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Life & Times Transcript

11/29/07

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Battling the spread of AIDS in Tijuana also means fighting ignorance.

Dr. Remedios Lozada>> If a client offers them more money, they will do it without a condom. So it's a matter of how they perceive the risk and their lives, how much they feel their lives are worth.

Val Zavala>> Is there comedy in caring for an aging parent? We'll see if our critics are laughing.

It's all straight on tonight's Life and Times.

Announcer>> 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 Zavala>> This Saturday is World AIDS Day and we continue our look at AIDS in Tijuana, Mexico. In Tijuana, one of the most vulnerable populations are sex workers. For a closer look at their plight, the Cal State Department of Journalism went to Tijuana under the guidance of professor and reporter James Hill.

[Film Clip]

James Hill>> The young women who sell their bodies along the street turn away when they see a camera, but that is about the only behavior that isn't brazen in this zone where sex is sold twenty-four hours a day. It's been like this for decades in Tijuana's infamous red light district, but now researchers say that they've found a sharp rise in HIV despite a program to register prostitutes and test them for disease.

Kimberly Brouwer>> This has worked quite well, although there's a lot of backdoor sex work occurring as well from what we've heard where people who are not registered and not being tested for infectious diseases are still engaging in sex work. This may be part of the reason why these studies have shown a huge increase of HIV in the sex working population.

James Hill>> This woman told health workers that she's an injection drug user and sometimes resorts to prostitution to pay for drugs. She is not a registered sex worker, but came to this clinic for a free blood test. The results of an initial three-minute test revealed that she is infected with HIV. She wouldn't be informed until a more reliable test confirmed the infection.

Meanwhile, health workers could only hope that she took their advice -- don't share needles and do use condoms. Tijuana has some five thousand registered sex workers, but even these women are pressured not to require condoms.

Dr. Remedios Lozada>> Some of them do it because they get paid more by the client. If a client offers them more money, they will do it without a condom. So it's a matter of how they perceive the risks and their lives, how much they think their lives are worth.

Alicia Vera>> Yes, there is pressure not to use, but also that's where we try to intervene.

James Hill>> The nonprofit group, Preva Casa, works to prevent infection by handing out condoms in the red light district.

Alicia Vera>> It's at first trying to gain their trust and that's a hard thing to do, but people can also tell if you're genuinely providing the message, but also that you actually care about their lives as human beings regardless of whether they're drug users or they're sex industry workers. But just the fact that, at this point, my relationship with you is in assisting you in reducing your risk for getting HIV or any other sexually transmitted diseases.

James Hill>> There is a simple hope here that people will take the condoms and the protection they afford even if it's a child who fetches them for his father. Unprotected sex also plays a major role among Tijuana's gay men.

Kimberly Brouwer>> A recent cross-sectional study found that almost a twenty percent HIV prevalence in a study of men who had sex with men in Tijuana. So it's very alarming.

James Hill>> Alejandro Crisanto says that he is gay and HIV-positive. Journalism student Natalie Zelaya talked with him in the AIDS hospice, Casa Hogar Las Memorias, where Crisanto cooks for other patients.

Natalie Zelaya>> How did you get HIV?

Alejandro Crisanto>> Due to sexual relations, the person who infected me was my partner. I didn't know he was positive. There were only three occasions when I didn't use protection with him.

Natalie Zelaya>> After you found out, you stayed with your partner, the one that got you infected?

Alejandro Crisanto>> Yes.

Natalie Zelaya>> Why?

Alejandro Crisanto>> I don't know. Because of the affection I had for him, I don't know why.

James Hill>> Experts say that HIV and AIDS in Tijuana can form a complex web among gay men, prostitutes and drug users.

Kimberly Brouwer>> It's hard to distinguish between each of these risk groups because quite often you have an overlap in activity. You may have men who have sex with men who engage in commercial sex and who also inject drugs, so it's when you have those overlaps that you see an even higher HIV prevalence.

James Hill>> This may be one reason that the stigma of AIDS remains strong in the border city.

Courtney Crane>> Now they're in a group of, you know, prisoners and drug addicts and alcoholics and prostitutes. They're just like put in this little category like that is who you are, but that's not who they are. That's just what they've done. So who they are is much deeper than that. What would break the stigma is seeing people as human beings instead of like their actions.

James Hill>> Dr. Manuel Gallardo Cruz says that even the medical profession is not free from stigmatizing those with AIDS.

Dr. Manuel Gallardo Cruz>> I think that is mostly ignorance. Personally, I have experienced a rejection of some of my patients by other doctors. Some of my patients have been rejected by dentists and surgeons. They have been rejected when I have the need to send them for support because they need surgeries or they had dental illnesses. They have returned to me because they have HIV or AIDS.

