedestrian. She uses public transportation. She used to be a motorist, but she gave up her car two weeks ago after walking with residents on the corridors she and Vision Zero are hoping to improve.
Price, on the other hand, is a self-identified motorist. He rarely walks or bicycles.
"Just walking down Crenshaw, it always feels like I’m on the freeway," he says. "Cars are moving so fast. Honestly, if I wanted to get from the west side of the road to the east side of the road, I would have to go I don’t know maybe two football fields down the road in order to make a safe crossing. So I think one of the major things we can do is even put intersections where you have crosswalks that are highlighted with lighting, that are clearly marked so that motorists can see exactly where the folks are crossing."
Also, bicycle lanes.
"I don’t see that many cars that are parked on the street so I’m also thinking there might be opportunities for bike lanes to be put on the side of these roads, so that people, like myself who might want to ride a bike to work, will be able to do that and feel safe doing that," Price says.
Thomas says the reason you don't see people walking their dogs or riding their bikes in South LA isn't because they don't want to. "It’s because they don't have an environment that’s conducive to doing that," she says.
Over the next several months, Thomas will continue working with Price and other South LA community members to solicit their ideas on the best ways to make their streets more safe. LADOT will come up with a few action plans. The community will then decide on those plans and the city will construct the winning ideas.
So maybe in 2018, South LA might not have the dubious distinction of ranking no. 14 when it comes to traffic deaths, but it might have more walkers and cyclists.
All aboard: How Angel's Flight got back on track
"All Aboard!" to Downtown L.A.'s tiny little railroad. Angels Flight carried passengers up Bunker Hill for over a hundred years, until it was shut down four years ago because of a derailent.
But as of Thursday morning, it's back on track.
With a little assist from movie stars Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, L.A. historian and preservation activist Richard Schave led a petition drive to re-open Angels Flight.
He spoke with A Martinez about the funicular's journey from derailment to its big comeback.
To listen to the segment, click the blue play button above.
Searching for solutions to SoCal's housing crisis, YIMBYs say 'yes' to development
LA schools aren't quite keeping up, but is it really cause for alarm?
When a high school graduate goes off to college ... it can be a proud moment for them AND their family, all hoping that one day they'll be able to celebrate a bachelor's degree.
The thing is, as we all know, in life, there are no guarantees.
A new study out of UCLA finds that only a quarter of LAUSD high school grads end up with a college diploma within six years. But in the past, there have been attempts to provide alternatives to a traditional college education. Former President Obama, for instance, was pushing for more technical or vocational education alternatives. So, is higher education really the best way to gauge true success?
Meredith Phillips is an Associate Professor of Public Policy and Sociology. She authored the study and spoke to A Martinez about the findings.
To listen to the full segment, click the blue play button above.
Youth sports has become a $15 billion industry-- and looks a little like the professional sports industry
How early is too early to start treating young athletes like professionals? When they're in college or high school? How about middle, or elementary school-- or even younger?
The youth sports industry, valued at $15 billion, is forcing parents to think about that question more and more.
Sean Gregory is a senior writer with Time magazine; he's written about the sudden growth of the kids' sports industry, and how it's affecting families. These include families like Brandon Owens'. Owens lives in LA, and his nine-year old son, King-Riley Owens, is rated as a five-star recruit by the National Youth Basketball Report.
Take Two host A Martínez spoke with Gregory and Owens about the changes in the youth sports industry. To listen to the full interview, use the blue media player above.