Life & Times Transcripts: 06/02/05

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Life & Times Transcript

06/02/05

Coverage of Town Hall Los Angeles speakers on Life and Times is made possible by a grant from the Boeing Company.

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

There are millions of dollars at play in Southern California's housing market and some of the players might surprise you.

Alison Dickson>> The Union Rescue Mission, whose very purpose, you know, is to serve the homeless community, and here they are actively through their actions fueling the fire.

Val>> And then, our FilmWeek critics spar over the new crop of movies. Is there a clear winner or will it be a split decision?

These stories and more next on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> We all know home prices are going through the roof, so to speak, but you may not realize the domino effect they have on almost everything from where developers decide to build their homes to how banks market their mortgages. It also makes life harder on renters and even the homeless. NewsHour correspondent Jeffrey Kaye looks beyond the high home prices beginning with those who hope to cash in on this hot market.

Tony Robbins>> "What you need is more emotional strength. Isn't it true?"

Jeffrey Kaye>> With self-help preacher, Tony Robbins, kicking things off, a recent gathering at Los Angeles's Convention Center had all the trappings of a revival meeting.

[Film Clip]

Jeffrey Kaye>> Thousands came to a two-day expo hoping to learn how they could turn investments in real estate into personal riches. For between thirty and five hundred dollars a ticket, attendees could hear tips about buying, selling and trading properties and they could get an earful from dozens of vendors all hawking their own products and strategies to reach easy street through real estate.

>> "We have Power Investing this evening at seven o'clock."

Jeffrey Kaye>> The carnival atmosphere was a reflection not only of the booming real estate market, but the get-rich-quick investment fever which surrounds it. In California, the median price of a home has risen to half a million dollars, more than twice the national price. For those in the housing business, these are gold rush days.

Mohamed Edlebi>> This is like maybe the most exciting thing in the last two years for investors.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Mohamed Edlebi is both a real estate agent and an investor. He left a high-end Italian clothing business to trade properties like this one, a San Fernando Valley home he bought for half a million dollars. In seven months, he's almost doubling his investment as the offers pour in.

Mohamed Edlebi>> I get six offers between one and three.

Jeffrey Kaye>> At Dilbeck Realtors in Los Angeles's San Fernando Valley, office manager Bonnie Strassmann says, more often than not, buyers engage in bidding wars. She's seen as many as thirty bids on one property.

Bonnie Strassmann>> Coming in full price is not going to get the buyer the house anymore, so the buyer definitely has to pay more than full price and then come how much more? I heard of one the other day that just went for $75,000 over asking.

Jeffrey Kaye>> But housing price inflation has put home ownership beyond the reach of many Californians. Only eighteen percent of the state's households can afford to buy that median priced home of half a million dollars.

Sylvie Madore>> We were surprised by how expensive a lot of the houses that don't look very good are and the prices just keep going up.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Sylvie Madore has been looking for a house for five months. She's made offers on six different homes and has been outbid every time. The owner wants $800,000 for this property in Sherman Oaks, California. It's a three-bedroom house with a converted garage in the back. Madore is not enthusiastic, but she's learned that, if she wants to buy, she'll have to compromise.

Sylvie Madore>> We've been saving for a few years and we thought we were at a point where we could find a house that we liked in the neighborhood we liked in the price range we had. There's no way we can put all three together. So either we have to get a house we don't like as much in the neighborhood we want or we have to get a house that's real nice in the neighborhood we don't really want to live in.

Jeffrey Kaye>> One big reason for the housing boom in Southern California as elsewhere in the country is low interest rates for home loans. On the supply side of the equation, prices have been driven up by a shortage of affordable housing. One reason for the shortage is homeowner groups in urban areas often oppose increased density and new developments. Boom prices in cities are fueling a construction boom in the outskirts of suburbia. Developer John Young is one of the largest home builders in the fast-growing counties each of Los Angeles, the so-called Inland Empire.

John Young>> In the state of California, we think we need 250,000 units built per year and we're building about at a 200,000 clip right now, so what does that do? You keep adding that up per year, in ten years, that's 500,000 homes that we needed, so it accumulates every year that we don't build enough homes.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Residents here put up with long commutes, often one to two hours each way, but home prices are half what they are closer to Los Angeles or the coast. Elizabeth and Rene Burgos are moving to a desert community where housing is more affordable.

Rene Burgos>> $200,000 cheaper and I know over here they're like quarter of a million. Quarter of a million over here, but over there, it was at $100,000. Now they're going to $200,000 to $300,000.

Jeffrey Kaye>> We met the Burgos's at a forum put on for Spanish-speaking buyers by local government.

