A Brand New Building Has Been Empty for 9 Months and It's LADWP's Fault

In 1979, Dead Kennedys frontman Jello Biafra ran for Mayor of San Francisco. The notoriously outspoken Biafra saw corruption and poverty overrunning the city he called home, and he didn’t like it one bit.

Biafra didn’t really intend to become Mayor. His run was more of a practical joke combined with scalding-hot social commentary.

While the media seized on Jello’s proposal to require businessmen to wear clown suits during business hours and going to Acting Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s mansion to clean up her lawn, Jello’s smartest - and most scathing - idea was an official Board of Bribery.

In Biafra’s own words:

Something else I had learned quickly when I first came to San Francisco was that the city was openly and brazenly corrupt. I realised, for example, that the reason why punk shows were getting attacked so much by the police was that none of us had the money to pay off the cops. In some cases the promoters just refused on principle.

So realising how the whole thing worked, I thought, okay, let’s just bring it all out in the open. And I proposed an officially appointed Board Of Bribery to set fair and standard bribe rates for acquiring liquor licenses, building code exemptions, protection from the police and other crooks and so on.

He was certainly on to something there. (Bolding is mine.)

Los Angeles is corrupt. It’s naïve to think that it isn’t.

Mayor Frank Shaw may have been recalled by outraged Angelenos in 1938, but did the problem of corruption ever really go away? Of course not.

Look at which neighborhoods get the best city services - and at who lives there.

Look at which companies get the most perks and the most expedited permits - and at who receives money from those companies (especially campaign donations).

Now, why do I bring up Jello’s Mayoral run and public corruption on a blog dedicated to empty and misused buildings, you ask?

Because sometimes, when a building is chronically empty, IT’S THE CITY’S OWN DAMN FAULT.

I’d like to draw your attention to this X thread started by Alex Weiss, owner of a multifamily property management company.

In order to legally rent out apartments, you need a Certificate of Occupancy from the city. That requires a lot of inspections and for LADWP to hook up the utilities.

According to Weiss, the building has been ready to lease for NINE MONTHS…except the owner still can’t get a certificate of occupancy due to LADWP delays. And the owner is under pressure from the bank, even though the situation is not his fault. I asked about number of units and location, but haven’t received a response. If I do, I will update this.

This isn’t the first time I’ve heard of property owners being forced to keep otherwise-ready rentals off the market because LADWP kept them waiting for months. (If you are a landlord who falls into this category, I’m listening.)

Read the thread. And I mean read the ENTIRE thread. Multiple comments share similar experiences in dealing with the city. Others mention that dealing with the city has become too expensive and too much of a hassle. That could spell fewer and fewer new buildings in the city, which should make YIMBYs nauseous.

In the thread, there are also mentions of red tape and implications that some greasing of palms may be required. While I HOPE that isn’t the case, would it surprise anyone?

UPDATE: Here’s a reply from John Otter (bolding is mine):

Unfortunately it’s too late. Sure there will be some units built, but not many and not enough.

-ULA has ruined the economics of developing rental housing in LA.

-The average person can’t conceive how badly broken and incompetent DWP is. Our example: We’re sitting on a finished bldg with 176 units that was supposed to have power in April 2024. It’s Oct 2025 and no power. A $900k estimate was given by DWP to run a line to our project. We received the bill; it’s $3.3M. Plus millions more in interest carry. All overruns to the budget. All the budget overruns kill the returns. Every other large developer I know, and I know most of them, have DWP horror stories. And we’re being told by DWP rank and file that the net three years are going to be worse as the city and DWP dedicate resourses to the Olympics.

-Building Trade Unions have LA in a vice grip. They are politically successful getting the city to impose union requirements that add $120k-$150K per unit. This is financially infeasible, so unions don’t build the housing they advocate for and the housing simply doesn’t get built at all.

At the institutional capital and institutional level apartment developer level, it’s small world and we’re all communicating.

Institutional capital has now redlined LA

Large scale developers have now redined LA

No one will capitalize and build rental housing in the city going forward

Capital and developers don’t need to build in LA. We can build anywhere. There are other cities in CA and other states to build in. That’s where we’ve gone. LA needs developers and capital to build and fund rental housing projects in LA. But those of us who do it are done with LA.

We have no interest in trying to fix it anymore. It would be futile and life is too short to play Sisyphus every day trying to fix LA. We’re not going to spend our most scarce resource; i.e. our time, beating our heads against the wall in LA. We can build plenty of housing in other, more competently run cities

With all of the difficulties in getting new housing built and ready to rent, we REALLY need to keep existing housing, but if you read this blog, you already know there are other good reasons to do that.

Incidentally, I haven’t forgotten my old boss having a hard time with one of the South Bay cities. I won’t go into any identifying details, but suffice it to say that the city in question was negligent about something and refused to take any responsibility for a problem that it caused. My boss wound up pulling out of that city entirely. Which led to displacement of long-term tenants, but that’s a story for another time.

And by the way, consider the timeline. Weiss says “9 months and counting.” It’s October. This building could have housed displaced fire victims. Instead, it’s still sitting empty.

So where am I going with this?

I’ll just call it - we need our own Jello Biafra.

We need someone to call attention to LA’s problems in a way that captures the media’s attention, gets the public informed and talking, and makes City Hall sweat a little - preferably a lot. Controller Kenneth Mejia has been great for financial transparency, but we need all the other issues out in the open, too - and ideally in a way that’s far too outrageous to be ignored or overlooked.

Anybody want to go for it? I’m always good for an interview.