James Hill>> Jose Guadalupe Santovanyas (ph) was too weak to talk as he lay dying in a hospice room marked with the Spanish word for isolation. His former neighbor massaged his legs and feet.

>> "I'm doing this for his skin and for it to have movement. He relaxes and it also helps his tendons."

James Hill>> She told us that the former community activist had never taken drugs or had sex with men. She says that he contracted HIV from an extra-marital affair eleven years earlier. Rejected by much of Mexican society, Santovanyas lived only three days after these pictures were taken. He spent his final days largely isolated in his hospice room at the end of a dirt road on the edge of town. In Tijuana, Mexico, I'm James Hill for Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> Our thanks again to the Cal State Northridge Department of Journalism for that story. If you'd like to post your response, you can go to our blog at kcet.org/lifeandtimes/
blog.

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

Val Zavala>> Well, it's that time of year when you have to pull out your checkbook. No, not for Christmas presents, but for your property taxes. Every homeowner knows that the property taxes are due December 10. But did you ever stop to think about what the value of all the homes in all of Los Angeles County would add up to? For the answer to that big question, I went to the Los Angeles County tax man.

His name is Rick Auerbach and he knows exactly how much all the real state in Los Angeles County is worth, minus government buildings. Ready? $1,037,881,721,280.00. Now the primary job of an assessor is not to collect taxes, although they do plenty of that. It's to make sure that the value of the properties are assessed accurately. In the case of Los Angeles County, that one trillion dollars is a record.

Rick Auerbach, Assessor for the County of Los Angeles, we're going to talk about taxes. But first, we should mention, though, that you did not get in a fight with your wife this morning.

Rick Auerbach>> No, or no taxpayers (laughter).

Val Zavala>> Or no taxpayers, that's right. So people shouldn't worry about that. This is an historic time for Los Angeles County. Explain why that is.

Rick Auerbach>> Well, we've just completed the assessment roll for 2007 and the assessment roll is now over a trillion dollars.

Val Zavala>> Explain what an assessment roll is because that's a term not most of us know.

Rick Auerbach>> Okay. That's a listing of all the property in Los Angeles County and its associated value.

Val Zavala>> So the value of all the real estate in Los Angeles County, with the exception of government real estate, is worth more than a trillion dollars?

Rick Auerbach>> That's correct. But actually it's worth much more than that, but because of Proposition 13, the value is actually kept artificially lower for property tax purposes and that's the benefit of Proposition 13.

Val Zavala>> So in terms of real estate values, that makes Los Angeles County by far the richest, if you want to call it that, in the state?

Rick Auerbach>> Oh, by far. I think Orange County would be next. They're probably right about four hundred billion or five hundred billion or something like that. So, yeah, we're more than twice as large.

Val Zavala>> So the real estate boom that we've been experiencing for the last few years in single family homes, that's what has mainly driven this upwards?

Rick Auerbach>> The main driver has been the sales of single family homes. When property sells now, the new value, the value for property tax purposes, is essentially the sales price. The old value was its value under Proposition 13. So if a property was purchased maybe in 1990 and then sold again in 2006, its value for property tax purposes is probably two to three times higher than it was, so that's why there's such a large increase.

Val Zavala>> And more or less, what is the property tax rate these days that people are paying?

Rick Auerbach>> Well, the average rate is probably about 1.2 percent. As stated in Proposition 13, the general tax rate is one percent, but then there's voted indebtedness that's also added to that. The average is somewhere around 1.2 percent.

Val Zavala>> But still, you're talking about 1.2 percent of about a trillion dollars. That's a lot of money. That's good news for Los Angeles County, isn't it?

Rick Auerbach>> It's very good news for Los Angeles County and for local governments within Los Angeles County, the cities. The cities get a portion of the property tax. Actually, about twenty-five percent of the property tax collected in Los Angeles County goes to cities.

Val Zavala>> And then a good chunk of it also goes to schools?

Rick Auerbach>> About twenty percent to schools and about thirty-four or thirty-five percent goes to the county of Los Angeles, and the balance goes to special districts.

Val Zavala>> So if we hit this real estate slump or plateau or whatever, I would think that means bad news for Los Angeles County, that the tax revenues will drop and we could be in trouble.

Rick Auerbach>> Well, it's not as good news as it was for this year. The assessment roll we just completed was for January 1, 2007. In other words, the value as of January 1, 2007. Now that we've hit a plateau and in some areas maybe some properties are going down in value, the increase for 2008 will not be as high as the 9.3 percent increase we experienced this year. I would guess now that it would be somewhere between five to seven percent. That's the assessment roll increase and not the value of property overall, but just the assessment roll increase.

