Rent Control

Tim Willert GLENDALE -- A group of Glendale apartment owners, afraid that a rent-mediation ordinance being considered by the City Council could lead to rent control, has formed an association to challenge the document. About 40 apartment owners joined forces Monday to become the Glendale Apartment Owners Assn. One of the group's first orders of business will be to offer alternatives to the proposed program, which would give tenants the opportunity to to appeal excessive rent increases to a council-appointed rent-mediation board.

Joshua Pelzer A measure blocking local rent control moved closer to the ballot Wednesday when the city clerk delivered nearly 20,000 signatures, gathered by a property owners' group, to the county registrar-recorder. The county office has 30 working days to verify the signatures, which will be certified by the city and presented to the City Council. "We requested the signatures be verified by the county because we don't have the staff to verify 13,000 signatures," City Clerk Doris Twedt said of the number of signatures needed to put the issue to a vote.

Ken Carlson continues his attempts to deceive the public with political-style commentaries. Rather than base his letters on facts, he creates fairy tales out of the wisps of early morning fog, like those that hang over the Southland these days. I am beginning to wonder whether he genuinely cares about the city of Glendale, or has ulterior motives for the twisted logic he uses to tell his tall tales. His writings are not unlike the rhetorical, misleading, emotional trash that political ghost writers put out for their bosses.

The News-Press is certainly to be commended for printing so many letters and articles on rent control that express so many facts, opinions and viewpoints, keeping the public informed. A few things about me need clarification because of Thomas Allen Denny's letter, printed Dec. 6, in response to my letter, printed Nov. 27. Of course, I realize I am not the only senior citizen in Glendale. I was giving some insight to the reader as to my background.

There is finally genuine good news for the tenants of Glendale. The effort to put an initiative on the ballot to bring rent control protection for tenants will finally begin. The leadership of the Glendale Housing Crisis Forum finally got the message when the City Council told them to their face that the only thing that would get rent control in Glendale was by getting it on the ballot -- something that three angry tenants told them more than eight months ago. Had they listened to those tenants, it would already be on the fall ballot; as it stands, they are aiming for the spring ballot -- a retarded effort at best, but better late than never!

In Ms. Gutierrez's recent column on the virtues of rent control, several points that she makes are blatantly false in an attempt to sway readers. They are stated as facts when nothing could be further from the truth. She states that rents have skyrocketed, yet provides no statistical basis for this claim. The most recent survey conducted by the city of Glendale indicates that rents have stabilized and slightly dipped for the past 12 months. There is no proof that the rent in Glendale has risen faster than the average rent rate in Southern California.

I thought I was done writing about rent control, and a short, simple and factual rebuttal would have been sufficient to debunk the rent-control advocates' short-based socialist mentality. But that was before I read Ken Carlson's logically and constitutionally challenged letter on Dec. 8, "Landlords now must come up with some legitimate solutions," where he alludes that in Glendale "the problem is the housing crisis," but then inexplicably wants landlords to solve "the problem."

Karen S. Kim Councilman Bob Yousefian says he knows just where to point his finger when identifying the cause of a tenant effort to establish rent control in Glendale. Yousefian blames the Glendale Chamber of Commerce, the Glendale Assn. of Realtors and other property owner groups for not supporting three rent-regulation ordinances he tried to push forward earlier this year. "We would have had some of these things that we could control and modify," Yousefian said.

Darleene Barrientos The State Bar of California has decided against suspending the law license of Glendale's loudest rent-control proponent, but has placed him on probation for a year following a court ruling that he filed a "frivolous" appeal for a client solely for "delay or harassment." A document approved Tuesday by the state bar court in Los Angeles asserts that Ken Carlson filed an appeal that had no merit and that his purpose in filing the appeal was to harass the defendant.

I felt the necessity to respond to a letter from Roberta Gutierrez that indicates she has presented the key element of the rent-control measure filed with the city clerk's office. I think key elements should be elements that affect the landlord as well as the tenant, which her letter fails to cover. Obviously, she is presenting the elements she has been told are key elements, and hasn't read the draft itself. Either that or she is being less than forthright.