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Life & Times Transcript

07/05/05

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, works by preeminent American artists. They're part of a never before seen private collection now on public display.

It's all straight ahead 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 renters.

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 east 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.

Val>> Many American artists at the turn of the century took off to Europe for artistic inspiration, but then they returned to America during World War I and the Depression. So how does war and hard times affect their art? That's the subject of an impressive exhibit at the Orange County Museum of Art. Our Orange County reporter, Roger Cooper, took a tour of Villa America.

Roger Cooper>> We're at the Orange County Museum of Art, the curator, Liz Armstrong, with us and everybody is saying you have scored a coup here. Why are they saying that?

Liz Armstrong>> I think they're saying that because this is a very private collection that hasn't been shown before and it's also one of the very best collections of modern American art and we're showing it for the first time at the Orange County Museum.

Roger Cooper>> We don't want to delay. We want to go see this. Seventy-five or so paintings that are collected by quite a collector, Myron Kunin.

Liz Armstrong>> Yes, selected from hundreds of paintings they have in the collection.

Roger Cooper>> Word is Mr. Kunin made his money in the salon products business, but his passion was paintings and here is one.

Liz Armstrong>> Yes, and it's called "Villa America" which, of course, is the title we took for our exhibition. It's a really important painting and a really interesting painting for a couple of reasons. Villa America was the name of a house that Gerald Murphy, an artist who was American, but worked in Paris in the 1920's, owned in the Riviera. It became sort of a hangout and meeting place for this incredible mix of artists and writers and musicians, Cole Porter, Pablo Picasso, F. Scott Fitzgerald. They all hung out and Villa America.

Roger Cooper>> So, in a way, that's what you're doing here. You're bringing together a collection of artists and thinkers.

Liz Armstrong>> Exactly. F. Scott Fitzgerald idolized this artist, Gerald Murphy, whose painting we're looking at, his house that he partied at. Gerald Murphy, this painter, became the lead character in a couple of his novels like "Tender is the Night".

Roger Cooper>> Liz, getting close to a Georgia O'Keefe.

Liz Armstrong>> Yes, who, of course, has become one of the best known American artists of the century. But this is a particularly subtle and beautiful early abstraction of hers. It shows the drive for pure abstraction that was part of modernism, but it also, if you look at it carefully, reveals that realism is never given up. It's actually a painting that could hang horizontally as well as vertically. You know, a really good painting can hang any way (laughter).

Roger Cooper>> With Georgia O'Keefe's approval?

Liz Armstrong>> Yes, and she did it herself.

Roger Cooper>> So we can all go this way now (laughter).

Liz Armstrong>> (Laughter) Well, the camera can do that for us (laughter). This painting itself is actually very radical. It looks like us today a traditional nude, but in 1915, this is a very comfortable young woman who is disrobing and being painted in the studio in the nude.

Roger Cooper>> "Nude With a Violin".

Liz Armstrong>> Yes. This painting is now forty years later than the Robert Henri we just looked at, so a lot has happened. I think you see a certain kind of freedom and radicality just in the way the nude is painted. It's somewhat imaginary. This is an artist who felt free to plummet the depth of his own imagination. He also just is very free in his line and in the way he paints a nude. It looks almost like a very contemporary painting today. You know, the return to figuration in painting that we see all over the country is in some ways hearkened back to this time.

Roger Cooper>> And right next door, you think this is a great painting.

Liz Armstrong>> This is an amazing painting for so many reasons. It's called "Madawaska" and it's by Marsden Hartley made in 1940 and it's an image of a wrestler in Maine where he was spending time. There are several things, I guess, I want to say about it. Marsden Hartley was one of the most important modernists working in America at the beginning of the century and he has spent time in Germany, in France, he was a great friend of Gertrude Stein. He knew everything about modernist art and painted in a very modern style, bordering on the abstract.

Here we are, thirty years later and he's returned to the figure and I think he's looking at much as American primitive and folk art as he is in modernism and kind of combining the two. So you also have, again, this very original independent style of painting. The absolute confrontational nature of it is something you find in a lot of the work in this collection. You know, the collector once said "I'm attracted to the painting that reaches in, grabs my heart and stomps on it." I think you could say this about this painting.