Val Zavala>> So the bottom line is, it won't go up as much as it has gone up in these boom years?

Rick Auerbach>> That's correct, but we still expect again a healthy increase.

Val Zavala>> Now with the real estate market kind of slipping here, some areas have been hit pretty hard with depreciation or the home values dropping. Is there a way to get your home value re-assessed?

Rick Auerbach>> Basically, if you believe the assessed value of your property is greater than its actual value, we want you to file one of those claims for re-assessment. The job of the assessor, again, is not to raise revenue for the county or for the city. It's to put the proper value on property. If we're in error or the value of property in your particular area has dropped, we need to know about it.

So you need to compare your actual value of your property over what it says on your tax bill. Your tax bill is going to be coming in probably mid-October or early October. You can take a look at what the assessed value is and actually you can also find that assessed value online on our website. Take a look at that and, if you think it's in error, let us know. First step, either look online or call one of my offices.

Val Zavala>> And if you do think that your house is less than the assessed value, who's to determine its true value? Do you have to hire a professional appraiser?

Rick Auerbach>> No, you do not. We will take a look at it and we are very good. Again, we have no incentive to over-value property. However, if you still believe that we're wrong, you can file an appeal with the Assessment Appeals Board and you have until November 30 to file that appeal.

Val Zavala>> People often forget that the assessor is an elected post. Rick Auerbach has been re-elected twice to the job. Still, as jobs go, tax collecting is not the most popular. Now at cocktail parties, when they say, "Oh, what do you do?"

Rick Auerbach>> Well, most of the time, unless they know me, I would probably say, "I work for the County of Los Angeles". Then if somebody asked me to be more specific, then I would tell them what I do. I'd rather not be recognized when I go to the grocery story or --

Val Zavala>> -- oh, really? Because there's too many complaints? People are --

Rick Auerbach>> -- actually, because of Proposition 13, I think people are fairly happy. Again, they know what their property taxes are going to be. Even when they buy a new property, they know what they're going to be because it's essentially one percent of the sales price or purchase price. I think that's been good.

Actually, another thing, my office participated in a survey of the county of Los Angeles, a customer satisfaction survey. This was just completed a few months ago. We were one of two departments in the county that got a ninety-nine percent customer satisfaction approval rating.

Val Zavala>> Really?

Rick Auerbach>> In other words, ninety-nine percent of the people that came to our public counters, if they agreed to sign something whether they were satisfied or not satisfied, ninety-nine percent said they were satisfied.

Val Zavala>> Rick Auerbach, thank you very much. Great information and I'm glad that wasn't from a taxpayer (laughter).

Rick Auerbach>> (Laughter) Thank you. Thank you very much.

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

Life and Times
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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-director Tamara Jenkins. You may remember that she did the movie, "Slums of Beverly Hills" about a decade ago. Her new film, "The Savages", also a family drama, stars Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> I'm joined this week by critics Claudia Puig of USA Today and Lael Loewenstein of Variety. Lael, what did you think of "The Savages"?

Lael Loewenstein>> I really enjoyed this film, Larry. Tamara Jenkins made a film called "The Slums of Beverly Hills" about ten years ago which also dealt with a dysfunctional family and this takes a different look.

It's a brother and sister who are dealing with their father who has been somewhat abusive to them and emotionally neglectful, and they're really quite damaged from their childhood. He's now gone into dementia. Philip Bosco is wonderful as the dad. They have to take him from his home in Arizona and put him in a nursing home.

What was so terrific about this film was the way it kind of balances the tender, funny, painful, really acerbic elements of dealing with a family in crisis. I thought that Linney and Hoffman in particular are just so good at showing, you know, exposition through gestures, interactions, the slightest little movements. Just really a terrific, very strong, moving, funny and dark film.

Larry Mantle>> Claudia?

Claudia Puig>> Well, I agree completely and I think that, in addition, Laura Linney and Philip Seymour Hoffman seemed like a real brother and sister. The rapport, the bickering, the various sort of shorthands that siblings have, you completely believe them as a brother and sister. Philip Bosco was wonderful.

It's something that sort of puts you in the place of, you know, being a middle-aged person who is facing these issues with a parent in mixed emotions, in a sense, because the parents was not a very good parent to them, yet they want to do right by him. At the same time, they have their own issues.

They're kind of arrested as troubled kids as grownups, so their lives haven't really gotten off to much of a start in terms of romance, in terms of a lot of things. It's mordantly funny and yet it's also heartbreakingly sad. It's just a really wonderful film.

