The Honorable Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa                                                    September 19, 2005
200 North Spring Street, Room 435, Los Angeles, CA 90012 

Dear Mayor Villaraigosa,

The Greater Valley Glen Council has been reviewing the issue of preserving affordable housing in Los Angeles. 

To reinstate real investment incentives in older apartments, preserve quality affordable housing, attract employment, generate new tax revenue, reduce crime and redirect our tax dollars to critical needs, the Greater Valley Glen Council makes the following recommendations to the City of Los Angeles:

1. Reestablish the original 100% R.S.O. Capital Improvement Pass Through that was allowed until September 1989.
2. Implement Permanent Vacancy Decontrol. This would not be detrimental to any existing tenants, and new tenants already pay the market rate. Although Section 8 has some critical problems that first need to be resolved, the general concept for means tested tenants would benefit only those who need it.
3. Allow an additional pass through for all government-related costs (particularly including school bond servicing and short of implementing Permanent Vacancy Decontrol). Extra costs should be combined into just one pass through and kept simple.  
4. Allow owners to respond to tenant complaints by enabling them to evict promptly suspected nuisance tenants with a thirty-day notice, subject to the evicted tenant's rent (plus allowed annual increases) remaining in effect for the benefit of any tenant who rents that unit during the year after the eviction. In addition, that rent (plus the allowed increases) shall remain in effect as long as the tenant (who replaces the nuisance tenant) rents the unit.
5. Allow owners to round total rent, including pass-through items, to the nearest dollar, not just to the next lowest dollar.

We hope you will implement these suggestions in order to benefit both tenants and landlords in our great city. If you have any further questions, please contact Greater Valley Glen Council member Victor Viereck at (818) 985-9174. Thank you.

Sincerely,

The Greater Valley Glen Council
Charlotte Laws, Ph.D. – Chair of the Government Relations Committee

*Proposal suggestions by Greater Valley Glen Council member Victor Viereck.