I argued with Orthodox Jewish friends the other day about who owns the neighborhood. They say nobody owns the neighborhood and people should be able to do what they want with the property they buy, including building a giant mansion. <\/p>\n
My Orthodox friends are opposed to legislative attempts to limit mansionization. Orthodox Jews tend to have large families and on average they don’t care as much as the goyim do about maintaining certain neighborhood aesthetics. For instance, are Orthodox Jews more or less likely than Presbyterians to keep a clean and neat lawn and garden? Modern Orthodox Jews keep up their lawns and gardens while traditional Orthodox Jews vary. <\/p>\n
Who’s more likely to leave trash on the roof of their garage? Orthodox Jews or Anglicans or blacks? <\/p>\n
Who’s more likely to yell? Orthodox Jews or WASPs or Puerto Ricans? <\/p>\n
Who’s more likely to have a lot of loud rambunctious children? Orthodox Jews or WASPs or Africans?<\/p>\n
I remember a Gentile couple I knew well were shocked at how rambunctious Jewish kids were (compared to the Seventh-Day Adventist kids they were used to). <\/p>\n
Ryan Bradley writes in the Los Angeles Times<\/a>: <\/p>\n Earlier this month, the city planning commission released a report on so-called mansionization. It found that from 2005 to 2015, 57,224,810 square feet of either new additions or new construction had been developed in single-family zones throughout the city. Recently, the commission took steps to mitigate the problem. It voted to eliminate various loopholes, including one that grants a 20% square footage bonus for building \u201cgreen.\u201d But the City Council must review and sanction these changes before they become law, and plenty of loopholes still exist \u2014 attached garages, for example, do not count against total built space if they\u2019re located at the back of the property.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, very little about the proposed adjustments will do anything to curb the underlying realities that incentivize such unlovely building choices. Much of Los Angeles is still zoned for single-family house construction, so developers can\u2019t maximize the space available \u2014 and their profits \u2014 with multiple units. Instead, developers drive up the asking price by piling up the square footage.<\/p>\n It\u2019s not just the aesthetics that bother me. All those additional square feet add up to an enormous waste of space.<\/p>\n In \u201cLife at Home in the 21st Century,\u201d UCLA researchers tracked 32 middle-class Angelenos, trying to measure and analyze how we live today. One family in particular they followed intimately, tracking how they moved around the house during the mornings, evenings, and weekends \u2014 when they were all home. The results were amazing: the family huddled around the kitchen and family room nearly all the time, leaving the living room, porch, and more than 50% of the rest of the first floor communal spaces almost entirely empty. The habit of gathering around the kitchen to eat, or huddling in front of the TV to watch, hasn\u2019t changed much since the 1950s, but the average home size has \u2014 from 983 square feet in 1950 to more than 2,660 square feet today. Meanwhile, the average family size has shrunk and so has the average number of people living under one roof, from 3.3 in 1960 to 2.54 today.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve managed to build more space for fewer people in a city with arguably the worst housing crisis in America. Mansionization is the inverse of densification\u2014less space for more people\u2014which we desperately need to keep L.A. halfway affordable and environmentally sustainable in the long term. Community groups rail against the large apartment buildings going up in Hollywood and downtown, but it\u2019s the mansions that are terribly out of step with the reality of this city.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I wanted to know the moral reason why my Orthodox friends held that nobody can own a neighborhood. From what I deduced, they had the libertarian view that people should do what they want so long as they don’t hurt others and they didn’t want more city rules about how they build and renovate. <\/p>\n I guess I have a citizenist or nationalist view that people should be able to band together to maintain neighborhoods as they see fit. If a neighborhood doesn’t want mansions, they should be allowed. In Jerusalem, there are requirements to build with Jerusalem stone to maintain a certain aesthetic. <\/p>\n I think this discussion gets at deeper points than just mansionization. Who owns a neighborhood or city or country? I think its citizens do and they should be able to determine who gets to move in and what the rules are. <\/p>\n Homeowners at Robertson Blvd and Airdrome are not happy with the basketball courts in the park because basketball courts attract young men who commit high rates of crime, including violent crime, theft, and drug pushing. Blacks are selling drugs at the park at Robertson Blvd and Airdrome, sometimes to Orthodox Jewish kids. Residents are not happy. They don’t want young black men hanging around. They don’t want homeless setting up camp in alleys. And they don’t want more public parking. They want people to have to buy a monthly sticker to park. <\/p>\n Here are some Yelp reviews of the Robertson Recreation Center<\/a>: <\/p>\n * The outdoor\/indoor basketball courts are okay. Between the guys doing drugs in between buildings of the Rec Center and the homeless guys that leave their trash by one of the doors to the center and “work” at the Ashram temple across the street, you’d have a better time crawling into a sewer for your own amusement than coming to this place. It’s a travesty.