Larry Mantle>> Artist and director Julian Schnabel has turned his attention to the personal memoir book, "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly". The film is in French.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly", Claudia?

Claudia Puig>> Well, this is a wonderful, wonderful book by Jean-Dominique Bauby. It's a memoir about his life. He was the editor of El Magazine and he had a stroke at forty-three that put him in what is known as a locked-in syndrome where basically you can't move any part of your body except for, in his case, his left eye.

So he was able to blink out this amazing novel which was translated into English. It's more than just an inspiring story. It's a very honest tale and it's very lyrical in the book, so the movie takes that and runs with it. There are some amazing visual images.

The very beginning of the movie will just grab you because you're seeing everything through the perspective of his left eye. So you're seeing things in blurry images. You're hearing snatches of voices and you're feeling the terror and paranoia and all the emotions that he's feeling when waking up and realizing what his situation is or not quite knowing what his situation is.

Julian Schnabel is the director. He does a really nice job -- not quite as good as the book - of doing Felini-esque images and just kind of taking the poetry of the book and translating it to film.

Larry Mantle>> Schnabel, a visual artist himself, of course, as well as filmmaker.

Claudia Puig>> Indeed.

Larry Mantle>> What did you think, Lael?

Lael Loewenstein>> Yeah, I agree. I think I liked it even more than Claudia. I think poetry and lyricism are two words that really aptly kind of connect with this film. Schnabel as an artist was such a great choice to direct it.

I think you really get a sense of this intense objective identification with Bauby and that's largely due to Amalric's performance which is just so unique. He had to be so physically constrained at the same time he's embodying this character who's so full of imagination and life internally.

So I loved all the directorial choices that Schnabel makes and working with Janusz Kaminski, his cinematographer. There's a lot of really wonderful and daring and I felt original, although some say derivative, things that are done in the film. But I thought it was really beautiful, quite moving, one of the best films of the year.

Larry Mantle>> Writer-director Miles Brandman's film, "Sex and Breakfast", stars Macaulay Culkin and Eliza Dushku.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "Sex and Breakfast". What did you think, Claudia?

Claudia Puig>> Well, despite the title, this is not a very sexy story. The biggest problem I have is that Macauley Culkin stars. He's a perfectly good actor, but, I'm sorry, we all have that "Home Alone" image. To think of him having anonymous group sex which is kind of what this is about --

Larry Mantle>> -- home alone doing this or home with others doing this (laughter).

Claudia Puig>> Yeah (laughter), home with others doing this, no. He's not the first person that comes to mind when you're thinking of hot sex and he's probably not the fiftieth person that comes to mind, so that's problematic. It's a tedious film. It's about these young, beautiful couples who are bored with their relationship and are looking to spice it up.

So they go to this grandmotherly matron who recommends group sex as the answer to all your relationship problems. Of course, it doesn't exactly pan out, but it's just tedious. It's not interesting. I found it to be kind of a waste. There's a lot of scenes of them in the car not doing much of anything. It's just kind of an exercise in futility.

Larry Mantle>> And finally this week, the drama, "Badland", which features the story of an Iraqi war vet returning home to a very difficult family life.

[Film Clip]

Larry Mantle>> "Badland", Lael?

Lael Loewenstein>> Well, bleak doesn't really begin to describe this film. It's an incredibly disturbing film about a returning Iraq war vet who has to come home and deal with his wife who's been stealing money from him. He gets fired from his job. You know, he's defamed in every possible way and then he basically snaps.

He shoots his pregnant wife and his two sons and very nearly kills his daughter and himself when suddenly he realizes that that's the wrong thing to do. So he runs off with his daughter, assumes a different identity, goes to another town where he meets Joe Morton, who's another Iraq war vet, and they strike up a friendship. Morton, I thought, was very good --

Larry Mantle>> -- as he always is.

Lael Loewenstein>> Always, always is. There are some moving elements to that friendship and particularly to Morton's performance. It's a very, very rough film just given the subject matter and there are several choices that are very tough to deal with. I felt it was a bit self-important as a film. It didn't seem to really be so much about the Iraq war or the true Iraq experiences as it is just a take on a disturbed individual.

Larry Mantle>> Thanks for joining us for FilmWeek on Life and Times. I'm Larry Mantle of 89.3 KPCC joined by critics Lael Loewenstein of Variety and Claudia Puig of USA Today. Please join us next Thursday at the same time for the next FilmWeek on Life and Times.

Val Zavala>> For a longer version of FilmWeek, tune in to KPCC public radio Fridays at eleven a.m. And that's our program. I'm Val Zavala. Thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

Announcer>> 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.

Sponsored in part by:


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