Donald Shoup
January 10, 2022, 9:58 AM PST
Los Angeles has 10,750 miles of sidewalks, and roughly 40% are broken. Repairs would appear to be on the way: In 2016, Los Angeles lost a class-action lawsuit initiated by disability rights advocates who alleged that the city’s inaccessible sidewalks violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. The settlement requires L.A. to spend $1.4 billion over 30 years to fix its sidewalks.
In November 2021, Los Angeles Controller Ron Galperin released an audit that found progress has been agonizingly slow. Five years after starting the repair program, the city had repaired less than 1% of its sidewalks.
During the same period, it paid $35 million to settle lawsuits filed over pedestrian injuries caused by broken sidewalks. At this rate it will take 500 years to fix all the sidewalks, Galperin said.
What can Los Angeles do to accelerate the repairs? Answering this question is important for all U.S. cities. In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that the Americans with Disabilities Act requires cities to keep their sidewalks accessible to persons with disabilities. Since then, Atlanta, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Sacramento, San Francisco, Seattle and hundreds of other cities have been sued for violating ADA requirements for sidewalks.
Fortunately, there’s a simple way to ensure that sidewalks will be accessible: Cities can require that the sidewalk abutting any property must comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act when the property is sold.
For more than two decades, I have studied these point-of-sale programs as a way to repair inaccessible sidewalks. Lawsuits may be needed to ensure accessibility for people with disabilities, but almost everyone will benefit. During Covid-19, millions of people began walking for exercise in their neighborhoods, so many of them now know from experience about the high cost of bad sidewalks.
California’s Streets and Highways Code requires property owners to repair damaged sidewalks fronting their property. Nevertheless, many cities don’t enforce this law because it’s politically difficult to compel property owners to pay for the repairs — which is why 40% of L.A.’s sidewalks are broken. Point-of-sale programs can help cities enforce the state law. More generally, all U.S. cities should consider a point-of-sale program if they lose an ADA lawsuit or want to avoid one.
To see how point-of-sale programs work, consider the ordinance that explains the excellent condition of sidewalks in Pasadena, adjacent to Los Angeles. Pasadena requires an occupancy permit for any residential property that is sold, and to receive an occupancy permit the property must have safe sidewalks:
PASADENA MUNICIPAL CODE Section 12.04.031
The city shall inspect the condition of the sidewalk abutting or fronting on a particular piece of property prior to the issuance of any single-family or multifamily occupancy permit. . . All such permits, prior to final issuance, shall require a notation that a sidewalk inspection was completed and that either the sidewalk is not in need of repair, that repair has been completed or that repair has been bonded to the satisfaction of the engineer.
How would this policy work in Los Angeles? Property owners would not have to pay or do anything until they sell their property. They need to fix only the broken sidewalks fronting their property, so they will see where their money goes. And the cost of sidewalk repairs should be small compared to L.A.’s median home sales price of $949,000 in 2021. After selling their property, owners who move out of the city will leave their neighborhoods in better shape at no cost to those who remain.
These pay-on-exit requirements aren’t new in California. When properties are sold, Los Angeles requires smoke detectors, water-conserving devices, and seismic gas shutoff valves. Berkeley requires insulation and water-conserving devices at sale, while Davis requires a full property inspection to ensure that residential units meet minimum building codes and health, fire and safety regulations. Like Pasadena, Piedmont mandates at-sale sidewalk repairs. According to Chester Nakahara, director of the city’s public works department, “the at-sale repair program has significantly helped to maintain the high quality of our sidewalks.”
To manage a point-of-sale program, the city can require property owners to submit a certificate of compliance with the sidewalk ordinance before the title is transferred. To obtain the certificate, property owners would request the city to inspect the sidewalk abutting their property. If the sidewalk is in good repair, the inspector issues a compliance certificate. If it’s damaged, the inspector estimates what the city would charge to repair it. The property owner can then have the city make the repairs or hire a private contractor to do the work.
In cases where the required repair cost would impose a hardship on low-income property owners, the city can pay for it. This subsidy shouldn’t cost the city much because most property owners don’t have low incomes. For other property owners, the sale provides the cash to pay for the sidewalk repairs.
How fast will a point-of-sale program fix L.A.’s sidewalks? On average, half of all properties in the city are sold in 12 years, so a program adopted in 2022 should repair half the city’s broken sidewalks by 2034. And since the property turnover rate is similar throughout Los Angeles (and also throughout the nation), a point-of-sale program should improve all neighborhoods at roughly the same rate.
If a sidewalk seriously violates the Americans with Disabilities Act, repairs shouldn’t wait until the abutting property is sold. Cities can repair the sidewalk and delay the owner’s payment until sale. In effect, the city will lend owners the money to pay for the sidewalk repairs for as long as they own the property. Owners who can delay paying until they sell their property may repair early because they know they will eventually have to pay anyway.
A pay-on-exit program may be the fairest and most politically painless way to keep sidewalks accessible. Property owners who are cashing in on capital gains and leaving the city, or at least the neighborhood, will pay most of the costs. Who better to pay for repairing an inaccessible sidewalk in front of a property?
Property has its duties as well as its rights. With pay-on-exit public finance, all property owners will do their parts sooner or later, and sidewalks won’t be obstacle courses for pedestrians. Prohibiting title transfers for properties with sidewalks that violate the Americans with Disabilities Act will put into practice the adage from Goethe: “Let everyone sweep in front of their own door, and the whole world will be clean.”
0 notes
I don’t know what California you’re living in, but last election—if you really cared about your vote getting stolen—you could sign up for notifications that tell you when your ballot was shipped, when it was received, and when it was counted. If any of these didn’t match up, like if your ballot was “delivered” and “received” when you don’t recall filling it out, you would know that something was wrong. Signing up took like thirty seconds.
193 notes
·
View notes
The ban includes top policymakers such as those who sit on the Federal Open Market Committee, along with senior staff. Future investments will have to be confined to diversified assets such as mutual funds.
Fed officials can no longer have holdings in shares of particular companies, nor can they invest in individual bonds, hold agency securities or derivative contracts. The new rules replace existing regulations that, while somewhat restrictive, still allowed officials such as regional presidents to buy and sell stocks.
“These tough new rules raise the bar high in order to assure the public we serve that all of our senior officials maintain a single-minded focus on the public mission of the Federal Reserve,” Fed Chairman Jerome Powell said in a statement.
Under the new rules, the officials will have to provide 45 days’ notice in advance of buying or selling any securities that are still allowed. They also will be required to hold the securities for at least a year, and they cannot buy or sell funds during “heightened financial market stress,” a news release announcing the moves said.
28 notes
·
View notes