[Film Clip]

Jeffrey Kaye>> Educator Monica Nazar explained there is government assistance for purchases, but she says enthusiastic buyers should be alert for scams.

Monica Nazar>> Maybe they thought there was no prepayment penalty and now there is. Maybe they thought it was a fixed rate and now it turns out to be adjustable. People are not knowledgeable and they are afraid to ask the questions, so they sign.

Jeffrey Kaye>> High home prices have made it tough for some businesses to recruit workers from outside California. Since buying an affordable home is a pipe dream for most residents, Los Angeles has one of the lowest home ownership rates in the country. About sixty percent of city residents rent, but tenants too are facing a crisis. There's a shortage of affordable rental housing.

Alison Dickson>> So right now, the housing authority is basically just trying to duke it out with the owner.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Activists like tenant organizer, Alison Dickson, of the Coalition for Economic Survival, say real estate speculators are making a bad situation worse by driving up rents.

Alison Dickson>> The greatest threat to affordable housing is greedy developers, people who are more concerned about making a buck than housing Los Angeles tenants.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Dickson says one case illustrates her point, a forty-eight unit building in central Los Angeles. Tenants here have received federal rent subsidies since 1981, but the property was recently sold. The new owner has pulled out of the subsidy program and is raising rents. Tenant Kathleen Ilindo, who's on disability, says she doesn't know what she's going to do.

Kathleen Ilindo>> Now I'm paying $305.

Jeffrey Kaye>> And the increase will be how much more?

Kathleen Ilindo>> About $1,100 or $1,200 more and he wants that as of June 1.

Jeffrey Kaye>> And you just don't have the money.

Kathleen Ilindo>> No, I sure don't.

Jeffrey Kaye>> While Dickson is critical of the current owner, she is furious at the previous landlord. Ironically, that was the Union Rescue Mission of Los Angeles which provides services for homeless people in downtown Los Angeles. The mission bought the building as an investment, held it for eight months, then sold it last year at a profit of half a million dollars.

Alison Dickson>> The Union Rescue Mission, whose very purpose, you know, is to serve the homeless community, and here they are actively through their action fueling the fire of the homelessness problem.

Jeffrey Kaye>> Union Rescue Mission representatives say the buyer assured them he'd keep the rents affordable. They say the profit from the sale helps fund homeless services. Neither they or the building's new owner, Jeffrey Green, would answer questions on camera. The low-income renters here are worried about rent increases and evictions and seem a world apart from the nearby expo that screamed "real estate equals wealth". Experts are debating how long the California housing boom might last, but here there was no ambivalence.

Dean Seif>> There may be adjustments in prices and values, but it's not a bubble where it's going to burst and you're going to lose everything. It's just not going to happen.

Jeffrey Kaye>> In Southern California, as the real estate frenzy continues --

>> "Learn how to pull money out of thin air with real estate. Jump in the money vault."

Jeffrey Kaye>> Would-be tycoons hope to grab what they can while they can. I'm Jeffrey Kaye for Life and Times.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life and Times".

Val>> Imagine having to manage one out of every five acres of land in the United States. Well, that's the job of the Secretary of the Interior and, for the first time, it's a woman, former Colorado Attorney General, Gale Norton. As you can imagine, energy policies are a priority. I talked with Norton about President Bush's energy policy, offshore oil drilling and the administration's not so great environmental reputation. We met at the Biltmore where Norton was a guest of Town Hall Los Angeles.

Gale Norton>> The first prong of the President's energy plan is conservation. We want to be sure that we're using energy efficiently and getting all the new technology that we can to help us with that. The second prong is renewables. We in the Department of the Interior are very involved with that. We give out permits for wind energy facilities. We've been doing environmental analyses of the best places for wind energy sites. We're putting in new permits for new places. Geothermal energy is another renewable on which we do a lot of work especially in California and Nevada.

The third prong is traditional energy. As much as we want to see renewables become a huge part of our energy picture, the reality is that it's going to be a minor contributor for quite a few years. So we need to have traditional oil, gas and coal as parts of our energy picture. In the Department of the Interior, our lands produce about a third of America's oil, natural gas and coal.

Val>> So it's in the domestic or traditional sources of energy. That's where a lot of the controversy is and, in particular in California, oil drilling off our coast. Apparently there is more activity on the part of oil companies. They're gearing up for possible increased drilling and that's going to get a lot of people in California very skittish.

Gale Norton>> The reality is that we've been dealing with some leases offshore California that were issued decades ago. We've been in litigation with the companies that hold those federal leases.

Val>> The Department of the Interior?

Gale Norton>> Yes, we have been.