Roger Cooper>> I keep coming back to the fact this is all in a private collection, but it's now, firsts time ever, all put together so that everybody can see it.

Liz Armstrong>> Well, that's certainly one of the things that's so special about it.

Roger Cooper>> Reginald Marsh, "Star Burlesque - 1933". It is burlesque.

Liz Armstrong>> Yeah, and the burlesque was a very attractive subject to artists during this period as well as in literature because you sort of have this revolt in progress against Victorian prudery still, so there's that angle. Burlesque shows are very popular for that reason. I think, also, because you're in the Depression and it's a great distraction. But at the same time, and we actually know, that the artist had just seen a Mae West film a few days before, "I'm No Angel", and this figure in a funny way looks like she could have just walked out of a movie marquee.

Roger Cooper>> All of this hanging in a private office building in Minneapolis?

Liz Armstrong>> I have to say, the first time I went to see this collection, I walked in and over Myron Kunin's secretary's desk was this painting and I knew I was onto something completely fresh and original.

Roger Cooper>> It's by Paul Cadmus and you should know something about this. You did your thesis on Paul Cadmus.

Liz Armstrong>> Yeah, like a lot of artists in the 1930's, he is really interested in the American scene and what's going on. This is a really interesting case because this was a commission from the government to do the murals for a post office in Long Island -- Fort Washington actually -- and he submitted these four studies -- this is one of them -- for a giant series of murals about this town. Needless to say, the town fathers were not too happy with their happy suburban enclave being portrayed kind of as if you were in the middle of New York with all kinds of people and noise and chaos and street life (laughter).

Roger Cooper>> They got a little more than they bargained for.

Liz Armstrong>> A little more than they bargained and they sent them back to the artist.

Roger Cooper>> But we've got it.

Liz Armstrong>> Got it here.

Roger Cooper>> Our viewers may not know this painting, but they know something about this artist.

Liz Armstrong>> Yeah. Grant Wood is one of the best known artists in America because of his painting American Gothic.

Roger Cooper>> A guy in overalls and a pitchfork.

Liz Armstrong>> Exactly, with a sort of dour-looking daughter next to him.

Roger Cooper>> But this time, Grant Wood is in the painting.

Liz Armstrong>> Yeah, he's front and center and it's a self-portrait of sorts and he calls it "Return from Bohemia". He is referring to Bohemian Paris where he spent a couple of years in the 1920's and grew a beard and smoked a pipe and did the whole American in Paris thing.

Roger Cooper>> Liz, in this amazing collection as this one and it's Ben Shahn and it's outside a church.

Liz Armstrong>> Yes. Ben Shahn is actually portraying himself, at sort of the edge of the painting. And in contrast to these dressed in black churchgoers, he's kind of wearing his street clothes. You know, he's got these two-toned shoes on.

Roger Cooper>> He's got a camera. He's taking a photograph.

Liz Armstrong>> He's also taking a photograph. He was known, of course, as a great photographer of his period of documenting American life and America's social struggles. This camera reveals the way he did so much of his work in photography. It's sort of a trick camera. It's got a ninety degree lens pointing towards these churchgoers, but it looks like he's photographing straight ahead, so he's surreptitiously taking their photograph.

Roger Cooper>> Well, Liz Armstrong, thanks to the collector, we can all get to see this now. Amazing group of paintings.

Liz Armstrong>> Well, it really is and I love coming into the galleries and talking about the work, so thank you for sharing it with the viewers.

Roger Cooper>> Thank you.

Val>> For more information on Villa America, you can go to the website of the Orange County Museum of Art. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

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

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 --

The future looked bright in 1955, but what's ahead for Disneyland on its fiftieth anniversary?

>> Disneyland can be better than it is now as long as it holds fast to that and doesn't get distracted. It'll continue to make lots of money, make lots of people happy and be here, the big star of Southern California.

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

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