<\/p>\n * Mom’s perspective here:<\/p>\n I came here with my husband and 18 month old on a Sunday afternoon for the playground. There was trash scattered throughout the sand and I would not let my kid take off his shoes to play in the sand because I felt it may not be safe. There were two men sleeping on benches in very close proximity to the playground. When one of them woke up and stared at us, my husband requested we leave.<\/p>\n The play yard was small and the basketball courts were full of grown men playing games. I was the only woman there. I would not feel comfortable here alone with my child.<\/p>\n Needless to say, I will not be back.<\/p>\n * It’s a police check in station, so it’s relatively safe-ish. I come here to shoot hoops and only see shady things going on once in awhile, like people smoking joints or sleeping in the bushes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I remember one time I was walking by this park and a bunch of black guys on the court started making fun of a studious black kid going by with library books under his arm. They said he was acting white. <\/p>\n I don’t like walking by this park. I don’t like many of the people it attracts. I remember one day there was a homeless guy who died right beside the park. I notice some shady types park their vans by the park and live there. I’m not thrilled with all the homeless in 90035.<\/p>\n The La Cienega Park in Beverly Hills (near Olympic Blvd) used to have public basketball courts but they tore them down because they attracted too many blacks. The park has sterling ratings on Yelp<\/a>.<\/p>\n Roxbury Memorial Park<\/a> has basketball courts but it is a long way from where lower-class blacks live so they are not the problem they pose in and around 90035. <\/p>\n It’s hard to maintain excellence with public goods such as parks when you have low-IQ people in them.<\/p>\n Diversity is a threat to excellence. <\/p>\n This reminds me of a story from psychologist James Flynn who spent a year in Virginia in an upper-class suburb. The neighbors were all professionals. After dinner in the Asian family, the kids would settle down to do their homework. Meanwhile, the Jewish family after dinner would all yell at each other and then the kids would settle down to do their homework. And the black family? They’d gather to play basketball. <\/p>\n So I guess in some areas, my Orthodox friends do want to own the neighborhood. They don’t want public basketball courts. They don’t want loitering by young black men and the homeless. They don’t want open air drug sales. They don’t want illegal immigrants urinating publicly. If they can clean up the neighborhood, they’ll increase property values, which in turn will keep out undesirables. Our prices discriminate so you don’t have to! <\/p>\n I like the old days in America and Australia and Canada and England where homeowners banded together and kept up their neighborhoods by keeping up their standards. There was a sense of “We own the neighborhood.” With ownership, comes increased care and increased demands. I think that makes for better neighborhoods than everyone doing their own thing. <\/p>\n That phrase, “You don’t own the neighborhood!” bugs me. It reminds me of Jon Stewart’s epic rant, “This country isn’t yours!” Jews certainly feel, correctly, that they own Israel. <\/p>\n Homeowners feeling ownership of the neighborhood strikes me as a good thing.<\/p>\n It seems to me that ownership belongs to those who can take power. If you can control your neighborhood, you own it. If you can control your city, you own it. If you can control your country, you own it. If you can control your religion, you own it. <\/p>\n Ownership requires power effectively demonstrated. <\/p>\n Right now, the hardcore Muslims control Islam because the softcore Muslims don’t intimidate anyone. The Pope seems to have a lot of power over the Catholic church. He’s changing the church. <\/p>\n The Alt-Right is fighting back against Jews who claim to be Alt-Right<\/a>. If the leading intellectuals of the Alt-Right declare that Jews can’t be in the party, then any Jew who claims to be Alt-Right appears foolish. <\/p>\n TRANSCRIPT<\/a>: <\/p>\n Well, the convention\u2019s over. I thought Donald Trump was going to speak. Ivanka said that he was going to come out. She said he was really compassionate and generous, but then this angry groundhog came out and he just vomited on everybody for an hour. <\/p>\n The Republicans appear to have a very clear plan for America, and they\u2019ve articulated it throughout the convention. One, jail your political opponent. Two, inject Rudy Giuliani with a speedball and Red Bull enema. Three, spend the rest of the time scaring the holy bejeezus out of everybody. But I\u2019m not interested in that. I\u2019m actually interested in gymnastics. <\/p>\n With the Rio Olympics coming up, I\u2019m enjoying the gymnastics portion of the program that\u2019s about to occur. That would be the contortions that many conservatives will now have to do, to embrace Donald\u2026 J. Trump, a man who clearly embodies the things that they have, for years, said that they have hated about Barack Obama.<\/p>\n (Clip of Fox News presenters calling Barak Obama thin-skinned, straightforwardly authoritarian, and a raging narcissistic who has no grip on reality.)<\/p>\n Yes. A thin-skinned narcissist with no government experience. Yes, that sounds exactly like\u2026 Barack Obama. So now the right-wing media\u2019s going to have to spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week, justifying this choice they\u2019ve made. Can they make the turn? They already are. Let\u2019s trace their journey through the eyes of one of their most talented gymnasts. <\/p>\n (Photograph shown of Sean Hannity.)