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PrintJanuary 19, 2024
Judicial overreach comes to the circle driveways of Beverly Hills
A county judge went all soup-Nazi on the City of Beverly Hills, mandating that unless the city builds low-income housing on its pricey real estate, no building permits for you.
According to the Los Angeles Times:
Last month, Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Curtis A. Kin blocked the city from issuing all building permits except for new residential development as a penalty for Beverly Hills’ failure to approve a sufficient blueprint for affordable housing.
Officials are appealing the decision and say they’re continuing to process permits as normal. But the potential ramifications on home and business owners and the construction industry have left civic leaders aghast.
“I’m shocked by the judgment,” said Murray Fischer, a real estate attorney who has practiced in Beverly Hills for 50 years. “It would mean that the city is at a standstill.”
Someone who wants to remodel his kitchen, or repave his circle driveway is s--- out of luck for a building permit to do it.
It's an astonishing example of judicial overreach, of an ambitious judge legislating from the bench.
Now, sure, it's easy to make fun of Beverly Hills, given its rich people, most, but not all, of whom, vote Democrat. You get what you vote for.
But I used to live on the edge of that city and I like the place. You don't have to be crazy rich to enjoy it, anyone can, there is no admission fee.
The judge here is clearly violating the takings clause of the Constitution, mandating that innocent people who might not have even voted for the city officials who failed to deliver the plan that the judge liked (they've delivered a lot of plans, all of them declared inadequate) have to pay the penalty in a group punishment, the way hideous teachers do by making the whole class stay after school because someone farted during a test.
If you can't improve your own property, what property rights do you actually have?
It's not just homeowners who are penalized here. The other group of people who are penalized are the small businessese that do a robust business in kitchen remodels, porch revamps, driveway and garage-door improvements, bathroom refurbishments. The little guys pay, too.
There are winners, of course. The Los Angeles Times cited developers of low-income housing, as if Beverly Hills had any room for it to start with. But the more likely winner will be the illegals. There are plenty of places that are hard to see through the trees and gates in Beverly Hills, so you can bet that the underground economy populated by that population that pays no taxes will kick in for those kitchen revamps that eventually will happen anyway, Corruption will ramp up, too -- as corrupt pols and lawmen are paid off in campaign contributions and other payola to look the other way.
But most renovations won't happen and I shudder to think of what the city will look like after years of zero improvements. I've seen places like this -- in Riverside County and elsewhere; they eventually get a run-down look.
In effect, the judge is saying that if Beverly Hills won't build more slum housing amid its mansions, it can become a slum itself.
Which is quite the judicial overreach.
That said, the ruling is based on a pretty crummy law passed 50 years ago, that every town and village have to build low-income housing no matter what the character of the city and no matter what the economic infeasibility. Given Beverly Hills's land prices, it's unlikely that building low-income housing makes much economic sense unless there are some kind of state or federal subsidies. The other thing is the importation of people who don't produce and who live off welfare -- meaning, the city can experience the kind of crime and decay that other parts of Los Angeles County experience, the places that vote completely Democrat. Unlike a lot of San Francisco, which is seeing a comparable slide downward, there are people in Beverly Hills willing to fight back, given the natural character of their city, which was always intended to be a wealthy shopping area since its founding.
Perhaps there is a failure of the imagination of the officials, too. Beverly Hills, arguably, could benefit from servant and gardener housing, given that the Beverly Hills maids and gardeners (I've known a few) have to travel extremely long commutes by bus to get to their jobs, as do the people who work in the hotels and shops. They could even make it nice. But the system doesn't work that way -- it insists on importing all comers, contributing to society or not, and it's pretty much a given that such housing, if they could even find a place to construct it (there is talk of forcing the city to construct tall buildings, like they do in the Paris banlieues) would change the physical character of the city and very likely lead to a lot of petty crime.
Bottom line here is that what needs to go is not just this overreaching judge, but that low-income housing law, because it not only threatens Beverly Hills, it threatens all communities. If a judge who likes to throw his weight around can extend his overreach to this city, he or another of his kind can make up any other thing he likes to extend group punishments to all cities, particularly those that don't conform to Democrat party lines.
Image: Carol M. Highsmith, via Library of Congress, via Picryl // no known restrictions