Val>> Why would the Department of the Interior want to buy or want to get control of areas that are currently leased by oil companies?

Gale Norton>> The federal government, through my department, controls all of the federal offshore areas and we lease out some of those areas for energy development.

Val>> To oil companies?

Gale Norton>> Yes. We leased these lands out to oil companies twenty some odd years ago and those leases have stayed in existence for all of this time. Because the companies own those leases, we can't just cancel those, so we're now in litigation. They're saying that they deserve compensation for not being allowed to develop those leases. Although we are continuing to administer those leases in the way we have to because that's what the law requires, we are also negotiating to buy out those leases and settle that litigation.

Val>> I see. What will the federal government, the Department of the Interior, do if you get those leases? What will you do with that area?

Gale Norton>> That just means that there would not be any drilling offshore California, so there would not be any energy development in the area that currently has leases.

Val>> And isn't that counter to the President's plan if he wants to develop domestic sources of oil?

Gale Norton>> We really need to have domestic sources of oil. We need to have domestic sources of natural gas. We need to develop our own resources, but we also have to do that in those places that make the most sense. So we want to work with local communities and with states to identify those places and to see what states want to see energy development, see what areas ought to be opened for energy development. So we will be hearing from states all over the country about their perspective and will be coming up with our plan for that.

Val>> You also used a phrase -- or the President's using a phrase -- called "cooperative conservation". Explain what that means.

Gale Norton>> Cooperative conservation is what we see as a new phase in the evolution of environmental protection. We believe that the best way to solve environmental problems is getting those people who are most effected together to try and find solutions. When you've got a local area of land to manage, you might have ranchers who are not happy with what the environmentalists want to see, who are not happy with what the horseback riders want to see. You've got a variety of different kinds of recreational uses and productive uses of our land. What we want to do is to get people to sit down together and solve problems. We want people to work together.

Val>> Now the Bush administration, it will be no news to you, gets very low grades from, you know, a long list of environmental groups, so they might be very suspicious and distrusting of this cooperative conservation.

Gale Norton>> The reality is that we work as very close partners with a number of environmental groups. Those that are actually involved in on-the-ground restoration of habitats, working with wildlife, managing lands. We work together very closely with them as partners. There are some groups that mostly get their existence through fundraising and require, for their fundraising, to say, oh, there's a big environmental problem. Otherwise, people don't get motivated. So with them, we see them trying to say that there's a crisis. But we believe that cooperative conservation really gives the opportunity to work constructively with people of all varieties who are willing to sit down and work on really making a difference for the environment.

Val>> Well, Secretary Gale Norton, thank you so much for your time and best of luck back in Washington.

Gale Norton>> Thank you.

Val>> Gale Norton was a guest of Town Hall Los Angeles. If you'd like more information on future speakers and events, you can go to their website or give them a call.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us by mail at this address:

Life and Times
4401 Sunset Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90027

You can also call our viewer comment line (323) 953-5555) or contact us the fast way by e-mail at kcet.org.

Larry Mantle>> Welcome to FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC. Our first film this week is from director, Ron Howard, as the dramatized story of heavyweight boxer, Jim Braddock. The film stars Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger and Paul Giamatti.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by film critics Jean Oppenheimer of New Times and Andy Klein of City Beat and Valley Beat. Andy, what did you think of "Cinderella Man"?

Andy Klein>> I had mixed reactions to this film, Larry. Ron Howard has once again gone to somebody's real life for source material as he did in "A Beautiful Mind". This time, it's Jim Braddock, a fighter who had an amazing comeback in the 1930's and who was dubbed The Cinderella Man at the time by Damon Runyon who had a sports column.

Basically, this is a guy who had a career going in the 1920's, it collapsed and, at the same moment, the economy collapsed and he finds himself living in a terrible little apartment with his wife and three kids desperately trying to support them. His right hand has been broken so many times that he's been banned from most boxing venues. He gets this big break, this fluke break, and suddenly he finds himself, after three or four bouts, going up for the World Heavyweight Championship against Max Baer. The film has great, great fight scenes and mostly they try and make it relatively historically accurate except that they really trash Max Baer and make him seem like an evil guy, which by all reports he wasn't.

Larry Mantle>> What did you think, Jean?

Jean Oppenheimer>> Well, I thought the film took about an hour to kick into gear. I felt that, once it does, it really does win you over pretty much completely. It's a very mainstream Hollywood film in that the production design is too perfect. The cinematography, I mean, you look at the screen and a certain portion of it is out of focus and there's a pool of light here and that's in focus. I thought it drew attention to itself even though I think a lot of people will look at it and go, God, they really captured that period.