<\/p>\n Uhhhh, his name escapes me. Let\u2019s just refer to him as Lumpy. Hey, Lumpy. For instance, here\u2019s how Lumpy felt about Barack Obama\u2019s divisiveness.<\/p>\n (Clips of Hannity calling Obama the most divisive president in history, bringing up black vs white, racial lines)<\/p>\n Cats versus dogs! Batman versus Superman! <\/p>\n (Photographs of Taylor Swift, Kanye West and Kim Kardashian.) <\/p>\n That one against the other two! I\u2019ve been out of the business a while, I don\u2019t know what that is. If you don\u2019t like divisiveness, what about when Trump suggested Mexico is sending us their rapists? <\/p>\n (Clip of Hannity explaining how Trump \u2018didn\u2019t call all Mexicans rapists\u2019)<\/p>\n You\u2019re right, and on Cinco de Mayo, we had the Trump Tower taco bowl, and that\u2019s one of the healing-est meals on the Trump Tower menu. I\u2019m not an expert on racial unity. But I do believe that some of our more vaunted historical leaders in that area did retweet white supremacists less than Trump. So I believe\u2026 I\u2019m just saying. Then there was the Obama crony that Lumpy couldn\u2019t stand. His old friend, Teleprompty.<\/p>\n (Clip of Hannity saying Obama \u2018can\u2019t read a sentence without using a teleprompter\u2019.)<\/p>\n He probably sleeps with the darn thing and then probably doesn\u2019t call it the next day because it didn\u2019t say so on the teleprompter. Lumpy, your 180, please.<\/p>\n (Clip of Hannity praising Trump\u2019s use of teleprompters.)<\/p>\n [Shouting] You hate teleprompters! You\u2019re saying now, \u201cTeleprompters are for stupid people, and I thought Trump handled it pretty good.\u201d O.K., inexperience aside. Divisiveness aside. The worst thing about Barack Obama is his elitism.<\/p>\n (Clip of Hannity asking the audience \u2018we have to wonder how in touch\u2019 Obama is because he has a $1 million home and ordering a burger with Dijon mustard.)<\/p>\n Yeah, you elitist! You probably eat that burger with your mouth instead of acting like a real American and having a Magnum fire it up your ass. Like they serve them at Arby\u2019s. That\u2019s how they serve them, actually, at Arby\u2019s, they shoot them right up your ass. Meanwhile, here\u2019s how Lumpy feels about the guy who sits in a literal golden throne at the top of a golden tower with his name in gold letters at the top of it, eating pizza with a knife and fork. How do you feel about that guy?<\/p>\n (Clip of Hannity describing Mr. Trump as a \u2018blue-collar billionaire.\u2019)<\/p>\n That\u2019s not a thing. You know what? It is true, Trump does seem like the kind of guy you want sit down and own a fleet of airplanes with. Look, all that stuff is actually superficial and I\u2019m sure it\u2019s easy for people without ethics or principles to embrace someone who embodies everything that they said they hated about the previous president for the past eight years. Because, really for a president, it\u2019s about what\u2019s inside. And that\u2019s where Lumpy and friends, this is where they really have found the president lacking.<\/p>\n (Clip of Hannity criticising the Rev. Wright Jr. and saying he would not go to his church.)<\/p>\n Obama would. He\u2019s the type of Christian that\u2019s, you know, [whispers] not Christian. When the pope said that Trump\u2019s talk about immigration was not Christian, surely that gave Lumpy pause.<\/p>\n (Clip of Hannity asking how the pope can decide who is a real Christian \u2018at heart\u2019.)<\/p>\n Yeah. Who died and made that guy pope? So let\u2019s just say, for real, here\u2019s where we are. Either Lumpy and his friends are lying about being bothered by thin-skinned, authoritarian, less-than-Christian readers-of-prompter being president. Or they don\u2019t care, as long as it\u2019s their thin-skinned prompter-authoritarian-tyrant-narcissist. You just want that person to give you your country back. Because you feel that you\u2019re this country\u2019s rightful owners. <\/p>\n There\u2019s only one problem with that. This country isn\u2019t yours. You don\u2019t own it. It never was. There is no real America. You don\u2019t own it. You don\u2019t own patriotism. You don\u2019t own Christianity. You sure as hell don\u2019t own respect for the bravery and sacrifice of military, police and firefighters.<\/p>\n Trust me. I saw a lot of people on the convention floor in Cleveland with their \u2018blue lives matter\u2019 rhetoric, who either remained silent or actively fought against the 9\/11 first responders\u2019 bill reauthorisation. I see you and I see your .<\/p>\n We\u2019re live. [Colbert gives audience thumbs up] Never been on a television show with stakes before. So I see you. You\u2019ve got a problem with those Americans fighting for their place at the table. You\u2019ve got a problem with that because you feel like \u2014 what\u2019s Representative Steve King\u2019s word for it? Subgroups of Americans are being divisive. Well, if you have a problem with that, take it up with the founders. We hold these truths to be self-evident. [Singing.] \u201cThat all men are created equal.\u201d Respect, Lin-Manuel. Those fighting to be included in the ideal of equality are not being divisive. Those fighting to keep those people out are. So, Lumpy, you and your friends have embraced Donald Trump. Clearly, the \u2018c\u2019 next to your names don\u2019t stand for constitutional or conservative. But cravenly, convenient [Colbert interrupts with an air horn.]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I argued with Orthodox Jewish friends the other day about who owns the neighborhood. They say nobody owns the neighborhood and people should be able to do what they want with the property they buy, including building a giant mansion. … Continue reading \n