A bigger problem for me really was the first hour of the film felt very episodic and sort of shallow to me. I mean, the first scene, things are going great for Braddock and his family. The second scene, it's jumped forward four years and they're in the Depression. I just think that we didn't get a feel for all of that or didn't get drawn into the characters enough before it really kicked into gear.

Larry Mantle>> A couple of years ago, documentary filmmaker Stacy Peralta made a film about 1970's competitive skateboarding culture in Venice, California. "Dogtown & Z-Boys" was a kind of art house hit. Now you've got a dramatized version of that film, the "Lords of Dogtown".

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> Jean, what did you think of the "Lords of Dogtown"?

Jean Oppenheimer>> Well, Larry, I'll tell you, growing up in south Texas in the 1960's was very different from growing up in Venice, California in the 1970's, so I really didn't know this world at all. To me, the film is very glossy and glossed-over. You know, it's got this non-stop action. I think the target audience which is obviously, you know, kids mainly -- not even just boys. I think probably girls too -- who are into skateboarding or into guys who are skateboarders, would probably like it a lot. I mean, the actors were fine with a special nod to Heath Ledger who, I thought, was terrific. He's totally unrecognizable. He does this sort of Val Kilmer-John Malkovich sort of turn playing this really -- he seems like totally drugged out, but I think it was alcohol as opposed to drugs. Totally out to lunch guy and he does a marvelous job with it. So it wasn't really my type of film at all.

Larry Mantle>> Andy?

Andy Klein>> I had a similar problem, but slightly different. I mean, I was living here in the 1970's when the skateboarders were really a big deal.

Larry Mantle>> You knew these guys, right? (laughter)

Andy Klein>> Yeah, and they were rotten little punks, for the most part (laughter). I mean, I really hated those guys back then. Not these particular characters, but you know, I remembered them like running over little old ladies and stuff and not feeling any guilt about it. I felt like I was being -- in fact, the film shows them doing behavior that though I think is really, really awful and seems to be thinking that it's all high-spirited, good fun which really bothered me.

It is well done. The dramatic part is kind of flat partly because I think they tried to stay true to the real life stories of these guys. But why would I like these people? I don't get it. I mean, you know, hormonal high spirits is a great thing sort of, but when you start hitting people with large heavy objects, not good.

Larry Mantle>> Our final film this week is the documentary "Shake Hands With the Devil". It tells the story of former Canadian General Romeo Dallaire who was responsible for U.N. peacekeeping efforts in Rwanda during the period of the genocide.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "Shake Hands With the Devil", Andy"?

Andy Klein>> Well, this is a documentary that's on a really important and fascinating subject which is the Rwandan genocide which was, of course, covered more recently in "Hotel Rwanda", but this is the real thing. The central character here is Romeo Dallaire who was the head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission during the genocide who basically did everything he could to stop it, but the international community, including the U.N. wouldn't let him. They just didn't want to get involved. Somalia had just happened with the Blackhawk down thing.

So this poor guy was there and essentially he fell apart towards the end of it because he felt so responsible seeing this going on and being the guy who's supposed to be preventing it and yet having his hands tied by the people above him. The problem is that the documentary itself is not that great. I mean, the subject carries it to a large extent, but the genocide gets brought across well, but the inner struggle of Dallaire, I think, just really didn't happen and it's a fascinating issue.

Larry Mantle>> What do you think of that, Jean?

Jean Oppenheimer>> I agree completely with Andy. I mean, to me, this is one of the great tragic stories of all time. I mean, it's has a mythological dimension. It's almost Shakespearean in nature and it would seem almost impossible to miss with this kind of deeply felt subject matter. But, to me, the documentary really did not do justice to the subject.

Well, let me just say first, intellectually, it's sort of there. The things that come across, but emotionally it's just lacking and I think that part of this could be that Dallaire probably didn't want to reveal too much emotional stuff about himself because he was so weighed down by what had happened. But to me, I am interested in the story because of his disintegration and I wanted to see more about him.

Larry Mantle>> Well, thanks for joining us for another edition of FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC joined by critics Andy Klein of City Beat and Valley Beat, and Jean Oppenheimer of New Times. We invite you to join us next week at this same time for the next FilmWeek on Life and Times.

Val>> And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of medicine, health, science and education.

And by a generous grant from Jim and Anne Rothenberg.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times --

Classroom bullies. What do you do when suspending them from school doesn't work?

>> When I was younger, I used to get picked on a lot. I was like the small person in class, but look at me now. I'm like super huge. Basically, I thought if they do it to me, why can't I do it to them?

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.

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